From Peak Oil to A Kinder World

Evidence is emanating from around the world that oil reserves have reached their peak and production is on the wane. At the same time, demand for fossil fuels is rising incrementally thanks to third world countries like India and China with their burgeoning populations clamoring to become second and even first world countries. Now they also want the good life, the easy life that abundant energy provides! While in the 1970s after the Arab oil embargo Americans became serious about economizing on the use of fossil fuels, in recent years this caution has been thrown to the wind, as witnessed by infatuation with SUVs and pickup trucks, which by themselves needlessly burn entire rivers of oil. In the 1970s there was an effort to produce more fuel efficient cars but this effort has gone in a backward direction, with today’s Ford Excursion getting around 4.6 miles per gallon in town and other models getting around 18 mpg. Thus, because of its huge needs and exhaustion of indigenous supplies, the US has become completely dependent on foreign supplies of oil. Europe, Japan and China are in the same situation. By 2035 the world will use double the present amounts of energy, with demand for oil multiplying from the current 80 million barrels a day to 140 million barrels. Natural gas demand will increase 120 percent and coal use 60 percent. By 2020 the global demand for electricity will be 70 percent higher than today. The 2003 California blackout was just a flash indication that electricity needs are outstripping supplies. While the writing is on the wall, nevertheless major oil companies continue an increasingly desperate search for more oil in places like Borneo, Kamchatka, Nigeria, off the Florida coast, in the South China Sea, Alaska and Chad – all to guarantee uninterrupted access to oil for their respective countries.

King Hubbert
In 1956, US geologist M. King Hubbert predicted, based on his calculations, that U.S. oil production would peak about 1970. At the time, his prediction was ridiculed. In fact, it proved correct. In 1974 Hubbert again predicted that global oil production would peak in 1995. According to Brennan & Withgott, he is almost on the dot again, as global oil production fell in 2001 and fell again in 2002. While some experts predict that recoverable crude oil will last another 40 years, other sources say that the world will run out way before 2045. Natural gas supplies are expected to last longer, however, while coal supplies may last another 200 years.

Fossil Fuels
Fossil fuels from which oil, gas and coal derive were formed millions of years ago from the tissues of organisms which gradually converted to chemical-bond energy and then further decomposed into hydrocarbon compounds under the ground. When less decomposition takes place, the result is coal – matter that was compressed under very high pressure to form dense solid carbon structures. Natural gas is primarily composed of methane, produced as a by-product when bacteria decompose organic material in an environment with nearly no oxygen. Crude oil (aka petroleum) forms in certain temperature and pressure conditions about one to two miles under the surface, and is a mixture of hundreds of varieties of hydrocarbon molecules having carbon chains of different lengths. Later oil refineries sort out these hydrocarbons depending on their intended use. The first such drilling for oil began in the 1850s by Pennsylvania miners. If we were to see oil under the ground, it would appear as little droplets sticking to the surfaces of holes in porous rock, just like a sponge whose pores are full of water. As we squeeze a sponge to remove the water, similarly pressure is placed on the porous rock to squeeze out the oil. Oil has an unlimited number of practical uses, including as kerosene, gas and diesel oil, jet fuel, lubricants, plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, computer parts, polyester clothes and sunglasses, nylon jackets and dishwashing liquid.

A fourth nonrenewable energy source not derived from fossil fuels is nuclear power. Nuclear power up until 2000 provided 6.8 percent of the world’s energy needs. It is derived from uranium, which is mined from deposits under the ground. The enriched uranium used in power plants has a ‘shelf life’ of several years, after which it loses its ability to generate energy and must be replaced by fresh fuel. Here again, the disposal of radioactive waste presents major difficulties – difficulties that do not exist with renewable fuels.

Pristine Lands
On the North Shore of Alaska, underneath the flat expanse that stretches along the jagged Brooks Mountain Range, there is oil. Because there is oil, there is also controversy. The western portion of the North Slope was already set aside for petroleum exploration in 1923 by the US government. In the 1980s exploration and oil tapping began; however, today most of the Reserve is still undeveloped. Larger quantities of oil were discovered just east of this Petroleum Reserve in Prudhoe Bay, and a pipeline was built from the North Shore in the Arctic Ocean to the town of Valdez on the southern border of Alaska. Since 1977 the Prudhoe Bay region has produced 12.8 billion barrels of oil. The area now in demand by oil companies is directly east of Prudhoe Bay, and is part of land designated as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Many Americans consider this area as one of the last sources of pristine, untouched wilderness remaining on the North American continent. Even if they never travel there, these nature-lovers want that the area remain untouched by civilization and certainly by industry. They want to preserve the natural heritage and all the biodiversity that presently thrives there. This includes the musk oxen, 160 bird species, marine mammals, grizzly bears, polar bears, Arctic foxes and timber wolves. In addition thousands of beautiful caribou arrive every summer from the south to spend a few months in the Refuge next to Prudhoe Bay, where they give birth to their babies and raise them until they are strong enough to travel back to southern regions. For this very reason, the northern Alaskan slope is sometimes called “the Serengeti of North America.”

