The Political Economy of World Energy: A 20th Century Perspective
by John G. Clark
ISBN: 0807843067
Although this book was written in 1991, the topics raised are still relevant today. In order to understand better the paradigm shift currently going on here at the beginning of the 21st century, it is necessary to look at the past, particularly the 20th century. More than any other technological breakthroughs in the past several decades, developments in the energy sector have the potential to ultimately change the modern world going forward into the future. As America and the rest of the world try to move away from coal, oil, and natural gas because of geopolitical influences, leaders find themselves asking from where they will obtain enough energy to power their societies; energy has become the dominant factor in shaping a country’s future prospects. In the past, availability or access to these resources determined whether or not a nation was able to rise into the arena of wealthy nations. WWI and WWII helped propel oil onto the world’s stage where it remained on top, unchallenged until the energy crises in the 1970s and ‘80s; Coal, because of its abundance, continued to be relied upon primarily for stationary applications. Here, though, at the beginning of the 21st century, where China, India, the Middle East, and many other areas of the world seem to be developing on a similar trajectory to America in the 20th century, it would greatly benefit us all if politicians and economists would take a minute to study some of the trends of industrialization that developed over the course of the last 100 years.
________________________________________________
Modernization through industrialization is a trend that has been shaping the world since human civilization began. We like to think that our modern era is the first time period where technology was developed in order to make life easier, but the truth of the matter is that past societies like the Chinese, the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Native Americans, and Europeans in the past all sought to use energy to develop a more powerful society. The more advanced of these societies created mechanical systems and routes of transport that were developed in order to simply improve life.
When one attempts to compare the advancements in the modern world to those of the past, it becomes apparent that human civilization’s development is not linear at all. Oddly enough, to think about the 20th century in America in terms of human progress requires us to neglect looking at the environment all around us. While society has progressed, the environment has been degraded.
From a technological standpoint, the 20th century did however result in several achievements that changed the way that human beings interacted with their environment.
When we try to list the top ten achievements that advanced our society in the past 100 years, a few significant events stand out. In terms of providing valuable lessons as we go forward from here, it is important to look at not only how these advancements improved our daily lives, but also how they sped up the destruction of the environment in which we live.
The establishment of an energy grid and the ensuing electrification of business and residential areas is an incredibly important event along the human evolution continuum. By developing an electrical grid, humans were able to take themselves out of the natural world; they also were required to feed the grid with an ever-increasing supply of natural resources. Electricity put humanity on an continually-speeding-up path of progress. People no longer had to work according to cyclical patterns; they could burn the candle at both ends. The conveniences that were afforded to people made everything from cooking to reading to washing their clothes easier; not to mention, electricity allowed for an entertainment industry to develop through radio, television, and movies.
A significant majority of our electricity for the grid today is generated from the burning of fossil fuels. In America, this is primarily in the form of coal. In order to obtain this coal, mining companies are using explosives to blast off the tops of mountains so that they can harvest the fuels faster; but this practice and the process of burning copious amounts of coal is falling under more and more criticism.
We probably would have to say that the invention of the automobile is second in the list of societal achievements in the 20th century. By itself, though, the invention of the automobile really would not have revolutionized our collective society. It wasn’t until America built the Interstate Highway System that the automobile assumed the role that we know it as today. Before the highway system, the transport of goods primarily went by rail, and trains used coal in order to be powered across the terrain. The invention of the automobile began the general transition in the transportation industry from a reliance primarily on coal to a reliance on petroleum. Now we were burning two fossil fuels simultaneously in order to fuel our expanding civilization.
These two achievements alone are responsible for dramatic improvements in the quality of life for modern people. The grid and the automobile, though, while making life easier for those people living in the countries that developed them, are responsible for a majority of the environmental destruction and resource depletion that we are experiencing today. Electrification and mechanized travel on a societal scale are processes that need to be analyzed thoroughly before being implemented; but they weren’t.
America and Europe have gone through an industrial age where their national grids were built out and every family was given the opportunity to own a car and drive anywhere they wanted; but is it actually possible, after looking at the damage incurred from these advancements, that the world has the ability to offer the citizens of China, India, the Middle East, and South America these same luxuries?
