Modern life is something "new under the sun." Here is a short list of genuinely new things that have come into being in the last 300 years (and most of these in the last 100):
- Industrial machinery.
- Mass-produced synthetic medicines
- Plastics
- Widespread use of oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy.
- The ancients would have laughed in disbelief at the idea that out of every 100 people only 2 would be producing enough food to feed the other 98.
- Mass, nearly-instantaneous communications over long distances.
- Human flight.
- Exploration of the undersea world.
- Space flight.
- Synthetic fibers for making clothes.
- Nearly universal literacy.
- The list of possible occupations available to a citizen of a typical small agricultural village anywhere from 5000 years ago to 500 years ago could almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. In a modern society there are thousands of possible occupations, many of which require years of preparation in order to perform successfully.
- Mechanized warfare.
- Gene therapy.
- In-vitro fertilization.
- Cloning.
- Artificial intelligence.
And that is the crux of our problem. We live in a dramatically new world created by our advances in knowledge and know-how, but we are essentially the same kind of being as our peasant or hunter-gatherer ancestors. The rate at which our world is changing keeps speeding up, but the speed at which we can adjust to all these new changes is about the same. We are more knowledgeable but not much wiser. The gap between the complexity of the world and the level of complexity most humans can manage keeps getting wider. As a result, our societies become more fragile, more vulnerable to catastrophic failures.
More and more ordinary people are waking up to this gap. They keep bumping up against problems more complicated than they feel comfortable dealing with. These kinds of encounters often create stress, anxiety, and even desperation. People have some funny ways of dealing with these negative feelings. One common coping method is denial. They may deny
- that the problems really are more complicated than they can solve.
- that they are really bothered or troubled by the problems.
- that the problems are really much different from problems people had 30 or 70 or 200 or 2000 years ago.
For some of the statistical background, see the following:
Historical Perspectives on Human Energy Use
Recent Per Capita Energy Use by Country/Region/Degree of Industrialization (NOTE: "Per capita" is Latin for "per person".)
Per Capita Energy Use by Country, 2005-2007
World Oil Reserves
Peak Oil (NOTE: "Peak Oil" refers to a tipping point at which the world begins to continually produce less oil as time goes by because of dwindling supplies.)
Coal Reserves by Country
More on Coal
Peak Coal
Natural Gas Reserves by Country
Peak Natural Gas
If you don't have time or inclination to dig into the dirty details, here is the upshot: There is a limited amount of coal, oil, and gas available for energy use. These resources are nonrenewable. Coal, oil, and gas were produced from the bodies of decaying animals and vegetation buried and put under tremendous pressure.
According to standard scientific theory, this taks place over millions of years. Most of the original vegetation grew in a period between 350 million and 250 million years ago, although the origin of some existing coal deposits can be traced to as recently as 70 million years ago. We have no practical means to speed up this process so that we can mass-produce coal, oil or natural gas in a period of days, months, or even several years.
If you happen to believe that God created the world very recently (say, about 6000-10000 years ago) then where did coal, oil and gas come from? Either it was created along with the rest of the earth or was formed during the Genesis flood. Both of these are one-time events. They will not be repeated.
For the foreseeable future, the coal, oil and natural gas currently buried in the earth is all we will have. We are using it up at rates which will exhaust our currently-known supplies as follows:
| Resource | Approximate Years of Remaining Supply |
|---|---|
| Coal | 300 |
| Oil | 70 |
| Natural Gas | 60 |
Is this likely to happen?
No. As the supply dwindles, prices will rise. As prices rise, people will be unable to buy as much coal, oil, and natural gas. This will create great suffering unless we are able to find other ways to provide energy. And, in fact, the high price of coal, oil, and natural gas will motivate people to find other ways to obtain energy. "Necessity is the mother of invention." We will find other ways to provide energy. As a result, as supplies dwindle, so will the use of coal, oil, and natural gas.
Yes. Humans have a long history of using up natural resources until they are gone. Human societies have hunted several wild species to extinction. In America alone, people hunted carrier pigeons to extinction and nearly wiped out bison. There are multiple cases of humans exhausting water resources and wild sources of food in other parts of the world, leading to the collapse of their societies. There is no reason to think that scarcity by itself will change this behavior. The rise in coal, oil, and gas prices will spur invention ... of new ways to find and extract more coal, oil, and gas. The higher prices will motivate people to extract and sell the existing reserves more quickly, not less. That will accelerate the rate at which these resources are used up. Unless we develop another way to provide large quantities of energy quickly, technological societies are in for big trouble in the coming decades.
A further complicating factor is the growth of many economies across the world. For too long the world has been divided into a relatively small number of technological societies and large numbers of people living in abject poverty. And in many cases the poverty has become worse than that of their ancestors because of changes brought about by the interference of technological societies in their traditional way of life. This situation is beginning to correct itself. India and China, the world's two most populous countries, are going through rapid economic expansion. As they do this, their energy consumption is rising rapidly as well. World oil, coal, and gas prices are on the rise as a result of this new demand. And this is just the beginning. Many countries in Latin America, Asia, and even Africa are poised on the cusp of dramatic economic expansion. On the one hand, this could life another billion or so people out of poverty. On the other hand, it could drive world energy prices through the roof.
Unfortunately, supplying energy on a massive scale is a long-term project. Power plants and electric distribution systems take decades to develop. The same goes for distribution of oil, natural gas, and nuclear, solar or wind power. If oil prices jump to $300.00/barrel in the next 2 years and gas is selling for $8.00/gallon, we are not going to be able to switch to all-electric cars by the third year. And if we wait until coal, oil, and gas prices rise, we will have less money needed to develop alternatives. We will be spending that money trying to buy up the coal, oil, and gas that remains. In short, waiting for energy prices to rise high enough to motivate us to find alternatives is a recipe for disaster. It's like refusing to fix holes in a dike until the river has already flooded your house.
One final note on the energy problem. There are political, media, and corporate interests that are in deep denial about the severity of the energy problem. Some of the others are aware but are so afraid of what would happen if the general population found out how bad things are that they'd rather give us "bread and circuses." (In the days of the Roman Empire, Emperors would pay for public entertainments and provide free food to the citizens of Rome and parts of Italy to keep them content. This was a way to reduce the chances of violent rebellion.) For example, the American Petroleum Institute, a trade organization representing the major oil and gas companies, has been televising a series of commercials promoting their industry. Their messages? Oil and gas companies don't hurt the environment when they drill. We depend so much on oil and gas that we'd better not do anything to restrict oil and gas companies from getting us more or we'll regret it. Oil and gas companies produce lots of jobs. There is truth in all these messages. The problem is that these advertisements say nothing about our dwindling supplies.
When the chief executives of oil and gas companies go public with their conviction that our country needs a long-term, comprehensive energy policy that includes looking beyond the use of oil and gas, you know we have a problem.
Here is one example. Here is another. The time to act is now. Next week we will take a closer look at what to do.
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