According to Mark Shaffer, senior vice president of programs for Defenders of Wildlife, it depends on what a person values more: a six-month supply of oil, or retaining one of the last pristine wilderness areas on earth. According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), there are about 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the debated area – an amount that would last Americans for just six months. According to Shaffer, the only people to benefit from this drilling would be the multinational oil corporations, who benefit by prolonging America’s dependence on oil. The wiser thing to do, he says, would be to begin production of alternative energies, as in any case more oil drilling means more global warming with its devastating effects on climate. Other critics say that simple energy conservation by consumers and the manufacture of more fuel-efficient cars would save far more oil than whatever is extracted from the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge.

But for millions of others, and especially those in the oil business, it seems completely wrong to leave this oil untapped and unutilized, particularly when oil is the backbone of our way of life, and when other local supplies have run low or finished. Aside from scientists, geologists, oil industry experts and environmental groups debating on whether this pristine ecosystem should be opened up for oil tapping, even the local native Indian tribes have joined the debate. The Gwich’in tribe survives by hunting caribou. For this reason they do not want oil companies to come and tamper with ANWR lands, as they fear it will drive away the caribou. In contrast, the Inupiat tribe believes that oil extraction in the ANWR will give an overall economic boost to the region.. According to columnist Debra Saunders, a pro-environment person will oppose drilling anywhere and everywhere. She says there is no reason not to drill, especially as 95 percent of Americans will never visit the Wildlife Refuge. The reality is that American lives run on oil. Also, she says that there are nine times as many caribou today in the Prudhoe Bay region, where oilrigs abound, as there were in 1974. Perhaps her strongest argument is that it is preferable for the US to engage in highly regulated drilling in Alaska than to have under-regulated drilling in foreign countries. Drilling for oil in the North Slope of Alaska is not necessarily a win-win situation for the oil industry because first, the expense of extracting some of the oil would be high, and second, the expense of transporting the oil and natural gas extracted from the North Slope down to Valdez would also be high. Hence, the USGS has estimated that the amount of oil that is ‘economically recoverable,’ meaning economically feasible to extract, is between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels, particularly if the price per barrel remains at its current high of more than $40.00.

US Policies
Sadly, the topic of energy is inextricably interwoven with the topics of multinatinal corporations and with government which supports those corporations. After the oil shortage in 1973, the US government enacted policies that were an attempt to reduce dependency on foreign oil. These included drilling in Alaska, resuming oil extraction at sites where primary extraction had ended, and widening its source of nations from whom it could purchase oil. The government also arranged for storing a stockpile of oil underground in the salt caverns of Louisiana. This buffer supply is called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and contains more than 600 million barrels of oil, which in the US would last one month. In addition, conservation measures were enacted such as requiring auto manufacturers to build more energy-efficient cars. Today, however, these policies have been all but abandoned. Government funding for alternative energy research has decreased, speed limits have increased, and the average fuel efficiency of new cars is down to 20.8 miles per gallon. The lack of fuel efficiency in cars alone has led to far huger consumption of oil than was necessary.

The US government continues to insist that fossil fuels will provide abundant availability until about 2035. However, many geologists, oil industry analysts and some government officials believe that supplies are running out now. During previous temporary unavailability of oil, the US and other countries sank quickly into economic recession. This new scenario of permanent non-availability will throw countries into a permanent economic depression that would make 1929 look like a picnic, unless steps are taken right now to shift to alternatives. If a big conservation effort took place among consumers, it would slow down this path considerably. However, due to ignorance of the masses, this is not happening. Instead, people continue to use oil-based energy as if its supply were inexhaustible. While the US makes up five percent of the world population, it uses 25% of the world’s fossil fuels. Since local supplies are now negligible, the US, in its complete dependency on foreign oil, must now defend the present global energy infrastructure by any means necessary – even military – to ensure the continued flow of oil into American homes. When a country like Venezuela dared to suggest that its oil be used for the welfare of its own people and not for American SUVs, a coup d’etat took place in Caracas, funded and organized by the CIA. In early December 2004, we saw what Patrick Buchanan calls a post-modern coup in Ukraine, where CIA money distributed by George Soros controls public opinion via newspapers and television channels. All this is done with the express intention being for the US to control oil in the former Soviet Union. One day, the people of eastern Europe will realize how they are being exploited for oil, just as the people of Venezuela overthrew the American coup. In Iraq we see the most blatant plunder of Iraqi oil reserves, both directly with US soldiers surrounding the oil facilities and pipes and organizing oil transfer to Israel, and indirectly by the US fatwa that Iraqi oil revenues for the next 30 years be used to pay off J.P. Morgan-Chase.

In 1979 President Carter created “corporate average fuel economy,’ or CAFÉ. CAFÉ standards encouraged automakers to produce more fuel-efficient cars, and they did, right up until Ronald Reagan became president and he rolled back the CAFÉ standards so as to please both big oil and Detroit carmakers. According to Amory Lovins, if the US had continued to conserve oil as it did from 1979 to 1985, it would have no longer needed to import any oil from the Middle East after 1986, which means the US would not have had to go into the first Gulf War (also a grab for oil) and the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq (the larger grab for oil). Both wars would not have been necessary if simple fuel efficiency of cars had been maintained. A one mile gallon improvement in auto-efficiency could have yielded double the oil that could ever be extracted from the ANWR. How many young men’s lives lost in those two wars (with the second war still continuing) could have been saved by the simple step of government mandating fuel-efficiency of all vehicles?

While Europe, and particularly Germany, have educated their populations and taken concrete measures to reduce individual energy consumption by such simple steps as switching to fluorescent lights, the US has not followed suit. Hence US contribution to greenhouse gas emissions continues to rise. Europe and Japan, seeing the writing on the wall, are moving on and developing solar and wind energies. In contrast, American citizens know nothing and care less about energy conservation, where energy comes from and what it costs. They are energy illiterate. However, it is not entirely their fault. It is the fault of the local, state and federal governments, the school and university systems, for not providing ‘energy education’ to the people. As this education of the public was successfully implemented in Germany, why not in US?

Today all around the world we see powerful nations such as China and the US scrambling to control the world’s oil reserves. In West Africa we see the US National Security Agency involved in the development of the oil infrastructures of these countries. Hence, for the American government, the exploitation of African oil reserves is part and parcel of American national security. This kind of petro-colonization has yet to be identified as a crime as large and as iniquitous as the colonialisms of the past. Eminent eco-economist and founder of the PROUT economic model, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, has said clearly:

“The drainage of money from one region to another must also be checked, otherwise the per capita income in a socio-economic unit cannot increase. Every socio-economic unit should demand the cent per cent utilization of state or central revenue raised in its area till the per capita income is on par with the most developed area in the country. Stopping the drainage of money from a socio-economic unit is the most practical and courageous approach to uprooting exploitation. However, the present leaders [of the exploited nations] will never dare to adopt this approach.”

It is quite likely that in the next few years as global oil production decreases, there will arise tremendous pressure both by the government as well as the oil industry to open up the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge for drilling. It is interesting to again note here that the US uses 25 percent of the world’s oil and sits on less than 3 percent of world reserves and hence will always be dependent on foreign oil. Hence, as even the conservative Cato Institute stated, the Bush-Cheney claim that plundering the ANWR of its oil reserves would reduce dependency on foreign oil is “not just nonsense, but nonsense on stilts.” While today nature lovers and environmentalists still have the luxury to demand that this pristine area of the world remain so, in the near future emergency oil shortages may arise that will change the ground rules completely. However, when alternative energy sources are available right now, why not maintain the sanctity of our pristine ecosystems? If the transnational oil, coal and natural gas corporations are not ready to make the switch, then the solution is for people themselves to move forward in a cooperative manner in developing alternative energies to maintain their immediate localities. Brennan & Withgott state: “…as evidence builds that renewable energy sources are becoming increasingly feasible and economical, it becomes easier to envision giving up our reliance on fossil fuels and charting a win-win future for humanity and the environment.” The chart below shows the present percentage of each fuel used to provide energy to the world.

