How Close Are We To a Progressive Energy Policy?
Here’s a good, readable summary of the predicament in which humankind finds itself vis-à-vis energy, and the path we took to get here, from author Thom Hartmann.
He points out that we run our factories, heat and cool our buildings, and transport ourselves and our cargo with the decomposed remains of plants and animals that lived and died millions of years ago, and concludes that “it’s time (America) stepped out of the Carboniferous and Mesozoic Periods, and stepped into the 21st century.”
The problem is that doing so will require achieving a political consensus to make a tough decision. The American people will have to understand that it’s not acceptable for our country to have a de facto energy policy that is built around extracting the last molecules of hydrocarbons from the Earth’s crust and burning them. How close are we to that level of agreement?
Let’s just say we’re not exactly knocking on the door. We had a presidential election a few months ago in which a central tenet of both campaigns was an energy strategy built around becoming even more aggressive about the harvesting of coal, oil, and natural gas. At a certain point, it appeared that the president might lose his re-election bid because he was not sufficiently uncompromising in his support of the fossil fuel industries.
Fortunately, the voices calling this into question are growing louder by the day – at least that’s the way it seems to me.
The article points out that these fossil fuels are hydrocarbons, made by natural processes from prehistoric carbon, out of the prehistoric atmosphere, from a much hotter planet earth, before much of our modern biosphere had evolved.
The article then states…
“Since the beginning of the 19th century, we’ve based our entire economy, our livelihoods and our entire civilization on fossils.
“Just think about that for a second. These preserved remains of animals and plants that lived and died hundreds of millions of years ago today run our country, from the cars we drive, to the electricity we use in our homes. They fuel our ships and planes. They drive our industry and our computers.
“Most important, they’re made into fertilizers and pesticides, and they power the machines that plant, harvest, and transport our food. We’re literally living on – and even eating the product of – fossils.”
Here’s what could stand to be more emphasized for the reader:
That prehistoric carbon, from the prehistoric atmosphere that caused a hotter earth, is being dug up from deep in beneath the ground and burned, and is then spewed into our modern atmosphere by the gigaton as carbon dioxide. We can’t rationally expect that carbon dioxide won’t have the same impact on the climate as it did when it was in the atmosphere before we evolved. The laws of physics haven’t changed.
This piece of writing is really a good one it assists new web visitors, who
are wishing for blogging.