Our Future of Energy Policy–and Defunct Civilizations

Here’s a short but wonderful article by Allan Hoffman, PhD USDoE (Ret.) that summarizes U.S. energy policy and where it may be headed vis-à-vis the Earth’s great empires and what eventually brought them down. 

Of course, there are many great aphorisms that speak to the relationship of history to the future, perhaps the most famous of which comes to us from Spanish philosopher George Santayana: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  In this case, the author closes with a similar notion: “We should learn from history, not just repeat it.”

Personally, I’ve never been totally sold on this.  I believe (fear, actually) that the future will be so far different from the past so as to have very little bearing on the subject.

In particular, what happens when nine billion people on a tiny speck in space find themselves constrained in terms of the essential life-giving commodities (like food and water) that they formerly took for granted?  They have the technology to address the situation with the greatest of ease.  But do they have the political will?  Will decency and a sense of duty to one another trump unbridled rapacious greed?  Don’t look to history for the answer; it doesn’t exist.  This time we’re on our own.