Fossil Fuels Are Here to Stay
The end of the fossil fuel age is like the horizon, it recedes as we approach it. For several decades, environmentalists and believers in human caused climate change have campaigned to reduce and then eliminate fossil fuel use that provides heat and light, power for factories and homes, and cost-effective mobility.
While no one can deny that the use of fossil fuels involves what economists call externalities and others call pollution, technology has reduced those externalities because that was cheaper and better for society than moving to alternatives. As a result pollutants from combustion have been reduced and air quality continues to improve.
If one dimension of the fossil fuels use represents externalities, the other dimension, which too rarely gets examined, is benefits. A look at those benefits should convince the open minded that society and the environment have benefitted immensely from the use of fossil fuels.
The growth in population and industrialization in the 19th century stressed wood and whale oil resources leading almost to the extinction of whales and widespread deforestation. The Industrial Revolution in the mid-19th century and the increased use of coal and then crude oil reversed those trends and lead to increases in human well being, a more widespread distribution of wealth, and urbanization.
Cambridge professor Tony Wigley in an article, Opening Pandors's Box: A New Look at the Industrial Revolution makes the point that access to energy separate from plant photosynthesis enabled economies to "break free from the constraints afflicting organic economies." First coal substituted for wood as a source of heat and then became the source of energy to power machines. Around the same time, crude oil ... quickly became a substitute for whale oil ... for illumination and lubrication.
Richard Rhodes, Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation, in a paper Energy Transitions: A Curious History concluded "The abundance and variety of [the Industrial Revolution's] innovations ... may be subsumed under three principles: the substitution of machines...for human skill and effort; the substitution of inanimate for animate sources of power, in particular the introduction of engines for converting heat into work, thereby opening to man a new and almost unlimited supply of energy; [and] the use of new and far more abundant raw materials, in particular the substitution of mineral for vegetable or animal substances". The "industrial revolution opened an age of promise". Fossil fuels, innovation and technology have combined to achieve that promise by creating jobs, raising standards of living, increasing longevity, and promoting mobility that increased human freedom.
The energy revolution that began in the 19th century continues to be a major contributor to economic development, making it possible to accommodate population growth with a rising standard of living. Fossil fuels enable a coast-to-coast transportation system and the personal freedom to live away from city centers and places of work. Fossil fuels are the backbone of a nationwide grid system for electricity to heat and light our homes, power for a growing service industry, especially the information technology industry. As Mark Mills, Manhattan Institute scholar, wrote a few years ago, "the cloud begins with coal'. There are no commercially viable alternatives that provide that range of benefits.
Economic and energy history show a strong correlation between per-capita energy consumption and increases in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). If the very poor in the world are to become wealthier and enjoy the standard of living that we do, are to have clean drinking water, adequate food, and sanitary living conditions, energy will be required. The use of fossil fuels is the easiest way for them to get that energy. There are over 1 billion people living in abject poverty. High cost, intermittent energy systems will not allow their aspirations to be realized. Access to fossil fuels gives them reasons for hope.
In spite of concerted efforts to constrain the use of fossil fuels through an almost endless litany of problems, with climate change being the most recent, the International Energy Agency and others continue to forecast fossil fuel dominance for decades to come. While anti-fossil initiatives raise the cost of using them, their dominance continues because they are abundant, relatively cheap, and have a high energy density. No alternative can compete economically with those qualities, without large government subsidies. Past energy transitions have not come from mandates but from thermodynamic and economic principles leading to alternatives that offer substantial advantages.
An objective consideration of fossil energy's history and its continued contribution to our well being should lead to the conclusion that their benefits far exceed their externalities, especially since technology is continually reducing them. Those who advocate quickly replacing fossil energy to avoid a climate catastrophe would do well to remember the admonition of the 16th century historian, Guiccardini: "Excessive forethought and great solicitude for the future are often productive of misfortune. For the affairs of the world are subject to so many accidents that seldom do things turn out as even the wisest predicted. And whoever refuses to take advantage of present good from fear of future danger...often discovers to his annoyance and disgrace that he has lost opportunities full of profit and glory, from dread of dangers which turned out to be wholly imaginary."
William O'Keefe is CEO of the George C. Marshall Institute. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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