These two modernizing trends required so much additional energy in order to fuel their advancement that life in other parts of the world not fortunate enough to develop a grid or an Interstate system was compromised. As societies that employed these advancements expanded, the impact on the global environment widened. As populations grew and more resources were needed to power our homes, businesses, and machines, it became apparent that humanity had started to value oil, coal, and natural gas more than they valued clean air, water, and soil. Now that humanity was isolated from nature within their homes and businesses, the need for a clean ecosystem in which to live was not so necessary.
In the case of the automobile, the consumption of additional resources in the form of oil to the point where readily available reserves were shrinking considerably was just one factor associated with these trends of progress that would ultimately prove the technologies to be unsustainable. If we were to try to learn some lesson from the 20th century from the use of the automobile, we might take this sustainability argument and try to apply it to our transportation system of the 21st century.
It is common knowledge that global oil supplies cannot accommodate China and India’s industrial age. In order to be able to allow for further distribution, the automobile industry must begin its transition into a sustainable design. While Americans, over the course of the past few decades, bought bigger and bigger cars with lower and lower gas mileage, the prospect of exporting this kind of thinking to Asia as it goes through its industrialization is troubling.
Pollution and environmental degradation are the unpleasant side effects of relying on electricity and machines to power our lives. We have to ask ourselves if the current structure of the grid and the Interstate highway system is really what we were after when we set them up. We were after improving the quality of life for future generation; is that what we achieved? We have made outstanding advancements with our technological gadgetry, but at the expense of the living world to the degree that those future generations are now beginning to question whether or not life is really better at all.
The advent of the Interstate highway system allowed for an ease of travel not experienced before; it permitted communities to spread out. While this was welcomed by many as an advancement in society, it also made America more dependent upon fossil fuel resources that it didn’t have and that were already being depleted globally. Even if America could drill for all of its own oil domestically, it doesn’t mean that we should. If we apply some of the lessons learned from the 20th century to our energy paradigm in the 21st century, we would begin to see the importance of developing a sustainable energy policy; one that is based upon a patchwork of technologies.
So, before we can continue on with this next phase of industrialization in other areas of the world, it is important to begin lowering consumption of natural resources through energy efficiency programs and the through the development of renewable energy technology. There is a building database of information on this topic. From the information being gathered, it is becoming apparent that there is no possible way that fossil fuels will be able to support human population projection figures in 2050; not to mention that the natural environment simply cannot handle another 3 billion people all living the ‘American lifestyle’.
There is an evolving global energy policy that is going on currently; of course, there are those nations that are working to get their hands on as many fossil fuels as possible before their prices shoot through the roof, but research indicates that sustainable economies based upon renewable sources will fare better in the future. Those nations that rely on fossil fuels to power their societies will undoubtedly be a part of the collapsing world order. Those nations that pursue strategies that are not dependent upon fossil fuels have the potential to be part of the creation of an era of advanced industrialization. What are we if not creatures that learn from our past mistakes and evolve going forward?
In order to keep the two greatest advancements of the 20th century, grid and auto, we need to evolve them in order to have them function more efficiently. If we do not do this then we will not be able to support them going forward on an economic, as well as on an environmental level. What we need to do is begin linking together energy demand projections with natural resource indicators and environmental impact studies; for example, the fact that coal is abundant and cheap does not outweigh the fact that burning more of it on a wider scale will cause an increase in health risks, not to mention the environmental destruction that goes on to make it so cheap. If coal companies had to pay for the environmental damage caused by mountaintop mining, then coal would not be so cheap. In the future, it is important to put a value on the things that we value the most, like clean air, water, and soil.
A lot of attention has been given to the concept of climate change in the recent past. Experts across many fields are beginning to say that increased CO2 levels are bad for the environment. While there remains some controversy around the subject of CO2 science and its relationship to climate change, the simple fact is that CO2 levels are shooting off of the charts. We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that greenhouse gases trap heat. To continue to burn fossil fuels would be foolish behavior; the projections of the amount of fossil fuels necessary to power society in 2050 would cause atmospheric CO2 level to rise even more dramatically than they currently are. It is important to begin developing a sustainable energy portfolio that looks toward the future and takes into account population growth models and developing nations’ industrialization periods.