EnergySource Percentage of Global Supply
Oil 34.8
Coal 23.5
Natural Gas 21.1
Nuclear 6.8
Biomass 79.7
Hydro 16.7
Geothermal 3.2
Wind 0.2
Solar 0.3
Tide 0.03

Harm to the People and the Land
Robert Kennedy tells of flying over the hills of West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee in May of 2002, and seeing firsthand how the mining industry is dismantling the ancient mountains and streams of Appalachia by strip-mining, also called mountaintop removal. The companies blow off hundreds of feet from the tops of the mountains to reach the thin seams of coal underneath. Huge machines dump the mountaintops into adjacent valleys and streams, destroying forests burying the streams. These are the same forests where the legendary Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett once roamed. According to the EPA, the waste from strip mining in Appalachia “has permanently interred 1,200 miles of streams, polluted the region’s groundwater and rivers, and rendered 400,000 acres of some of the world’s most biologically rich temperate forests into flat, barren wastelands, ‘limited in topographic relief, devoid of flowing water.’” As strip mining continues, another million acres will be gone in a few decades. Every day 2,500 tons of explosives are detonated in West Virginia alone, removing the need for human labor. So aside from destroying the land, the biodiversity, it also destroys jobs. It destroyed the mining economies of the small towns nestled in those mountains. Fifty years ago there were more than 120,000 coal miners in West Virginia. Today there are less than 15,000. The legacy of King Coal is unbearable noise of the daily blasting, choking dust everywhere, and creeks of dead fish poisoned by mining waste. Most young people have left Appalachia. King Coal invariably leaves behind a trail of misery, disease and poverty. King Coal sends more CO2 into the air, more mercury and acid rain, more lung-searing ozone and particulates than any other energy industry.

Coal is the number one polluter in the US. According to EPA estimates, 15,000-100,000 Americans are at risk annually for premature death as a direct result of coal-mining pollution. Most affected are children and the elderly. Another toxic side effect of coal-mining is slurry. Slurry is coal dust washed from pulverized rubble along with toxic wastes from mountaintop removal, which are stored as a thick, oily sludge in reservoirs behind shoddy earthen dams. In 1972 the Buffalo Creek Dam southwest of Charleston collapsed and buried 120 people. On October 11, 2000 a slurry pit in Inez, Kentucky burst and flooded nearby communities. The EPA called the 300-million-gallon spill the greatest environmental catastrophe in eastern US history. The thick black, lava-like toxic sludge contained 60 poisonous chemicals. It choked 100 miles of rivers and creeks and poisoned the nearby drinking water. In 2000 no one died, but thousands became sick by drinking contaminated water. Environmentalist Judy Bonds told Kennedy, “Definitely the Bush administration and the coal industry have teamed up to wipe Appalachia off the map. This is Appalachia’s last stand. When the mountains go, so goes our culture and our people., and it’ll be the Bush administration that pushes the stake through our hearts.” American coal-burning companies acidify the Adirondack lakes, poison the waterways with mercury, cause 120,000 asthma attacks and kill 30,000 citizens every year. This is how Americans pay for pollution – with poisoned fish, sick children and a lesser quality of life. It is time for Americans to top being indifferent and to get involved in what is happening to their environment. Americans need to be educated in how pollution by the big energy companies is directly and often tragically affecting their lives.

MTBE, or methyl tertiary-butyl ether, is a gasoline additive introduced in 1978 by Tom DeLay and Joe Barton, chairman of the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, to prevent “knocking.” However, MTBE, which leaks from underground gasoline storage tanks, seeps into the ground water and has poisoned hundreds of pristine springs in Vermont and other states. MTBE causes kidney and liver cancer and possibly leukemia, lymphoma and testicular tumors in lab animals. Then oil companies began using MTBE instead of lead in high-octane gasoline. Today MTBE is used in nearly all gasoline, and wherever there is a service station where gas is stored underground, MTBE is leaking out into the local underground water and causing irreparable pollution. It is found in wells far away from service stations, as it moves easily through the soil. As Shell Company was kind enough to tell its sister companies, MTBE “is not biodegradable in water.” In 1997 hundreds of public and private wells had to be closed because of MTBE contamination.

