Facing up to our energy dilemma
November 10th, 2008 by Jim JustThe U.s., with only 5% of the world’s population, consumes one quarter of the world’s total energy supply. About 40% of our energy – almost all our transportation energy – comes from oil: some 20 million barrels, or 840 million gallons a day. Another 23% comes from coal, and a like percentage from natural gas.
Michael Klare at TomDispatch sums up the dilemma we find ourselves in:
- The future availability of petroleum is increasingly in question.
- Our most abundant domestic source of fuel, coal, is the greatest emitter of greenhouse gases.
- No other source of energy is currently capable of supplanting our oil and coal consumption.
Klare calls this Obama’s energy dilemma. In reality, it’s our dilemma. Here are the hard realities we must face head-on:
- The additional oil needed to fuel the increased travel projected by our current transportation planning will not be there. We’d better start figuring out other ways to get around, and ways to minimize the need to get around.
- We cannot continue to burn coal. We must phase out its use and leave it in the ground, along with other “unconventional” fuels such as tar sands. Any further delay in first reducing and then reversing atmospheric CO2 risks catastrophe: a largely ice free world with sea levels higher by 70 meters (more than 200 feet!) with widespread flooding and desertification.
- If we’re to retain a civilization with any resemblance to the one we’re used to, we’d better – as Al Gore urges – get started building an electricity generation and distribution system based on renewable sources such as wind and solar thermal.
- We’d better start planning to get by on a lot less energy, starting by using what we’ve got more efficiently. A good place to begin would be retrofitting our houses and other buildings with better insulation and energy-efficient windows and lighting, as buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in the United States.
All of these efforts will take massive amounts of planning, investment, and work. We need to start yesterday.