Until we begin investing in renewable energy technology on a scale that allows for it to expand to a significant market share, we will be locked on the fossil fuel trajectory of collapse into the future. That future is filled with runaway prices and global resource wars scenarios. A significant investment in converting to a sustainable energy system now, while relatively expensive, will save an untold amount of money in the future. The renewable energy technology currently available is approaching grid parity, and with the removal of subsidies from the fossil fuel industry, in the form of pollution forgiveness, and the creation of a fair value energy system, renewable energy technology will be able to compete with oil, coal, and natural gas.
There is a social conditioning aspect to this whole energy transition thing. People have grown accustomed to the processes of the 20th century. Even though it has been shown that burning coal is harmful to people and the planet and that we simply cannot sustain burning it on the scale that we currently are, people want to rely on an abundant, domestic fuel supply for their energy. Even though it has been shown that America’s reliance on oil is fueling petrodictators across some parts of the world and inciting radical fundamentalism in others, people do not want to drive smaller cars, or get better fuel efficiency. This kind of thinking, though, is changing.
We are transitioning to an age of energy consciousness. America is learning from its actions during the 20th century that it cannot continue to waste energy or generate it using old world means; a new age of technology is upon us and humanity should be able to generate energy using more sophisticated methods than burning fuels. Solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass all utilize advanced technological gadgetry; this reliance upon innovation is what brought about the industrial revolution and it will be what pushes the technology revolution into the energy sector.
The explosion of population in the 20th century in conjunction with the number of people experiencing a lifestyle interspersed with creature comforts has created a crisis that needs to be addressed. At times, the problem can seem so overwhelming that one does not know where to begin. In order to formulate a long-term energy and environmental policy, we need to address just two areas of energy use. By rewiring the electrical grid to not only be powered by renewable energy but also to be more energy efficient in its transmission will allow America to stop burning so much coal and become an example to nations like China and India who are anxious to allow their citizenries an opportunity to catch up to the American lifestyle. By retrofitting America’s automobile fleet to get higher fuel efficiency or to run off the grid will allow America to consume less petroleum.
It appears that humanity built out its infrastructure before the technology was ready for it. In much the same way that the brakes have been put upon the biofuel industry because of questions relating to its sustainability, America should have put the brakes on the coal and petroleum industries at the beginning of the 20th century when they were building out the grid and conceptualizing the automobile industry. To say that people 100 years ago did not have the capacity to be foresighted enough to see these problems that we are experiencing today is foolish. Of course, they saw them; they were just hoping that we could export our problems to other places in the world.
Well, our problems have come home to roost. We are currently experiencing one of those crossroads periods in human history. We definitely cannot afford to burn coal and petroleum at the levels that we currently are. The electricity grid and the automobile were not bad inventions on their own; but the introduction of indoor light and the freedom of mobility (two innovations that sought to improve the quality of life for people) may ultimately spoil the quality of life for many of us.
We can either adapt and innovate, or we can end up entering a period of collapse similar to those societies in the past that neglected to interpret those signs given to them by the environment in which they lived.
_______________________________________________________web recommendation
Ten Successes that Shaped the 20th Century American City
www.plannersweb.com
From the development of water and sewage treatment facilities to the abolition of corrupt political bosses, America over the course of the 20th century developed into the beacon of modern society. Besides the establishment of the electricity grid and the Interstate highway system, what other advancements are considered in the top ten achievements of American society? This page outlines ten. These kinds of lists that span 100 years are important to give us a perspective in relation to the 21st century. What kind of achievements will future citizens look back upon as defining innovations? Will it be the advent of the smart grid; the establishment of the electric automobile? One thing is for certain; without innovation, America would not have assumed the role that it is in today, nor will it be able to keep its position of leadership going forward into the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment