Host:  This week, Pepper Trail continues our series on taking responsibility for the Earth with the Earth Precept that states:

 ☼       Do not depend upon energy sources that cannot be renewed 

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Today’s precept is perhaps the most urgent of them all. When we talk about energy sources that cannot be renewed, we usually mean oil, coal, and natural gas; in other words, fossil fuels.  Let’s think about that term for a second:  fossil fuels.  The word fossil tells us two things.  First, these amazingly energy-rich compounds are yet another unearned gift of the biosphere, the ancient residues of life itself.  Second, these fuels cannot be renewed – fossils that they are, their creation takes millions of years.  

At the present time, our dependence on non-renewable energy is almost absolute: 80% of the world’s energy consumption comes from the burning of fossil fuels.  Humanity uses about 80 million barrels of oil every day.  The United States alone, with 5% of the world’s population, uses 25% of that total.

This will not continue much longer.  The brief episode in human history that may one day be called the Oil Binge will soon end, for the simple reason that the supply of oil is almost used up.  At present rates of use, the world’s economically recoverable oil reserves will be exhausted in the next 50 years.  Long before that, the global economy will be dominated by the impending end of oil. This end may occur without crisis, if we take prudent and immediate action to switch to renewable energy, or it may bring economic collapse and even global war, as world oil supplies are burned down to the last barrel. 

These possible social and economic disasters are horrible to imagine; but they are not the most serious consequences of our addiction to fossil fuels.  Even if there was enough oil in the ground for another thousand years of use, we would still need to switch to renewable energy within the next generation.  In that sense, it’s truly a blessing that we are running out of oil right now.

Humanity and the rest of the biosphere will be dealing with the consequences of the Oil Binge for thousands of years after the gasoline-powered automobile is a distant memory.  Our burning of fossil fuels has led to an unplanned and uncontrolled alteration of the global climate, whose dimensions we are only dimly beginning to grasp.  The ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica are melting at the fastest rates ever measured; the severity of hurricanes is increasing around the world; sea levels are rising, threatening coastal and island communities from the Arctic to Polynesia.  If carbon dioxide levels continue to rise unchecked, some models suggest that truly devastating changes are possible, such as the reversal of the Gulf Stream current, plunging Europe into Arctic conditions. 

Fortunately, there is good reason to hope that immediate action can avert the worst of these possibilities.  Renewable energy sources, from solar to wind power to biofuels, are ready and waiting.  We simply need to insist that these renewables be favored with incentives that reflect all their benefits; or alternatively, that non-renewable energy sources include surcharges to reflect their true costs.  Since those costs include the alteration of global climate and grievous injury to the systems that sustain all life, it is hard to imagine surcharges that would be too high.

All in all, whether we choose to honor this precept out of responsibility to the biosphere, or from simple self-interest, there is no more vital vow for us to take: we must end our dependence upon energy sources that cannot be renewed. 

Until next time, this is Pepper Trail.

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