Is it possible that we will never be able to do what is required to avoid the avoidable? Experience suggests that the answer is emphatically, "NO". The short span of human life relative to the often gradual development of changing conditions make our ability to intervene to alter inevitable consequences. This short-life span barrier is worsening as the world's population grows. The collective impasse becomes greater because greater numbers of people must be influenced to change or accept change. Let us consider one example that is illustrative.
For more than 50 years it has been recognized that natural oil supplies were limited and access to whatever is available beneath the oceans and land of the world are progressively more difficult and costly to retrieve. The leaders of the countries of the world were unable to consider this fact until after WWII. Once recovery from WWII became reality in the early 1950's we were blinded by the sudden joy of living normally again, while other countries devastated by the war were dealing with basic issues such as food, water, sanitation, housing and the rebuilding of all infrastructure. Many so-called third world countries were also struggling just to survive.
By the time the mid 50's arrived, and US living conditions improved substantially we and our leaders in the USA were preoccupied enjoying the good life.We were the automobile capitol of the world, and few other countries had as many automobiles as were driven in California alone. Long range oil price issues simply were beyond our horizon and certainly the availability of oil and gasoline was unquestioned, and nobody could tell us otherwise. The warnings about "Peak Oil" were laughed at and ignored even by leaders of our country (with rare exceptions) and everyone was happy driving cars that consumed at least one gallon of gasoline every 15 miles. Why would there be concern when gas was about 20 cents a gallon. So called "Peak Oil" was no more than a joke.
Now, more than 60 years later the joke is on us. Third world countries that barely used automobile for daily transportation, and other countries nearly obliterated by WWII are now overflowing with automobiles where only 60 years ago cars were rare. Now the nearly 7 billion occupants of our planet are at least familiar with oil consuming autos and in the USA the average number of cars per person exceeds seven!! World wide the average number of cars per person is almost two. In the USA alone we consume over 882 million gallons of oil per day, mostly in the form of gasoline. Approximately 20 gallons of gasoline are yielded from 40 gallons of oil. We in the USA use about 140 billion gallons of gasoline annually, the equivalent of nearly 300 billion gallons of oil per year or almost 800 million gallons of gasoline daily. This compares to about 150 millions of gasoline consumed per day in 1960. As the population of the world increases and we become more dependent upon automobiles for transportation required for daily use, the world natural oil supply becomes more depleted and more costly and difficult to
pump out of deep subsurface natural reservoirs, even miles below the ocean floors.
You do not require a PhD in geology to realize that we cannot pump oil out of the bowels of the Earth indefinitely. Eventually oil will become so depleted that it will no longer be economically viable to try to recover the last vestiges of natural oil. Nature will simply become to resistant to our boldest efforts, and we will no longer have oil. This is not speculation. The reality of today's technical retrieval efforts and price trends proves that we will eventually priced out of the remaining market for oil, or simply become broke trying to pay for it.
Neither option makes sense. Why do we fail to do something about this urgent issue that will slam right into our faces when we are unable or unprepared to do anything about it? The answer is that incompetent leadership is oblivious to or indifferent to the reality of the problem. When gasoline reaches $10 a gallon we will all be screaming and playing the blame game, and there will be no one to blame other than ourselves. We elect incompetent legislators and other political leaders who are elected because of our apparent inability to see beyond our own noses and allow our apparently shrinking brains to allow the Peter Principle allow the crap to float to the top. Unless we demand foresight from our political leaders and we ourselves assume responsibility for the future well being of our progeny we will continue to find ourselves behind the curve. Intelligence, not popular image , is the most vital ingredient for public leaders. We, however have turned election into popularity contests that are paid for by special interests and the Peter Principle becomes, unfortunately the common denominator that characterizes most of our elected officials. WE and only we, in a democracy, have the ability to force change. Unless we become aware of what our negligence is causing and change path quickly, the impending oil disaster is inevitable, as well as other preventable debacles. It may in fact be too late to do anything about the oil crisis since we have squandered over 60 years debating the issue and doing virtually nothing to overcome the impending economic consequences.
No comments:
Post a Comment