By S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV
In the long history of civilization, some written records go back ten thousand years or so. For most people it has been almost pure calamity. A few people living isolated lives in the forest had to deal with wild animals, but people living in developed areas had to deal with human predators: both bandits and the rapacious armies traveling through; taxes to support luxury-loving aristocrats; marginal food production and failed crops. And a host of other evils most people today don’t even think about.
Few today value the virtues of the American past, saving, efficiency, hard work, planning, etc. The job seekers want to enjoy life, and those concerned with acquisition of wealth are only interested in ever higher rates of return. Neither of these rarely think about one hundred years from now, or even ten. The world is becoming highly unstable again.
Our world is faced with a number of problems that are going to be “hard to get a handle on.” Perhaps the first among them is our dependence on energy and how we get it. You can get up a good argument that atomic weapons deserve first place, or population pressure, or that soil loss and contamination deserve first, but these all trace back to the need for energy.
Energy now comes from two reactions every eighth grader can understand. C + O2 = CO2 and 4 H + O2 = 2 H2O. The problem is two fold. First, the mineral sources of hydrocarbons, which supply the carbon and hydrogen we use for energy, are getting more difficult to obtain because what is left is further underground and more tightly held. “The easy stuff is gone,” they say. More technology and risk are required, and the return from the materials used and energy spent is less – it’s still available, but the investment is greater for the same energy return.
Second is the carbon dioxide produced. The water produced drops out of the atmosphere when it gets cool enough to condense, but the carbon dioxide does not. The atmosphere is huge, but finite. Until this generation it was large enough to be considered an infinite dump, but we are now putting out so much the atmosphere is being measurably affected, and scientists who have studied it have learned it is enough to cause world-wide heating, because carbon dioxide causes the earth to retain heat energy coming from the sun, what is called “the greenhouse effect.”
According to one source, the market capitalization of all the companies in all the sectors of the petroleum business in the United States was $4.2 trillion, 18.6% of the total market capitalization of all the publically traded, non-financial companies as of May 30, 2008. Big business indeed. And the government subsidies are equally impressive. Fuel companies are very politically powerful.
According to an organization known as The Price of Oil (which is concerned with all fossil fuels), “Over $114 million has been paid by the oil, gas and coal industries over the last decade to buy access and influence in Congress. And the 111th Congress is turning out to be the dirtiest yet. … energy companies are reaping huge returns on their investments in Congress, to the tune of billions of dollars in subsidies each year. All while they are expanding into ever more extreme areas using unsafe tactics.”
The precautionary principle has disappeared like dew when the sun comes up. In 1998 the principle was defined thus: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.” Where energy is concerned that has been pushed aside in the rush for economic advantage, personal wealth, and the desire for our nation to be “King of the Mountain Top,” a game we played as children.
The leaders knew there would be danger, else no need for the exemptions in the 2005 Energy Act. The $114 million mentioned above has been spent getting subsides and protection against action by aggrieved Americans. Further billions have been spent in public relations trying to bury all the complaints and the hundreds of organizations which have arisen to represent the aggrieved. The petroleum advertisements intended to suppress opposition appear everywhere.
Newspapers are bought with advertising. Universities are bought with research funds, primarily by suppressing adverse opinion and research. I heard recently one state Extension Service is subjecting 4-H campers to a fracking indoctrination in return for financial support for the camp! Propaganda for early teenagers! Petroleum and gas companies are not alone, but may be more creative than coal playing this game.
So how to insert reality into this real-life script? Just as the heat will be turned up as the earth warms and the pollution will get worse as fracking continues, the public view is changing, slowly. We need to keep working, because it is very important that energy come under control for the good of all sooner rather than later.
