August 23, 2005
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THE HIGH COST OF OIL
Our way of life is based on cheap, abundant energy, which until recently, has meant oil. Obviously that has changed.
What concerns me is the apparent lack of any serious planning, or even discussion, of alternative sources of energy.
Back in the eighties, Meadows & Meadows described this course of events in "The Limits to Growth" - a book widely condemned and discredited in its time. Turns out they were on target - the target was and is pretty obvious- you can't keep using up a non-renewable resource forever.There are several alternatives to oil, coal, and gas which are already in use and which could be readily expanded: Nuclear power -NIMBY- so starve in the dark; Hydrogen (needs nuclear-generated electricity for production), sunlight, wind, water, geo-thermal -all relatively non-polluting and not liable to develop shortages.
For some reason, there has been little effort expended in developing these resources. We have shut down atomic power plants, torn down dams and torn up railroads (a much more energy-efficient way to haul stuff long distances than trucks. All in the name of cheap oil. Well, we don't have the cheap oil any more, so lets get with it.
Right now Americans seem to be feeling pretty good about their financial situation. they haven't cut down on their driving, they are still buying gas-guzzlers and even at close to three dollars a gallon (and clearly doomed to continue the cost climb) gas consumption is actually up over last year.
As the cost of energy begins to impact us - you can't produce anything or get it to the market as cheaply as last year- I see a world-wide economic collapse and retrenchment with the U.S. suffering the greatest hit (we have more to lose).
Can we do anything about this? Well we should at least be seriously talking about it. the new energy bill is a bad joke, designed to make us more, rather than less, oil dependent. I suppose it's our own fault, we elected and have re-elected and supported those who got us in our current mess and are doing nothing to get us out.
Comments (3)
Oh cmon... What's so bad about giving money to the people who are already raking in the dough so that they can find more oil to sell to us? Is that REALLY so bad ;P
RYC: Macs, in theory, are more reliable - but my boss has done such weird things to the Macs that they crash - all the time! Seriously - all we have at home are windows and linux boxes. I cannot recall the last time anything has happened with any computers at home - no crashing, no data loss - nothing. At work, I save every few minutes because my computer crashes at least 2x a week.
I am seriously considering getting a window laptop just for use at work... Ugh.
I see the problem with oil. You see the problem with oil. But that doesn't seem to help when people can be so effectively stirred to vote for someone based on one issue that will not have nearly as significant of an impact on our world. I'd like to say I don't understand how people, the public and all, can continue to be so completely oblivious to getting screwed like this, but that would just be me trying to make an excuse for it, that it is somehow beyond comprehension. It's not beyond comprehension. It seems to me that society is getting more and more and more dependant, and programmed, and less and less critical, of anything and everything. Critical thinking seems like a foreign concept to so many people, and yet to me, it is fundamental to us all. Until we can get people to actually consider and examine what they see in the world, showing them evidence that A (using/being dependant more and more (on) gas) + B (running out of gas) = C (we're screwed) won't do anything until we can get them to consider that evidence.
So what do we do? I'm not sure ... Sorry, little mini-venting going on
-Aldo
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