Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
There’s been a lot of ups and downs during the last hundred years or so. But two of the most important – and beneficial – have passed by barely noticed by Mister and Missus Average Person.
I refer to the realisation by the oil producing countries of the Middle East that by combining together, they could hold the rest of the industrial world in thrall. And by the Russians, rather later, that they could do the same by opening and closing the tap on their supplies of natural gas.
Huge fuel depot
The reason these two blatant attempts at blackmail were, and are, beneficial is that they threaten the huge profits of the fat cats who buy and sell our fuel supplies. And thereby have prodded them to urgently look for alternatives.
Thus stumbling upon the awesome discovery that our planet is in effect one huge fuel depot.
Coal and oil
First of all we have coal. Which, despite the lies told by our politicians, remains in unimaginably huge quantities all over the world. Quantities greater by far than the amount we have consumed to date.
Then oil, new sources of which insists on being found every time one of our experts predicts it’s running out.
And that’s just the loose stuff, the oil which is laying there in great pools and puddles, waiting to be found.
Frackin’ Nora
There’s also the million upon millions of tons of oil-bearing shale the Canadians are now working.
And the oil soaked into deep, deep rock and which is now being sucked out by the ‘fracking’ method.
There’s so much of the latter in the USA, they’ll soon be able to stop interfering with the Arabs. As will we. And no doubt anyone else who decides to look for it under their own fields.
Plenty to keep us going
In fact with all that oil laying and seeping and pooling under our feet, it’s a wonder we aren’t being deafened by sloshing noises as the world revolves.
And to top off all this bounty we have gas. Again, just waiting to be discovered whenever we feel the need. Not only queuing up to burst into the light of day as soon as someone drills a hole, but all ready and eager to keep us warm just as it comes.
So, despite all the doom predictions that the planet is running on empty, there seems to be enough fuel left to keep us all going into a future so distant it is beyond imagining.
And what is our response? Why, to decide not to use it because it makes the air dirty.
Gulliver’s Travels
Instead we fool about with fans on tall sticks, a method which at best will never do more than just about satisfy our needs.
It’s a situation worthy of Gulliver’s Travels. A situation which must satisfy any observers from another galaxy that we are indeed completely mad.
Tackling pollution
Instead of investing in some technology that it seems, increasingly, is never going to work adequately, why are we not spending our time and money solving the problem of pollution – which will allow us to continue with a method of energy production which has already proven itself, and for which the technology, the equipment, and the know-how already exists?
If we can journey into space, and encircle the planet in a handful of hours, that surely cannot be beyond us.
Image: Craig Sunter under CC BY 2.0
