Energy

E N E R G Y

A Short Story

Bevan A. Findlay

2012

We are now in the latter half of the twenty-first century, and life has become increasingly difficult, not just for my family but for everyone on Earth.

The earlier part of this century was marked by several small regional wars over oil, just as man had earlier fought over land, love, and other desirables. Recently we have seen wars over water, but even water is, after all, only another resource. And now in many places we have more energy wars.

Intellectuals, politicians, policy makers and corporations had argued over whether peak oil was past, present or future, but had they spent their time looking for solutions rather than bickering, the future may have been much brighter. It isn’t.

Recently it was announced that the global population had reached nine billion. (Note 1) In all likelihood we have reached peak humanity and will never get to ten.

It should have been obvious that increasing population and increasing resource use when the resources were limited was never going to be sustainable. But, we cared more about comfort – it was always someone else’s problem as long as I had what I need.

And now we don’t have what we need.

Fuel prices sky-rocketed and so all other prices followed; rolling blackouts became a feature of first-world countries. As much as we wanted to think otherwise, much of our precious electricity came from fossil fuels. Then came the riots. First it was complainers who didn’t like that they couldn’t afford to drive their over-sized, over-powered SUVs, but that was nothing compared with what came later – when it got to be about food, complaining turned into rioting.

After all, food requires energy too – for the machinery to plant and harvest, for the machines to transport and process and package and distribute, for the lights and signs and fridges and people, even for the machines to build the roads it travels on. If energy stops, our food stops.

Even our clothing depends on oil and energy somewhere in its production.

But bravo for the greenies! They tried to warn us that we had problems, to get us to think of ways to save our anaemic planet. Of course, it was a pity that they too did not see the problems clearly; had they been concerned more with educating people as to how to reduce their energy use, and less on greenhouse emissions and whales, they might have helped us more (and, sadly, had more success at saving the whales too). (Note 2)

Food is a huge problem now. We argued over fishing, we argued over genetic engineering, we argued over subsidies, we argued over all sorts of things. Maybe if we had actually done something, rather than argue, we might be better off. Genetic engineering looked to be a way we could solve our problems – create super-crops to feed our growing populations. And so we did, in places (some refused to use them) and it worked, for the most part. Had we not meddled, cast aside thousands of years of genetic diversity in our haste, we might have avoided blights and pests that wiped out entire crops as if they were one plant. Still, it was better than nothing. I wonder too if we might have done better to use our land smarter, rather than more.

And so here we are, at the middle of the technologically greatest century in history, facing the demise of civilization as we know it. It has forced us to adapt – warnings were insufficient (we ignored them), taxes were insufficient (we just complained, tightened a little, but then carried on), and so we reached a place where we had to change – or die.

Looking back, the governments of our past seemed so incompetent – most of them seemed more interested in re-election than doing anything to actually help the world. They would pander to the requests of the people at the cost of sense, at the cost of the continued functioning of our society. But perhaps I should not be too harsh on them, that is after all how a democracy works. Leaders can only be as wise as the people electing them allow.