In March, 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it was suspending a Clinton-era ruling that reduced the allowable amount of arsenic in public water supplies. The arsenic comes from coal and through the processing of coal enters the streams and lakes near coal-processing plants and mining activities. In fact, studies by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) revealed that arsenic is a potent carcinogen. As the mining industry had given $5.6 million to the Republican Party with most going to George Bush, naturally the White House sought to remain on the best of terms with the coal mining industries. Attorney Erik Olsen told the New York Times that the decision to allow higher levels of arsenic in drinking water will cause a lot of people to die from arsenic-related cancers and other diseases. According to Robert Kennedy, the Report of the National Energy Policy Development Group released in 2001 was “an orgy of industry plunder, transferring billions of dollars of public wealth to the oil, coal and nuclear industries, which were already swimming in record revenues… the report focused almost exclusively on deregulation, giant subsidies, and tax breaks that would benefit virtually every major polluter in the energy industry.” The Nuclear Energy Institute donated $100,000 to the Bush inauguration gala and $437,000 to Republican coffers. As payback, Cheney’s task force report recommended loosening environmental controls, reducing public participation in the location of nuclear plants, and adding billions of dollars as subsidies to nuclear industries.

Another example of destruction is the massive numbers of fish that are killed by power plants every year. The Salem nuclear plant in New Jersey on the Delaware River, using antiquated technology to suck up huge volumes of fresh river water, kills more than 300 billion fish every year. Nationally, power plants kill more than a trillion fish every year, thus aiding and abetting the collapse of global fisheries. It is illegal to kill the fish. But today neither politicians nor citizens seem to care. This has to change, and the fastest way to bring change is through education.

Thus we see that alongside the huge energy infrastructure via oil wells, coal mines, natural gas sites, supertankers, pipelines, power plants, transmission lines, ships and trains, there has been tremendous harm to the people and to the earth. It has come in the form of air and water pollution, toxic waste sites, direct poisoning of the people, animals and land, electrical blackouts, price spikes, corporate fraud, and even wars. All three fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal – leave ecological devastation in their wake, primarily due to the release of carbon dioxide, which pushes up global temperatures of both ocean water and the atmosphere. Climatologists have long been warning of the dangers of global warming and resulting climate change. While fossil fuels greatly increased the American standard of living, they have taken a heavy toll on the environment and on human health. Aside from carbon dioxide, burning oil releases sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides into the air, which accelerate smog and acid rain. Gasoline combustion in automobiles releases ozone, which can cause both eye and lung problems. Fossil fuel pollutes our rivers, lakes and oceans. Constant small spills of oil enter rivers and sewage treatment facilities where they eventually reach the ocean. Most cases of oil polluting the ocean come from many small spills and not from the few major tanker leaks. Both plants and animals suffer and often die after exposure to crude oil. Surface strip mining is taking place on massive scales all over Appalachia, leading to irreparable damage of those ecosystems. Coal miners exposed daily to coal dust often die of black lung disease. Repeated skin contact with coal leads to cancer. Crude oil often contains lead and arsenic, which again miners are exposed to, and which lead to myriad health problems and again cancer. For all these reasons, scientists, environmentalists, policy makers and businessmen are saying, it is time to switch to renewable energy.

Kinder Alternatives
According to Roberts, while governments remain worried about political disadvantage or economic dislocation, there is a burgeoning group of energy optimists – scientists, engineers, economists, politicians, environmental activists, and even some energy company executives – who have already begun to make the transition to a clean, super-efficient sustainable energy economy. Alternative energy technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells, wind farms, solar, tidal, and biomass energy are simply waiting to be developed.We need to go through the process of studying which of these are viable, what they will cost, and what time frame is involved in their implementation. How long will the transition take to switch over from nonrenewable to renewable energy?

And who will be in control of these technologies? At present we have legalized energy monopolies in the US. The bottom line is, they are for-profit enterprises. The people are at the mercy of these corporations. If in the cold winter a man has no money to pay the energy company, if he has no job, if his mother is sick and dying or his children hungry, and he is sunk in debt, will it matter to this for-profit, capitalist, privately owned corporation? No. In the name of profit over people, they will turn off the heat! It means, in moving to a new energy era, the common people must make sure that energy production and distribution do not remain in the hands of greedy, corporate energy empires. The people must educate themselves, must study alternative energies, and learn how to build their own local companies – to serve their street or neighborhood, for example. People in each localized area should construct their own local renewable energy cooperatives. This will ensure that costs to the consumers are minimal, because consumers will own the company. Renewable energy technologies - their development and distribution - need to become a major subject in every university and be taught even in high school, to enable citizens to become energy-knowledgeable and energy-independent. Just as people can change a tire or a set of spark plugs, similarly in the near future people should know how to mount solar panels or hydrogen fuel cells on their roof or convert biomass around their homes to energy.

