A Darker Tomorrow

It’s been the subject of many science fiction tales across the years, but what exactly will happen in 45 years, when the first fossil fuels begin to run out?

Put simply, the world runs on fossil fuel – petrol and diesel, coal-fired power stations, plastics from oil – to exist. Chances are, you’re using a machine that was delivered by a fossil fuelled truck, made of parts shipped or driven, or flown on a fossil fuelled transport method, and made of plastic from oil.

We have grown our entire lives dependent on this fuel source, mostly unaware of the impending disasters that we may face when this drug runs out.

But what will happen when oil runs out? Will it really be a harsh reality, fraught with small wars, international conflicts, terrorist attacks, con artists, economies collapsing, governments toppling – a nightmare future.

Or will this be the antidote to our addiction? This could be the baptism of fire for the world, into a new era of enforced greener living.

When it comes to the time, this really will be a trial that the world must face together, sink or swim. The world will either band together for survival, shivering in the cold – or it will fall apart, turning on one another, and letting the gap between the rich and the poor widen exponentially. The ways we may do this are numerous, like abandoning crowded cities and disbanding into the safety and community lifestyle of the country, or group together even more so than now, in huge cities.

If not, cars, trucks, trains, planes, boats, and anything else powered by fossil fuels will be drawn to a complete stop. This could cause a worldwide panic as goods prices soar due to high delivery costs, widening the gap between rich and poor, small amounts of oil being rationed, the stock market crashing due to the surge in cost of goods, resulting in a ‘depression’ effect on a worldwide scale.

Although for the most part, it’s not all bad news. If by then we have developed a new breed of car – the hydrogen car, or otherwise – we may avoid this withdrawal almost entirely.

If we are to abandon our dependence on the energy that is buried inside the earth which is limited, for a relatively unlimited source such as solar or many of the other forms of ‘incident energy’ that falls to earth.

 

 

Peter Littlewood, Head of Physics at Cambridge University, weighs in on this idea:

“Nuclear power is by far the greenest option, but [it would be] temporary (would only last a century or so).

 

 

That buys you some time. Immediate issues involve China and India. Short term solution: provide China with subsidised nuclear power stations in return for it not building coal-fired ones.

 

For the foreseeable future, most of the green options will be more expensive than burning coal. Photovoltaics work, but are capital intensive. Similarly [for] wave/tidal power”

Using Nuclear power may be a viable solution toward replacing fossil fuels – in the short run. But what about long term resources, and the future?

Littlewood puts forward the following:

“Check how much incident energy falls on the earth, and you will find out it’s a great deal. It’s just not concentrated, so it’s cheaper to make use of situations where natural processes have concentrated the energy -coal, oil, etc.

The state of our technology is such that the cost of harnessing incoming solar energy (either by photovoltaics – directly- or by wind/wave – indirectly) or other major things like tidal power is too high.”

Work more on local alternatives is already underway, with steps forward like Honda’s Prius hybrid car, Nissan’s Hydrogen cell powered car, and some others splitting hydrogen and oxygen apart from water to power a standard combustion engine.

But harnessing incident energy is ultimately going to be the thing that powers future generations.

So, if we manage to switch to harvesting incident energy from space with long-term investment and research, before fossil fuels start to deplete – we may just save ourselves from a darker tomorrow.

Graham.