In today’s world of mass media coverage, we’ve all heard this one before: Our fossil fuels are running out, and they aren’t going to be replenished any time soon. Even the most conservative estimates put our “cliff event” (the time at which we will be unable to maintain our current levels of energy consumption) at around 2025. Yes, folks, that’s most likely within your lifetime. This would seem to make the problem even more threatening than the widely covered issue of global warming. Well, the good news is, you can’t warm the globe anymore if you don’t have anything to warm it with.

But before we let ourselves be hit with enormity of this problem and the dire consequences it can bring upon our world, perhaps we should start doing something now to prepare for the eventuality. Let’s explore what we know about this problem, what’s being done about it, and what factors are contributing to the very small progress we have been making toward a solution. The U.S. accounts for over 30% of the world’s total energy consumption which brings this problem closer to home.

Almost half of the world’s total energy consumption as of 2001 used the oldest and dirtiest fuel source: our friend coal. Coal and other fossil fuel reserves such as oil and natural gas were built up during a process that lasted for millions of years up until the early 1900s when we started using them. Many trillions of little trilobites and dinosaurs and trees gave their lives so they could decompose and be recreated by incredible pressure and heat as fossil fuels.

They’re not coming back, and we’re using more and more of them every day. Renewable energy sources have been around for a while, however. Hydroelectric, wind, and solar energy sources do account for a sizeable portion of the world’s energy consumption… a whopping 12% or so, depending on whom you ask. All of these power sources have their own environmental and reliability problems, and thus none of them really looks like a replacement for our continued reliance on fossil fuels.

Nuclear power, while clean, reliable, and renewable in and of itself, also leaves us with the nasty problem of nuclear waste. We still have no idea what to do with it except stick it in the ground and hope that it goes away in a few million years.

So here we are, burning our coal and our oil, worrying very little about what happens when we run out, right? Well luckily it’s not exactly quite that grim. For instance, even the ultra-conservative Bush administration has just pledged almost $1.2 billon in research for new, clean, renewable energy sources to be developed. Unfortunately, what many people don’t know is that these funds are directly linked to the administration’s ability to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness. No oil drilling means no research funds.

There are other folks throwing money at the problem too though. Even the often-sullied Enron Corporation maintains a small R&D department working on the problem. We have gasoline-electric hybrid cars which have reduced our need for so much refined gasoline. Unfortunately, again, nearly 50% of our electricity is produced by coal… making such cars somewhat of an anachronism. So what’s stopping us from trying to get over this issue?

Well, there’s one big reason: money. Oil companies, car companies, jet airplane companies, the shipping industry, and all sorts of other folks don’t want to give up on their lifeblood until it’s already gone. They worry about changing their infrastructure, changing technology, or becoming obsolete. Of course, the same thing happened to the poor blacksmiths who made horseshoes back when the automobile was first invented.

But if there’s one thing history has taught us, it’s that the majority of the world doesn’t actually learn from its past mistakes. There are interesting technologies on the horizon which have been all but pushed into obscurity for decades. But the big money that has pushed them back is not the only issue, as the research still isn’t there yet either.

One new energy source, hydrogen fuel cells, certainly holds some promise. The only by-product of their usage by the consumer is water vapor… not exactly smog, is it? It also currently takes an awfully large amount of electricity to extract said hydrogen from the earth, thus making it exorbitantly expensive to produce until we can find a new method of extraction.

We have toyed with the idea of cold fusion ever since the first atom was split in 1942. The physics of this are quite simple: To make two simple atoms fuse into a larger one, you either need a huge amount of pressure (such as in a star), or an incredibly low-temperature environment near to absolute zero to reduce the need for such a pressure. We simply cannot create either of these environments yet for more than a few seconds, and not without a huge external power drain as well. The common sense answer to this is that we must either find a new way of creating power, or a new way to make these current methods more efficient.

So how can we make this huge leap? We have relied on fossil fuels for over five generations now. The only way we can do this is to become active about it. It’s not a problem that will simply fix itself, as many believe global warming will. Someone, somewhere is going to have to make a stand on this. It may need to be someone with legislative power, or it may be some genius scientist who finally cracks the secrets of cheap fusion, or it may just be a bunch of little schmoes like you and I who realize that this problem affects us perhaps most of all. Look into it, explore it, and see where that knowledge takes you.

© 2004 J. Paris