One important point in the sustainability discussion is that no part of
life as we know it is sustainable over the long haul. Nor is life as we
have known it for nearly 100 years sustainable. That is because "life as
we know it" is almost entirely supported by cheap energy in the form of
cheap oil. Cheap oil not only fuels our transportation system, but is the
foundation of nearly everything we do. Look around you and see how much
is plastic, all from cheap oil. The mechanics of modern medicine would not
be available if not for cheap oil. When the oil runs out, life as we know
it will be gone.
There are plenty of guesses when the oil will run out. For as long as I
have been watching it, we have been told there is a 40 year supply. The
truth is, we will never run out of oil. As it gets more expensive, new
sources and replacements will be found. Nuclear generated electricity will
replace much of our energy needs. To some extent coal will replace
oil for many chemical base stocks but there again it is a finite
resource. Biomas is another source but with increasing population, biomas
may be pressured in other directions.
So life as we know is not sustainable. It may go on for my lifetime and
maybe my grandkids lifetimes, but there will be an end to the
party. Sometime in the not too far distant future, cheap energy will be
gone. What the society will look like after is anybody's guess and I would
be very surprised if anyone alive now could predict it.
I was thinking about this because I was thinking about my future and my
kids. It is very conceivable that my yet to be born grandkids will be
celebrating new year 2100. From there I was thinking about the world that
my mother was born into in January 1919. What was her world like and how
has life as she knew it changed. By the time she was born, cheap energy
was an important part of the economy and had been since well before the
turn of the century.
In a little over a century we have become completely hooked on cheap energy
and in a little over a century from now, we may not have any more cheap energy.
Don Bowen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Valley Center, CA Senior Software Engineer
Contract software engineering
http://members.cts.com/crash/d/donb
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ihc14
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ferguson/