Iceland is taking the lead in alternative energy development by already moving towards a hydrogen economy, and appears well on its way to becoming the first country in the world to leave fossil fuels in the hoary past. ‘Hydrogen economy’ means that hydrogen fuel coupled with electricity forms the basis for a clean, safe energy system. It uses a constituent of water and of all organic molecules. Electricity generated from intermittent renewable sources (wind or solar) is used to produce hydrogen. Fuel cells then employ the hydrogen to produce electrical energy as and when required – to run cars, computers, cell phones, or heat homes. Fuel cell technology has been around since the seventies, and results in no carbon dioxide emissions or any other bad side effects. Even now, US, Canadian, European and Asian governments are funding research into hydrogen and fuel cell technology, in particular to create cars that run on hydrogen.

A second renewable energy source is biomass. Biomass comprises organic substances produced by recent photosynthesis – in contrast to fossil fuels, which took millions of years to evolve. People harness biomass energy from living plant and animal matter such as wood, charcoal and animal waste products. As per the chart shown earlier, biomass constitutes more than 80% of present global energy supplies, with just the one question arising: what happens to our global forests? Biomass energy must be regulated so that as forests are used, new forests are planted. Third world people depend mostly on biomass energy for their survival. Biomass/waste products can provide liquid fuels such as biodiesel, ethanol, alcohol, gasohol and used vegetable oil – to fuel cars and trucks, for example. Biomass energy, aside from forests, is in virtually unlimited supply or is being constantly replenished.

Hydroelectric power is a third option for renewable energy, wherein the kinetic power of moving water is used to rotate turbines, thus generating electricity. Generally hydropower plants are built next to dams that collect water and then release it such that it runs through and turns the turbines. The distance of the falling water plus the volume of water decide the amount of power generated. Hydroelectric power fuels 17 percent of the world’s electricity production. Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Canada are countries that obtain large amounts of energy from hydropower. Hydropower is renewable as long as rivers and reservoirs fill with rain. If this water drops below a certain level, however, it can affect power production. If people use water supplies faster than they are replenished, then hydroelectric power would cease to be an option. Along with decline in fossil fuel production, water shortages are a very real scenario for the near future. While hydropower is clean for the air, it does cause thermal pollution because the water leaving a dam is cooler than water entering its reservoir. This factor has caused disruption to the ecosystems and economies adjacent to river areas.

Solar energy is still another alternative. Its first recorded use was by Swiss scientist Horace de Saussure who in 1767 built a thermal solar collector to heat water and cook his food. Today the most common approach is passive solar energy collection, wherein buildings are designed so as to maximize their direct absorption of sunlight in winter months while keeping the building cool during summer months. It includes such strategies as using heat-absorbing building materials, constructing south-facing windows and using thermal masses such as straw, brick or concrete in strategic places so as to collect heat from the sunlight and radiate the heat towards the house interior. Passive solar design includes planting of particular vegetation around a building so as to maintain internal heat or coolness.

Active solar energy collection in contrast uses technological devices to move or store solar energy until ready for use. Solar panels or flat-plate solar collectors consisting of dark-colored, heat-absorbing metal plates mounted in large flat boxes and covered with glass panes, are installed on the rooftops of houses. Water or air is run through the tubes that pass through the collectors, which carry the heat inside one or several buildings. This method is very effective for heating water. More than 4.5 million Japanese buildings and 83% of Israeli homes use this type of solar power. Another method of using ‘sun power’ is by using photovoltaic (PV) cells, which collect sunlight and convert it to electrical energy by using the photovoltaic or photoelectric effect, produced when light strikes one of a pair of negatively charged metal plates in a PV cell, which causes the release of electrons. The continual flow of electrons forms an electrical current which converts to AC and hence can be used for both residential and commercial electrical power. Solar power has no moving parts, is clean, requires no maintenance, and generally produces energy for 20-30 years. The biggest advantage of solar power is that it allows for local, decentralized control over power, which is helpful to both isolated rural communities as well as suburbs and cities. It steers people towards economic independence!

Wind energy is used via wind turbines. In another era they were romantic and picturesque wooden wind mills. Wind turbines came again into fashion after the 1973 oil embargo when both the US and European governments funded research for their development.

Today wind power is almost competitive with conventional electricity generation, with the turbines using wind movement to create electricity. Wind turbines can be erected alone, but generally big wind farms or wind parks are built, comprising of hundreds or thousands of turbines. Use of wind power is growing fast. California and Texas house two-thirds of US wind power. Denmark, a leader in wind power, has both land-based and offshore wind farms supplying ten percent of its power needs.

