Imagine the world using less oil and gas

The environmentalists be damned, it is the cost of oil and gas that is beginning to change things so fundamentally. The effects will depend on where you live. And the effects will take time, as in decades, to show themselves. But the effects are coming.

One hopes the beneficiaries of today’s $100 a barrel oil will sock it away. Some will, some will invest it, and some will continue on the status quo. The recent order of a private version of an A380 jet plane by a Saudi prince is such an example of the status quo ($300+plus million). The recent foreign policy of Russia to use oil and gas as both a foreign policy tool (as in withholding energy from others) to a domestic policy tool (as in funding their deployments of the 50’s era Navy and Air Force) is another example. The domestic budgets of Iran and Venezuela’s leaders have been saved by the fantastic increase in their incomes. If only they could tone down their promises to pay for so many things that even the increases will not cover.

Jump to the future. The cost of transporting so much of the rain forests being cut down will have to slow things down. The explosive costs of oil will probably bring the long awaited civil war to China. Self-appointed environmentalists in all nations will back down as people go without heat and electricity, and begin to die of the usual results. The use of coal will rebound, cleanly in the western world , and still dirty in the eastern world. Domestic sources of gas and oil in all parts of the world will be hoarded, and become national assets. Global trade will be restrained by transportation costs, and domestic production of such basic goods as clothes and food will resurge at home, where ever that is. Even home economics and shop will come back in American school education. All the silly false promises of alternative energies will become apparent.

We in the world need energy to live and work, and even if our populations decline, our standards will increase enough to be a real problem as we use less oil and gas. Bottom line, our energy requirements just to live and work should go up.

What’s a politician to do? What is a citizen to do? In present day USA it seems to be hope for the best, and push the hard decisions on to the future citizens. One expects they somehow can figure things out better than we can. Of course some nations and citizens may go some kind of Tom Clancy novel, and unleash some kind of human killing disease on the world. Maybe our present policies are already helping this along the way. So in the end, it is not the oil and gas, but the numbers of humans and the energy we need to live and work with. Cro-Magnon styles are starting to look better and better as a survival strategy. Also, more clearly, most prefer using our judgments and votes to guide solutions, and not any self-appointed environmentalists. And some people think things are exciting now!