A century ago, one barrel of oil could extract more than 1,000 barrels. Now, in the US it takes one whole barrel of oil to extract just five more barrels. In some parts of the world, that figure may be up to almost 10 times higher, but it’s still falling everywhere.
So the known reserves of up to 1.7 trillion barrels of oil might keep our world running for another 50 years, but it’s not much use if we can’t get it out of the ground.
How long do you think before we start using renewable energy to extract oil? Sure, that sounds crazy, but the wealthy are determined to extract as much oil as possible. They can’t make money from it if it stays in the ground. And that’s the main reason they attack renewable energy as being expensive and unreliable. They want to use up as much oil as possible first.
Ernest Hemingway said that bankruptcy comes gradually, then suddenly. He was describing financial bankruptcy, but it’ll be no different for energy bankruptcy. It’s already coming gradually and when it comes suddenly, the poor will suffer most and the wealthy will profit most.
The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. That saying applies just as well to developing renewable energy sources. If we leave it too late, there won’t be enough energy for all of us and the costs will skyrocket. Of course, that’s a feature, not a bug for the wealthiest. They’ll profit even more from the high prices that result from them slowing down the development of new energy sources until it’s too late.
What? We don’t need to panic because nuclear fusion will save us all. Even though after 70 years of research, the longest fusion reaction is just 22 minutes and the most energy from a sustained reaction was enough to power 12,000 homes for 5.2 seconds? Maybe God decided the inside of huge balls of explosive gas was the best place for nuclear fusion reactions, rather than the surface of rocky planets, for a good reason. But even if I’m being overly negative, the wealthy will want to recover the vast sums of money spent on fusion, so they’re not going to be giving their new energy away.
Considering the wealthiest 10% of Americans have already hoarded 68% of American wealth, how much more do you think they’ll take? On the bright side, as the poorest 50% of Americans already share just 2.5% of America’s wealth, things can’t get much worse for them.
So, when is the right time to start going all in on renewable energy?
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