By 2067 I’ll be 80 years old. Lets talk about what the world will be like. Maybe you don’t believe in all this climate stuff. Its ok, there’s nothing new there to talk about so we won’t. But maybe at least you believe (understand) that fossil fuels are finite, that we don’t make them, and that one day they are going away.
Unlike the climate, this idea isn’t controversial. So lets talk about this instead.
The spooks over at ‘Big Science TM’ estimate we have less than 50 years until the oil dries up and is gone. I’ll be 80 years old when this happens, if it doesn’t happen sooner. 50 years for oil and natural gas, 110 years for coal. Imagine what the air will be like as the earth struggles to replace the hole left by liquid fuel (60% of our energy consumption), with coal. Imagine what will be important to the culture of 2067. Imagine the power a solar panel will have that year; imagine the advantage an electric vehicle will have that year. You think gas is expensive now? Wait till 2067. Your grandkids will laugh at what you paid today.
The world is not transitioning quickly enough to be independent of our addiction to fossil fuels by the time we’ve drank it all away. This idea isn’t controversial either. It’s just a thing about to happen. Here in 50 years or less. Every vehicle or machine that takes gas? It will be a paperweight when it is worth less than a liter of unleaded. Every item you own with a polymer or plastic? Oil made that, and all of it will stop.
Imagine, when it happens, any nation with any oil at all will rocket to incredible wealth, able to ask whatever they want for it, they’ll get it (if they sell it), with ease, in 2067. Any nation without it will descend to pre-industrial squalor at nauseating speed. You think other nations don’t know this? As I write this there are 7 nations that use 100% renewable energy. You think the oil companies don’t know this? Of all, they know it best.
And look, I’ll be 80, and I won’t have any kids. So really, I do not have to care, and neither do you. After all, it isn’t up to you. Your voice is like mine: it won’t change how it goes. But there will be people around, and so for them, I’m for sitting on it (the oil reserves, that is). And whether you believe (understand) the climate issue or not- if you care about the future of the world (or even just America), if you have children or grandchildren who will be around when this thin sliver of time, the Fossil Fuel Era, comes to its inevitable end, you probably should, too.