One of the recurring themes of the "Tea Party" political movement is that our society, by running up huge budget deficits, is leaving a massive mountain of debt that will have to be dealt with by our children and grandchildren. They say that we are forcing later generations to pay for our excesses. Surprising as it may be to my many conservative friends and neighbors, I actually agree with that statement, although our respective solutions to the problem, and their timing, would be quite different. I would point out to them, though, that we are also piling up a different type of debt to leave to our descendants, one that dwarfs our current fiscal woes in size and complexity.
I'm referring, of course, to the enormous damage we are inflicting on our planet by our mindless reliance on fossil fuels, and our refusal to even consider the possibility of alternative sources of energy. We are already seeing the precursors of the catastrophic implications of our addiction to coal and petroleum (see Hurricane Katrina, and the melting of the polar ice cap); but the main event will come forty, fifty, or even one hundred years from now, according to the overwhelming consensus of credible scientific thought. We as a society have not yet faced the awful truth that that we are setting in motion forces that, during the lifetimes of most of the people who will read this, will reach a point of no return. By our reckless, short-sighted dependence on "cheap" fossil fuels, we are dooming our great-grandchildren and their great-grandchildren to lives dominated by chaotic climatic upheaval. How do you put a dollar value on our failure to act, even to consider action, in the face of such a future?
But what if you are one of those who consider the concept of man-made global warming to be a hoax perpetrated by a world-wide conspiracy of scientists in order to coerce more grant money from governments and foundations? You would have to assume that nearly every climate scientist in the world, except those who are paid by the oil companies and conservative think tanks, has suddenly abandoned any pretense of ethical scientific behavior; but that is your privilege. Even for you, though, there is another unpleasant truth about fossil fuels, especially petroleum, that there is even less controversy about. We're running out of the stuff, and the earth is not making any more of it.
Estimates of remaining reserves vary widely - it is all hidden underground, after all. Still, there is general agreement that we have already sucked up most if not all of the easily available crude petroleum in the United States. What's left is tucked away under the Rocky Mountains, or in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, or miles beneath the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. This summer's horrific experience with the rogue BP well in the Gulf should be a warning to us that we've got to find a better way to power our society.
As for the rest of the world, there is some oil left to drill; but you don't have to spend a lot of time with a map to understand the dangers inherent in these sources. Do we really want to trust our economic future to the good will and stability of Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria?
Furthermore, consider that over a period of about 150 years, we have used up more than half of the world's available reserves, by most conservative estimates. The really scary part of that is that this oil was almost exclusively consumed by the peoples of North America and Europe. The rest of the world has used almost none, up to now. Suddenly, we are facing competition for available resources from huge, rapidly modernizing populations in China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia, among others. How long do we think those reserves are going to last, and what will they cost, when we have three times as many people demanding their fair share? What sorts of wars, riots, and other conflicts will be unleashed as societies struggle over a rapidly disappearing pool of oil?
By any reasonable measure, we're leaving a very unappealing future for the generations that come after us. Unless we change our ways, and do it pretty quickly, our great-grandchildren will have ample justification to curse our lack of attention to the most pressing problems of our time, and of theirs.
However, it is not too late. This may be the most important idea of all. We can still reverse the poisoning of our atmosphere that has been taking place for decades. We can still develop alternative energy sources to replace fossil fuels and free us from the tyranny of "cheap" fuel. The first step is to disabuse ourselves of the notion that our fuels are cheap. We need to understand that they seem cheap only because the price we pay doesn't reflect all the costs. When we pay for a gallon of gas at the pump, we are paying the costs of the exploration company who drilled for the oil, the pipeline company who transported it, the refinery that converted it from crude oil to gasoline, the distributor who moved the gasoline to the retail outlet, and the owners of the gas stations who sold it to us. At each stop along the supply chain, the next person down the line paid enough to cover the supplier's costs, plus a reasonable profit. That's the way our system operates, and for most commodities it works pretty well.
The missing factor in the energy equation is the costs that are caused by our consumption of the fuel that won't come due until decades after we have consumed it. Every gallon of gas we burn creates more potential for climate disasters in the future. Doesn't it offend our sense of fair play to expect those costs to be borne by our successors on the planet? Each gallon consumed today brings us that much closer to the time when there is just not enough petroleum to go around. It hastens the day when the only way you will have a reasonable supply of energy is if you, or your government, takes it by force from your neighbor. In accounting terms, we are incurring significant costs when we burn that gallon of gas that we expect later generations to pay, and that unfunded liability is growing exponentially.
Thomas R. Borden Waugh, Alabama September 25,2010