Energy Usage is Changing Fast. It Needs to Change Faster

Things are changing fast in the world's energy consumption. For over half a decade, the oil industry and people who observe it have debated when peak oil would come: the point when global oil production would begin to decline -- the point when the world began to run out of oil. More recently, a growing number of people have expressed the opinion that peak oil demand would come before peak oil: that the global demand for oil would begin to decline. Some foresaw peak oil demand in 2050, others predicted 2035. Recent estimates have been around 2025.

 

And some say that peak oil demand has actually happened. They say the decline in demand during the COVID pandemic is the beginning of the end of the growth of the oil industry, that the world will never burn fossil fuel at a fster rate than it did in 2019.

It's not such a crazy opinion. Sales of EV's are surging, sales of vehicles which burn gasoline or diesel oil are declining. Solar and wind power are growing rapidly too, and every kilowatt of electricity produced by solar, or wind, or geothermal, or nuclear, or hydro, or tidal, or biomass, represent less demand for fossil fuels. 

Some of this change is being driven by free markets, by consumers and entrepreneurs who believe that clean energy will save them and make them more money than fossil fuels. (They're right about that, by the way.) 

Much more change can be caused by laws. Governments intervened and gave us seat beats, air bags, catalytic converters, gas mileage standards, scrubbers on smokestacks and a lot of other healthy things. Free industry didn't ask  for any of those things. They resisted all of them. 

We can wait for free industry to change the world over to clean energy, and the human race can die waiting, or we can pass laws to make it happen faster. It's about as simple as that. 

What about all the workers on oil rigs and in refineries? Climate change will kill them too, along with everyone else. That's one thing about them. 

This is all pretty simple, and very serious, and none of it is a secret. Vote for people who support the Green New Deal, and whoever your representatives are, call their offices and bug them, tell them to make these changes happen faster. 

Call them every day. Let them know you're very serious about this.