World Energy in 2075: Planetary Chaos?
My friend and frequent 2GreenEnergy commenter Cameron Atwood just sent me this quote from Lawrence Wilkerson, former aide to Colin Powell, in which he (Wilkerson) talks about Royal Dutch Shell’s two main scenarios for the world in 2075:
What I’m talking about, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of the American Empire. Empires have idiosyncrasies, nuances, complexities. Go back to the Assyrian, move forward to the British, go back to the Roman, move forward to the Third Reich, which lasted not 1,000 years but quite a few less.
Every one is a little bit different, but they all disappear. Ours could last another 75 years, indeed another 100 years, but it could be a very messy 100 years. Royal Dutch Shell has done a look. They have some of the best strategists that I’ve run into (and I was a strategist in the military) in a long time, and their look says the future is a blueprint, or the future is a scramble. And they talk about how to 2075, how dwindling water resources, dwindling petroleum resources, gas and oil, and so forth are going to cause world leaders to have to either cooperate and coordinate “blueprint”or fight each other mercilessly for half a century or longer. Royal Dutch Shell believes it’s probably going to be the latter. They call that “scramble”. We arrive at essentially the same point in 2075, with a basket of energy sources, some of which we probably don’t even know now due to technological innovation, with different countries in the world, with different power relationships in the world; we arrive pretty much at the same place, whether it’s the blueprint scenario or the scramble scenario. There’s just under the scramble scenario a lot of blood, a lot of treasure, and a lot of dead bodies. Frankly, Royal Dutch Shell strategists, they won’t tell you this, but I believe it’s fair to say that they think the political will and the leadership won’t be here, and so we’re going to do the scramble and not the blueprint. If you’re an optimist, you can go for the blueprint. The real reason that Dick Cheney changed from the man who in 1991 (and in 1994 he repeated it) said, “Going to Baghdad is not worth a single soldier or Marine,” to some 12 years later, “Going to Baghdad,” with some enthusiasm, is a three letter word called “oil”.”
Wow. That’s both fascinating and terrifying. I’ve long said that we’re living through the end of the American Empire, but I didn’t know anyone of this stature both a) agreed with me, and b) would say it publicly.
Not to suggest that my skills as a world visionary exceed those of Shell, but I honestly think they have the wrong reason. I believe it’s the end to U.S. superiority as the economic leader, given our pitiful educational standards and our political bickering (generated by the oil companies) that is making it impossible for us to lead the Third Industrial Revolution, i.e., cleantech. I think this gradually eroding economic leadership will eventually pull everything else down on top of it, like a man who chokes at a formal dinner and collapses to the floor while grasping the edge of the tablecloth.
I actually think the world energy picture won’t be the cause of the “scramble” described here. If it’s true, as Wilkerson says, “We arrive … in 2075 with a basket of energy sources, some of which we probably don’t even know now due to technological innovation,” how likely is it that fossil fuels will still have a commanding relevance to the needs of the 9 – 10 billion people living on Earth at that time? That’s 60 years from now, an eternity given the ever-accelerating rate of technology development. I think it’s extremely unlikely.
Obviously, oil means everything now, and most certainly has been the cause of most of our wars since its rise to prominence in the 19th Century; virtually no one disputes that. But it can’t stay true indefinitely, and just look at what we’re doing in clean energy (including advanced nuclear).
In any case, thanks for the very thought-provoking piece.