Meteorologists suggest that wind power can meet all the electrical needs in the US. Wind power produces no emissions, is extremely energy-efficient, and produces 23 times as much energy as it consumes. One turbine produces enough electricity for 220 homes. The one drawback of wind energy is when there is no wind, which puts it in the category of intermittent energy source.

Geothermal energy does not originate from the sun but rather derives its power from the radioactive decay of elements creating temperatures and pressures deep inside the earth. Sometimes the heat surfaces in the form of hot geysers and steam shooting up through molten rock. These are the surface manifestations of the processes taking place deep below the ground. Geothermal power plants use the energy of this heated water and steam to turn turbines and create electricity. Geothermal energy is renewable but sometimes the plant uses the heated water at a faster rate than that at which the groundwater is recharged. To solve this problem, operators inject city wastewater to replenish the supply inside the ground. Also, the activity inside the earth can shift over time to a new place, rendering that particular power plant useless. Generally wells are dug thousands of meters deep to access the hot water, which is often as hot as 300-700 Fahrenheit. It can be used both for heating as well as electricity, while being just 12-14 percent of the cost of using natural gas.

Finally, we have ocean energy sources in two forms. We can harness the rising and falling of the tides each day by erecting dams across the outlets of tidal basins, letting in the tidewater, which turns turbines to generate electricity. Or we can harness the motion of ocean waves and use it to turn the turbine and generator creating electricity. This energy source has been so far little utilized aside from test demonstrations in several European countries. But its potential is vast.

Geopolitics of Oil
More than half a billion people around the world have no electricity and no access to fossil fuels. It is called energy poverty. It creates a deep division between the haves and the have-nots. In Brazil, India and China, millions do not have electricity. They have no way to heat their homes in wintertime. If they do have electricity, they struggle like anything to pay for the cost of this privilege. In the US also, millions are without jobs, without any regular income. In the cold winter, they along with many people living alone in their old age will struggle to pay that huge bill from the local energy monopoly that sets prices as it pleases. For essential electricity and gas to heat their homes and cook their food, millions in America will go without food or without new clothes. We need to change this. We need to end the scenario of impoverished workers, grown men and women struggling to survive while functioning as slave-machines in gigantic factories that never recognize their individual humanity. By changing to renewables and building our own energy cooperatives, we can finally wrest power from the transnational energy corporations and bestow that power on ourselves – the little people! The great Emma Goldman said:

“Man is reaching out for the wider scope of human relations which liberty alone can give. For true liberty is not a mere scrap of paper called “constitution.,” “legal right” or “law.” It is not an abstraction derived from the non-reality known as “the State.” It is not the negative thing of being free from something, because with such freedom you may starve to death. Real freedom, true liberty is positive: it is freedom to something; it is the liberty to be, to do; in short, the liberty of actual and active opportunity.
“This sort of liberty is not a gift: it is the natural right of man, of every human being. It cannot be given; it cannot be conferred by any law or government. The need of it, the longing for it, is inherent in the individual. Disobedience to every form of coercion is the instinctive expression of it. Rebellion and revolution are the more or less conscious attempt to achieve it. Those manifestations, individual and social, are fundamentally expressions of the values of man. That those values may be nurtured, the community must realize that its greatest and most lasting asset is the unit – the individual.”

Every global economic issue thus is not merely an issue of supply and demand, of cost-benefit analysis, of environmental regulation. It is merely a part of the struggle of human beings everywhere to attain economic sovereignty for their communities, so as to make economic democracy of energy resources a reality. We need now to usher the new economic, social and spiritual development of human beings – their physical well-being, their latent intellectual qualities and their spiritual longings. Without further delay, we need to usher a society based on voluntary cooperation of productive groups and communities, bonded together by their common economic interests and their common humanity.

Those analysts who idly discuss the energy crisis and energy alternatives without any apparent awareness of the enormity of human suffering bound up in the production of fossil fuel energies by huge, exploitative corporations often enforced by armies (witness Iraqi oilfields surrounded by US military) can only be answered by the poetic polemic of Otto Rene Castillo, killed by the Guatemalan army in 1967, who averred that the ‘apolitical intellectuals’ of his country will one day be judged harshly by the poor. Today in our global village, no one can hide behind the barrier of nationality. So the crimes of an American corporation in Nigeria, Sudan, Chad or Iraq will have to be answered to by all the people. Castillo wrote:

“What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness and life
were dangerously burning out in them?Apolitical intellectuals
Of my sweet country,
You will have nothing to say.

