Guest Post By Ronald Stein
Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure of PTS Advance, headquartered in Irvine, California
Published March 11, 2020 at CFACT https://www.cfact.org/2020/03/11/social-changes-with-covid-19-are-a-prelude-to-life-with-less-fossil-fuels/
While the world is feverously trying to reduce emissions from fossil fuel usage, we get hit with the horrific contagious Coronavirus COVID-19. We’ve seen extensive self-imposed social adjustments to transportation that are very similar to what will be required to live with less fossil fuels in the future.
We’ve seen a serious reduction in the usage of the transportation infrastructures of airlines and cruise ships, as well as automobiles and trucks, and their impact on the leisure and entertainment industries, all to avoid crowds.
Before fossil fuels and the thousands of products made from petroleum derivatives, and electricity that followed, the world was a zero-sum snake pit that was a war against one another scrounging for food, water, and shelter. In the 1800’s most people never traveled 100-200 miles from where they were born. Life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between 20 and 30 years of age.
The social lifestyles before 1900 had no such transportation choices, as they had no autos, planes, or cruise ships for transportation. The inventions of the automobile, airplane, and the use of petroleum in the early 1900’s led us into the Industrial Revolution. Crude oil, natural gas, and coal changed – for the better – the lifestyles of every person living in developed countries such as, the U.S., Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia.
We would not be able to “make products and move things” if not for the thousands of products from petroleum derivatives that get manufactured from crude oil that wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture. A few of those products that are part of modern societies include:
Economies around the world, and all the infrastructures are increasing their demand and usage each year of those energy sources from deep earth minerals/fuels to make thousands of products, inclusive of but not limited to:
· Medications and medical equipment for cures for most diseases
· Electronics for worldwide communications
· Fertilizers to help agriculture feed the world
· Asphalt for all the roads
· Tires for all vehicles
· Steel for every building in the world
· Wire for the worldwide electrical grid
Today, the airlines that did not exist before 1900, transported more than 4.1 billion passengers in 2017 around the world and projections are 7.8 billion airline passengers by 2036. Cruise ships which also did not exist before 1900 move 25 million passengers around the world every year.
Along with those transportation options available for society, we also have billions of vehicle trips to and from airports, hotels, ports, and amusement parks that are increasing each year. COVID-19 has shown us that society changes can reduce the demand of those growing numbers.
Yes, we may be using fossil fuels too extensively for leisure and entertainment, but the developed world is where it is today, healthier and wealthier, because of all those products we get from those oil derivatives.
To meet those low emission targets, we’ll need to continue to reduce the transportation demands of society and COVID-19 may be showing us how we’ll need to retract from our extravagant usage of the various transportation systems that did not exist before fossil fuels.
Our future existence may be less vacations and less business conferences. Reductions in the usage of the entertainment and hospitality industries, neither of which existed before fossil fuels, may also be necessitated.
As we weed ourselves from oil, we’ll need to lower our demands for transportation infrastructures that COVID-19 has shown us the way.
As we weed ourselves away from fossil fuels, we’ll need to accept that many developing countries like many in China, India, and Africa that are still stuck in the pre-1900’s era that have yet to join the industrial revolution and the opportunity to enjoy the thousands of products in our daily lifestyles, may never do so as the fuels that support the demands of the various transportation infrastructures will be diminishing.
The same politicians that are thrashing on the oil and gas industry, and seeking its demise, are the same ones reaping the benefits of the medications, medical equipment, communication networks, and the thousands of other products from that industry that have contributed to their lifestyles and their ability to live beyond 80 years of age. Those vocal about emissions need to join the conservation movement.
Yes the world has changed from the societies that existed in primeval times, without airlines, trains, vehicles, merchant ships, medications, fertilizers, cosmetics, and military equipment like aircraft carriers, battleships, planes, tanks and armor, trucks, troop carriers, and weaponry, and electricity that did not exist before 1900, but now may be the time to start showing our conservation cards.
