So Suppose We Just Convert Away from Petro-Fuels. "We" Being The Whole Planet

Where my engineers at? What would it take, just in terms of logistics, leaving politics completely out of it for the moment, to relegate petrochemicals to the status of lubricants, and possibly also plastic? We need to talk about plastic too, as well as burning oil and gas and coal.

Of course, politics is a huge part of this, maybe the biggest part. I think that the single greatest threat to our survival is the continuing burning of fossil fuels, and I think that one of the things the petrochemical industry is doing to prevent the transition to more sustainable sources of energy is suppressing information about how easily this transition could be done. I just did a Google search for suppression of information about renewable, and apparently the fact that I think oil companies are blocking the flow of information means I'm a conspiracy theorist. Or maybe I'm just a normal alert citizen and the thing about the conspiracy theory is just more petrochemical industry BS.

Let's look at 2 pages in a world atlas, pp 96-97 in the 2008 edition of the Oxford Atlas of the World. On p 96 a graph shows some information on worldwide energy consumption -- but wait, it shows only consumption of petrochemicals and nuclear and hydroelectric power. "Excluded are biomass fuels such as wood, peat, and animal waste, and wind, solar and geothermal energy which, though important locally in some counties, are not always reliably documented statistically." That's strange, isn't it? What's this tiny fine print under the graph? "Source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2007." Okay, not so strange at all anymore, is it?

On p 97 there's a little chart of worldwide wind energy generating capacity yearly from 1980 to 2007, not provided by BP. Because, you know, BP is concerned about the reliability of such figures. Terribly concerned about reliability. Yeah, I'm delusional when I say that oil companies are interfering with the flow of information. 1980, 10 megawatts of worldwide wide energy generating capacity; 2007, 74,300 megawatts. 10 megawatts to 74,300 megawatts in 27 years. Yep, only a totally cuckoo-bananas conspiracy theorist would ask why such figures would be left out of a graph on worldwide energy consumption. Provided by an oil company. To the makers of a world atlas. Who put the figures on wind energy on the next page anyway. Please note, I'm only claiming that it's as obvious as can be and in our faces everywhere we turn that the oil companies are trying to keep the general public ignorant about big basic energy issues, and not necessarily that they're any good at it or are succeeding.