A vulture of silence
Will eat your guts.
Your own misery
Will gnaw at your souls.
And you will be mute
In your shame!”

To a Kinder World
The US dollar is falling rapidly. At any time, any day, there will be a run on the dollar, and we will see the economy crash under our feet. The obscenely wealthy energy barons, the corporate owners of vast holdings, seeing profit vanish into thin air, will walk away from their factories. It is at this point that the common people need to follow in the footsteps of the great Argentinian workers and take over those factories and run them as economic cooperatives – of, for and by the people! Stories emanate from around the world telling of how, when the economy collapsed and wealthy capitalists closed down their factories and put millions of dependent workers on the road, those workers went back to the factories and opened them. They made themselves the new owners and formed workers’ cooperatives. They ran the factories themselves, they shared the profits equally among each other, and they survived. Being owners and supervisors of their own economic destiny, they gained new dignity and self-respect. They had found the answer! In Buenos Aires, workers have taken over more than 100 bankrupt factories and are running them as self-owned cooperatives. The slogan of the great Argentinian workers is “Occupy, resist, produce!” In the new documentary called “The Take,” we learn that we need to “take back our humanity and dignity from the bosses and politicians who have stolen it from us. We will not be given social and economic justice by our governments or by our companies; we must seize these things ourselves from the bottom up in our workplace and our communities.” The film describes the great lessons learned by the workers of Buenos Aires – that there is a beautiful alternative to capitalism, that workplaces can function in a democratic, just and fair manner emphasizing cooperation and solidarity. The workers learned the joys of a decentralized economy! The deep drive to take over factories was not born out of any ideology but out of the struggle by the poor to survive. That shining struggle led to the spontaneous birth of economic cooperatives. The workers of Buenos Aires have set the example for all the workers of the world. This is what needs to happen now with the changing of the energy infrastructure. We need to change that infrastructure from one of capitalist control to one of worker-owned cooperatives. Why wait until the poverty and suffering of the people become unbearable? If we work to educate the people now, the transition from corporatism to cooperative can be smooth and easy. The great Mother Jones, who lived in the early 1900s, understood the sufferings of the people caused by corporations (particularly coal-mining companies), by capitalism. She said:

“…a factory system is…a disgrace to any race or age. As the picture rises before me I shudder for the future of a nation that is building up a moneyed aristocracy out of the life-blood of the children of the proletariat. It seems as if our flag is a funeral bandage splotched with blood. The whole picture is one of the most horrible avarice, selfishness and cruelty and is fraught with present horror and promise of future degeneration. The mother, over-worked and under-fed, gives birth to tired and worn-out human beings.
“I can see no way out save in a complete overthrow of the capitalistic system, and to me the father who casts a vote for the continuance of that system is as much of a murderer as if he took a pistol and shot his own children. But I see all around me signs of the dawning of a new day…and with my faithful comrades everywhere I will work and hope and pray for the coming of that better day.”

With the writing on the wall, with growing global conviction that Hubbert’s peak has already arrived, it is time to begin rapid development and building of infrastructures utilizing the alternative energy technologies described above. It is time to provide relief for the common people. Adopting alternative energies will give people economic relief if the people will learn to install their own solar panels, build their own windmills, produce their own hydrogen fuel cells or build their own converters to catch the tidal waves and harness that power. And along with learning how to construct their own power facilities, the people must start now to learn to work using business cooperatives. It will spell the end of owners and subordinates! It will be the last of boss and employee! All will be owners, all will be supervisors and all will be employees working not just for themselves but for the entire collective good of that particular cooperative! It is cooperatives that hold the secret to economic freedom for all the little people of this world. We must tell this to the people! Switching to renewable energy cooperatives will finally give the people relief from myriad health problems like asthma, hay fever, skin rashes, black lung disease, arsenic, lead and mercury poisoning, and finally cancer. The benefits of changing from a fossil fuel economy run by a handful of multi-millionaire private energy corporations to a decentralized renewable energy economy run by local people in every community, every town, every rural area will be astounding. It is time to educate the people about renewable energy sources, and it is time to educate the people about setting up their own local energy cooperatives. Local energy cooperatives run by the people will spell a new, higher level of freedom! It will create a glorious economic and social revolution not just in the US but throughout the world. It is time to welcome that revolution!