At a rapid pace more and more countries and governments are moving their energy policies toward ridding the world of fossil fuels to electrify societies using only intermittent electricity from wind turbines and solar panels. Electricity alone may support a simplifier lifestyle but cannot support the huge energy needs of the transportation infrastructures, nor provide the thousands of products that societies demand from those petroleum derivatives.
While everyone improves their conservation and efficient use of energy, it may be timely to begin weeding ourselves away from the transportation infrastructures, and the leisure and entertainment industries to the best of their abilities to conserve oil for where its most needed for society, to make the thousands of products that support lifestyles as well as worldwide sustainable economic development.
Ronald Stein, P.E.
Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure
PTSadvance.com
I don’t understand how you’re seeing this life without fossil fuels as a negative. The toxic pollutants and greenhouse gasses produced by combustion reactions and the burning of fossil fuels are huge health risks for us and pose a huge threat to our environment. I recently wrote a blog about the positive impact quarantine is having on air pollution, if you’re interested on understanding the other side to this: https://travellingwithoutfootprints.home.blog/2020/03/14/how-is-the-covid-19-outbreak-affecting-air-pollution/
“Crude oil, natural gas, and coal changed – for the better – the lifestyles of every person living in developed countries such as, the U.S., Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia.” This is a two-sided statement. I would argue tha the greenhouse gas emissions and imminent threat of climate that has come from these advances has, in fact, worsened my quality of life. This is without even considering the displacement and loss of native title that the fossil fuel industry has caused in the developing world and in native communities within the developed world. Just look at the native land titles that the Adani mine is currently threatening.
“As we weed ourselves from oil, we’ll need to lower our demands for transportation infrastructures that COVID-19 has shown us the way.
As we weed ourselves away from fossil fuels, we’ll need to accept that many developing countries like many in China, India, and Africa that are still stuck in the pre-1900’s era that have yet to join the industrial revolution and the opportunity to enjoy the thousands of products in our daily lifestyles, may never do so as the fuels that support the demands of the various transportation infrastructures will be diminishing.”
Weed ourselves?
This is obviously not a correct usage, and I would think it a typo, except it appears twice in a row is virtually identical usage.
This makes me wince, much as I do when I hear someone saying something like “The point is mute.”
I would say more, but I am trying to ween myself off of being overly critical.
Besides, I make a lot of typos myself…but the same word twice…?
Anyway, the sentence makes no sense, even without that error.
In fact, it is so incredibly awkward of a sentence I found myself reading it over and over again searching for some kernel of a coherent thought.
But no luck.
All indications are that our need for transportation has nothing to do with our preferred sources of energy.
It has to do with our need to get people and materials from one place to another.
If we stop using oil, we will either need to power motor vehicles with something other than gasoline or diesel, or we will need a entirely new infrastructure, or at least more of certain other ones besides roadways and gas stations and such.
And what COVID-19 is showing me personally is that when our travel and transportation is disrupted, our economy goes into a rapid and catastrophic tailspin.
If we want to know what not having fossil fuels will be like, without having something that can replace them completely and 100 percent reliably, just turn off all the power plants and end all the shipping.
Right now supply shock is adding to the instant loss of economic stability.
Without transportation of goods over long distances, all critical materials will need to be made locally for every population center.
We do not have any hardly any factories that make pharmaceutical anymore, and even if we can quickly build them, we get our raw materials and precursors from other places as well.
Economic productivity relies on having large amounts of a gigantic number of materials and products always on hand wherever they are needed, and there are a large number of materials and products that are absolutely critical to not just our lifestyles, but our very lives, as we now understand them.
One point the author made was to say that “Life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between 20 and 30 years of age.”
But this is not an accurate statement. Those numbers represented an average life expectancy AT BIRTH.
It was not a limit on how long people could and did live, or what the maximum age was, but a measure of how many people died young, at birth, or at any random age from a wide variety of harms, not the least of which was infectious diseases.
To me, what this outbreak does is demonstrate very vividly how utterly insane climate alarmists are, how unscientific people on the left are, how idiotic anyone who buys into their narratives is, and how even many of the people who seem to be on the right side of some issues are probably right for the wrong reasons, given how amazingly irrational they are on other issues.