World leaders continue experiencing a “dangerous delusion” of a global transition to “just electricity” that they believe will eliminate the use of the crude oil that made society achieve so much in a few centuries.
Crude oil is the basis of our materialistic society, as discussed in an educational and entertaining 27-minute podcast interview between Ronald Stein and Armando Cavanha in Brazil.
All the components and equipment for generating electricity by wind, solar, coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro are all made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil!
It’s shocking that the public has bought into the current rhetoric “lock, stock, and barrel” to STOP THE USE OF FOSSIL FUELS, which simulates the resurrection of the 1978 mass murder-suicide of religious cult members of the Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, Jonestown, Guyana?
In September 2023, 45 years after the Jim Jones tragedy in Jonestown, President Biden used his executive power to establish the American Climate Corps, which will employ and train 20,000 young people in the work of climate resilience without fossil fuels.
When this author watches the TV coverage of protesters, both politicians and teenagers, carrying signs to STOP THE USE OF FOSSIL FUELS, what he SEES on those posters is:
RID THE WORLD OF AIRPORTS, JETS, SHIPS, SPACE PROGRAMS, and STOP SOCIAL MEDIA, and THE PRODUCTION OF CELLPHONES, COMPUTERS, and PORCELAIN TOILETS that are dependent on the derivatives manufactured from crude oil!!
Shockingly, very few parents, teachers, students, politicians, and those in the media have any clues or understanding about the basis of the products in our daily lives! Energy Literacy at its best!!!
As John Stossel so often said, “give-me-a-break”!
The proverb “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” tells us that:
you can’t rid the world of crude oil
and continue to enjoy the products and fuels that are currently manufactured from crude oil.
Just a few hundred years ago, before oil, when the world’s population was around just one billion, the world was unspoiled, decarbonized, and dominated by Mother Nature and the wild animal kingdom. In the 1800s, there were no airports, automobiles, trucks, planes, cruise ships, coal-fired power plants, natural gas power plants, electronics, or space programs, as the Beverly Hillbillies had not yet discovered oil!
Fossil fuels make products for humanity and support more bountiful harvests and a measure of food security that allowed time and energy for innovation and the onset of the Industrial Revolution that allowed the world to populate from 1 to 8 billion in 200 years because oil can be manufactured into thousands of usable, life-enhancing and life-saving products.
On the other hand, renewables can only generate occasional electricity but cannot manufacture anything for humanity, while fossil fuels manufacture everything for humanity.
A couple of centuries ago, there were fewer humans competing with animals due to humanity’s limited ability to survive what mother nature provided. Before oil, life was hard and dirty, with many weather and disease-related deaths.
World leaders are not cognizant enough to recognize that there are no plans for the replacement of the products and fuels now manufactured from fossil fuels, which are the basis of every infrastructure segment supporting the 8 billion on this planet! The three fossil fuels, crude oil, coal, and natural gas, do different things for society. Crude oil is the only one seldom used to generate electricity as it is primarily used to manufacture fuels and products for society that are the basis of the worldwide economy.
Crude oil: primarily used for transportation fuels, road asphalt, and aviation fuel, but less than one percent for electricity generation.
Coal: primarily used as fuel to generate electricity, coal also has a myriad of other uses, including in cement production, carbon fibers and foams, medicines, tars, synthetic petroleum-based fuels, and home and commercial heating.
Natural Gas: generates electricity, heating, and industrial uses for producing chemicals, fertilizers, hydrogen, etc.
Eradicating the world of crude oil usage without first having a replacement in mind would be immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products now manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths and could be a greater threat than climate change to the world’s eight billion population.
This Epoch Times TV 1-minute video about the lack of a backup plan to replace oil is short, educational, and entertaining. The video has already been viewed by more than 834,000 on social media at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/stf2YrznkZU.
By contrast, “transitioning” humanity to just electricity means converting to wind and solar systems that can manufacture none of the vital products now being used by humanity. That will very likely cause the death of BILLIONS of people from diseases, malnutrition, lowered living standards, and weather-related disasters, whereas projections of millions of fatalities from “carbon emissions” and climate change are based on computer models that take none of these realities into account.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are great World War I and II historians. They both know there is no substitute for fossil fuel product dominance in the foreseeable future, even on a longer-term horizon. To believe a transition to just electricity from renewables is possible from the products now manufactured from fossil fuels and act accordingly is suicidal for humanity. As former Congressman Don Ritter of Pennsylvania wrote, “It’s the real “existential threat.”
Occasional electricity from renewables cannot run modern civilizations’ households, businesses, hospitals, militaries, space programs, jets, and cruise ships, and no products and fuels are now based on crude oil!
The silence is deafening from billionaires like Bill Gates, John Kerry, Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, President Biden, and the media that continues to refrain from asking a John Stossel-styled “give-me-a-break” question: Can you imagine our world without jets, airports, merchant ships, cruise liners, militaries, hospitals, social media communications, space programs, and toilets?
Ronald Stein, P.E.
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure
Ronald.Stein@EnergyLiteracy.net
Ronald Stein (energy consultant) Wikipedia page
Energy News Beat