Notes From My Knapsack 3-11-07
Jeff Gill
Are We Running Out of Oil?

Are we running out of oil?

Of course we are.

Pretty much every serious scientist who has looked at the question agrees that
there is a finite amount of petrochemicals that exists in pockets and strata
below the surface of the earth. It was made through long, deep processes of
geology and chemistry that cannot be reproduced through mechanical means, so
when we use it up, that’s it.

A non-renewable resource, they call it, with reason.

Footnote: I say "pretty much" because there is an intriguing, if highly
unlikely loophole. Go Google "abiogenic, petroleum, origin" and enjoy if you
want. I don’t buy it.

The point remains, though, that we don’t even really understand how clubmoss
and fern pollen becomes black gold. (Hint: bacteria)

More optomistically, the real energy locked up in traditional oil and coal is
actually (wait for it) solar power. Yep, the energy of a sunny day long ago is
literally "fossilized" into carbon deposits, hence fossil fuels. Our best plan
for the future is to use this odd interlude in human history, which we get to
burn through but once, to figure out how to tap the original source, which is
our nearest star, the Sun.

(Um, but you said we’re running out. Could you go back to that?)

Sure. We are, indisputably, using up our fossil fuels. They’ve powered the
world’s economies, from Britain’s Industrial Revolution out of the northern
English coal fields, to today’s Middle Eastern to Microchip global tangle.

We’ve expanded wealth, generally and as available to a percentage of the world’
s population, beyond any point in recorded history. More people are fabulously
wealthy in the world (that’s you, happy Booster reader, relatively speaking)
than ever before, and even the poor have longer lifespans and better prospects
for health and understanding than their ancestors did a hundred years ago.

The problem, of course, is that it isn’t sustainable.

I am, however, irritatingly optomistic on this front (my friends and family
assure me of the irritating part, anyhow). Just as photos of Licking County
from 1907 show a barren and denuded landscape from deforestation (I’m talking
anywhere in the county, folks; stripped), largely for firewood, and street
scenes virtually reek of the horsemuck, many feet deep, helping folks rich and
poor die of cholera . . .

The year 2107 isn’t going to show a gasoline and Conesville electric plant
world. How will we get our power from the sun, the seas, or the deep core?

Dunno.

What I’m sure of, though, is that we’ll develop new technologies and industries
around the end of fossil fuel and the "Carbon" Economy the start of the "Blank"
Economy.

What I’m less sure of is what all this will do in the Middle East. Tom Friedman
has pegged this one, as he does so often, with his passionate arguments for a
"Geo-Green" strategy for the United States.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been ruled since the 1920’s by one man, with 50
to 1000 children from more than 17 "official" wives, whose successors to date
have all been sons. (King Ibn Saud died in 1953, but their official legal code
says the ruler must be a son or grandson of the founder, and they’re still well
stocked). The country is literally staffed by foreigners, since Saudis
themselves are largely out of the labor market.

Recently, it was shown that Saudi Arabia is working harder to produce the same
amount of oil. Put starkly, they’re running out of oil they can afford to sell
for what it costs to get.

When a quarter of your population are aliens who can’t vote and aren’t allowed
to worship or gather, and you can’t pay them anymore, what happens? When you
have to get them out of your country before your own dissidents start fomenting
rebellion among them, who drives the garbage trucks and runs the water plant,
or brings the mango chutney to your table? Oil is 90% of their economy.

We (that’s you and me, kids) helped make this feudal nightmare work for almost
a century. Like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Iraq, the nations we built in
1920 after World War I are hitting their balloon payment dates, and the bill
has come in innocent blood. The first two are almost fully reconstituted along
reasonable lines, and we’re working on what Iraq will become. That land’s been
a piece of cake compared to what the endgame will be for Saudi Arabia.

We need sustainable energy, domestically produced, and soon, but not for the
reasons the doomsayers offer. This country is the chief support of a non-
sustainable government in the Middle East, and we’re going to have to be part
of finding a soft landing for them. The sticky mess was partly our fault back
when it was just sand, and oil has only made it messier.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio;
argue with him at knapsack77@gmail.com.