The 1970s brought the industrialized world face to face with the unpleasant prospect that there might be some fundamental limits to the inevitable march of technological progress. The Arab oil embargo made it apparent that unlimited supplies of cheap energy could not be taken for granted. Environmental movements began to explore the impacts that "progress" was having on the earth and its resources.
There are two previous diaries in this series. They can be found here.
Economics Of Alternative Energy
Economics Of Alternative Energy - Part II
By 1970 the US hunger for oil had long exceeded domestic production. While we still had large supplies of coal, it didn't produce gasoline. Our oil supplies were increasingly dependent on imports form foreign lands.
The conflicts between Arab states and Israel, the desire of producers to raise their prices and other factors lead to the great Arab oil boycott of 1973-1974. Americans suddenly found themselves facing difficulty in filling up their gas guzzling behemoths. They were greeted by scenes such as this.
This led to many delightful new customs such as odd/even days for buying gas and daylight savings time in January. It was a severe trauma to the American way of life.
Nuclear energy was being pushed as an alternative to non-renewable sources from the 1950s. During the period when the oil shocks were hitting there began to be incidents that raised concerns about the safety of nuclear reactors. Three Mile Island was a facility in Pennsylvania that had a partial melt down in 1979. Then in 1986 the world's worst nuclear accident occurred at Chernobyl in the USSR.
It resulted in death, destruction, lingering radiation pollution and general fright and hysteria.
The 70s saw a definite movement toward some forms of energy conservation. There was a demand for more fuel efficient cars and energy saving appliances. It was a point at which there was a sufficient level of public awareness that an aggressive government energy policy would have had a reasonable chance of political acceptance. Then along came the Reagan years. The new approach to energy policy was to get the government out of the way and let the free market solve the problem.
As of 2010 the US consumes almost 4B megawatts of electricity per year.
We produce 35K MW of electricity per year from wind
We produce 15K MW of electricity per year from solar
In solar energy our production ranks 4th after Germany, Spain and Japan.
While several countries have done more toward developing alternative energy than the US, Denmark is the only country that has made a really significant shift in its sources of energy. It now gets about 18% of its electricity from wind. The basic reality is that despite warnings of a day of reckoning for almost 40 years the industrialized world has made no significant moves away from its dependency on fossil fuels. The United States for all of its claims to being the leader in technology and know how has done less than several others.
Oil has become an ever greater factor in global economics and politics. Having oil to sell has made it possible for Russia to regain some of the political leverage it lost with the collapse of the USSR. Oil is always central to the complex politics of the Middle East. It doesn't seem entirely far fetched to suggest that this is a major facet of current US energy policy.
The reasons for the continued military occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq by the US and its allies are complex. However, oil has to be regarded as one of the major factors.
There is increasing global competition for the available supplies of oil. China's dramatic industrial expansion has been accompanied by a comparable increase in its demand for energy and other natural resources. They are increasingly competing with the US and Europe for those resources in the global south. They are flush with cash and offer the enticement of bypassing the Washington Consensus with its enforcement institutions of the IMF, World Bank and the UN.
The push to find and develop new oil sources leads to greater environmental risks. The current disaster with the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf has brought the reality home to Americans. However, it has been a reality in many other parts of the world for many years. Nigeria offers a striking example.
The next and final installment in this series will look at the economic and political prospects of doing anything significant about this truly deplorable situation.