"The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to EMOTIONALLY comprehend the exponential function." -- Edward Teller
Specifically, I would add, to emotionally comprehend what happens when the exponential function meets a finite resource.
My radical thesis is that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is ultimately a good thing, and the bigger and uglier it turns out to be the better. In the essay below I aim to explain why.
We desperately need to develop a clean, renewable energy industry in this country for the following reasons: 1) Climate change. The vast majority of the worlds scientist accept that climate change is occurring and is almost certainly caused by the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere as a result of human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. Every major scientific organization of repute in the world, including the NAS the AAAS, and the Royal Society (UK's version of our National Academy of Science) have issued official statements accetping this position on climate change. So any apparent "controversy" on the issue is not among scientists, it is between the community of the worlds scientists and the community of conservative pundits and commentators who dismiss the science of climate change for purely ideological reasons. The scientific consensus is clear and unless you are privy to knowledge that refutes the scientific consensus, then the most prudent thing to do is to accept the consensus as most likely being true. If the community of conservative commentators does not accept the scientific consensus, their recourse ought to be to produce sound science that will overturn the consensus. That is how responsible inquiry is done. Any other course of action on this issue is pure demagoguery.
2) Fossil fuels are a finite resource. This is simply a fact that no one disputes. That being the case, it makes no sense to base our way of life and any future growth on a nonrenewable energy resource. However, the technology needed to transfer from a fossil fuel based economy to a renewable economy is not fully available yet. On existing technology such a transfer would be a massive engineering endeavor requiring the bringing to scale of massive amounts of new infrastructure, what has been referred to as Renewistan. Clearly such a transition would require a major reorganizing of national priorities and resources. It would not be easy, but it is simply necessary, and the longer we wait to begin, the more painful it will be.
3) An early commitment to developing a clean renewable energy industry and becoming a world leader in this new industry provides possible economic benefits. For the two reasons explicated above, the world has no choice but to make the transition to clean, renewable energy. As I stated above this will require a large scale commitment to technological innovation and will create a need for a large scale manufacturing and technological base that could create thousands of new high-paying jobs that could not be outsourced. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has referred to clean energy technology as "the next great global industry" and many other experts share this view. China is just beginning to recognize this fact. If we do not make a commitment to pursuing this technology now the United States may well loss it's role as the leading world economy.
4) National defense. Most of the worlds oil now comes from countries that do not share our ideals of political freedom and equal rights. If a regime is able to maintain a strong economy simply by pumping oil out of the ground it has no incentive to invest in the education and welfare of it's people. The political process in these countries suffers as a result and despotic and dysfunctional regimes can emerge. The result of developing a clean, renewable energy industry would be an undermining of such regimes. Also being independent from these regimes would shield us from vicissitudes that might result from them.
So here we have four reasons for developing a clean, renewable energy industry in this country. More reasons may be available but these four reasons are remarkable in that at least one of them ought to appeal to most everyone, regardless of their political leanings. So why, then, is their such little political will in this country to begin making this transition? I can think of a few: 1) Everything seems fine right now. We can go about our lives giving little thought to our nations energy policy. People do not deal well with problems that are in the distance- we feel no emotional pull to do so. 2) Initially things will not be easy. The technological research needed will most likely not be done without large scale government funding. Venture capitalists and other investors will not endeavor to bring new technologies to scale without the assurance of demand for such technologies, thus the need for taxes on fossil fuel to ensure demand. 3) High levels of animus in the political discourse. Neither party is willing to advocate for anything that might require increased taxes or increased government involvement or regulation or short term sacrifice from the American people for fear of political repercussions, no matter how thoughtful or needed those policies might be. Our political system is essentially broken with no hope of making progress on issues requiring any degree of sacrifice, unless in the face of large scale, visible disaster. And therein lies the point of this essay.
No one was willing to accept sacrifice to improve our nations health care system despite the fact that health care spending was on pace to consume a quarter of our nations GPD within the next few decades. Why? The disaster was far off and not visible, so the rational arguments fell flat. Juxtapose that with the political climate following 9-11. Watching unmitigated evil unfold on our TVs nightly left the American people ready to make any sacrifice necessary to prevent anything like that from happening again. This willingness was squandered, of course, by inept and short sighted leadership in place at the time. The unmitigated disaster that will ensue if humanity continues to base it's entire way of life (transportation needed to maintain economic activity, energy needed to maintain functional food systems to support current and future population densities, etc.) on a finite and nonrenewable energy source would be horrible beyond anything experienced thus far in human history (exponential function meeting finite resource). Up to this point you have been reading the rational arguments and have been left, most likely, unmoved. What is necessary to produce the needed political will, unfortunately, is a truly massive and ugly visual spectacle. The oil spill in the gulf just may well be that ugly spectacle, but only if it is big and ugly enough.
