Fossil Fuels: Boon and Bane

A tidbit for today from the Writer’s Almanac: On this date in 1859, petroleum was discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania. It’s been called “the most important oil well ever drilled” because it marked the beginning of the modern petroleum age. Petroleum had been discovered elsewhere, of course, but this was the first well successfully drilled in search of the stuff….. Until the Texas oil boom of 1901, Pennsylvania was responsible for half of the world’s production of oil, and it spawned the motor oil brands Pennzoil and Quaker State. 

People occasionally ask environmentalists why we hate fossil fuels.  The simple answer is we don’t, and for two important reasons:

a) They enabled the rapid growth and development of humankind over the last 200 years, touching virtually every product and service sector, and

b) For at least the coming few decades, they (especially natural gas) will continue to power large parts of our civilization.

What is true, however, that, as wonderful as they were in the past, if we are to avert environmental catastrophe, they need to give way to low carbon energy sources in the future.  It’s like anything else in society: a development comes along and represents a terrific boon, but is later replaced by something even better, whether that means cheaper, cleaner, more efficient, or less toxic.

Complicating and retarding this transition, however, is the enormous sums of money, and thus the huge political muscle, represented by the fossil fuel industry.  As laid out in the new book Kochland, extremely wealthy people organize to achieve limitless power over our law-making apparatus, and become incredibly difficult to dislodge.  In this particular case, we have a story of the climate change denial machine, how a small group funded sham think tanks, fake research non-profits, consumer advocacy groups, social media presence, huge lobbying organizations, voter caravans, and several other tools to block any potential legislation that would address climate change.

What will eventually happen here is anyone’s guess. Mine is this: as long as big money continues as the dominant force over the U.S. Congress, very little progress will be made, regardless of the obvious destruction associated with a warming planet that we see right in front of our eyes.