Is There Life After Oil? Uh...YES!

Can you imagine, back in the 1700s or so, some Malthusians (heck maybe even Tommy himself) or whatever they were called back then, bemoaning how the forests were running out and how we'd have to do without fire in the future, and cut our population?

Now everyone knows they would have been wrong. Because human ingenuity found a new energy source. Fossil fuels. This rendered the old energy source pretty much obsolete, over time.

Now nobody worries about forests running out (except rainforests, but that's a whole other story). It is laughable. If you are cold, are you going to go outside and cut down a tree for firewood? No, you'll most likely turn on your gas or electric heater. Because we have developed technology that increases our standard of living and reduces our required effort. In fact, if the new technology didn't do these things, we wouldn't have widely used it.

(Image: To me, it is not real 'peak oil', but artificial scarcity of oil, which is a very real problem in our world today. There is potentially plentiful, non-polluting/less-polluting energy, but the oil cartels don't want this to be devloped as it isn't profitable and controllable quite like oil is)

The same rubbish is being spewed in a different era, by the same people - parasitic rich elites who want the rest of us to be more like medieval serfs than 21st century (fingers crossed) free citizens. They want us to feel guilty that we exist, that we use energy, that we are supposedly some kind of cancer on the Earth. This is to control us. Simple.

Peak Oil, in the short term, simply isn't happening, except in the minds of Malthusians and oil company press releases (nothing like artificially high oil prices for good old profits, eh?)

BUT the other notion about Peak Oil/post-industrial society plays on real concerns about pollution and so on. How do we reduce pollution? (and by this I don't mean co2, which is an essential life element, not a pollutant)

Do we have to shut down industrial society and go back to the land to dig out a living?

As absurd as it may seem, it is what many Malthusian/Marxist environmentalists (called Malthusian/Marxist to distinguish them from real environmentalists) say we ought to do. As an aside, it's funny that some people don't see that everything about socialism/Marxism is about putting the peasants to work as quasi-slaves, not 'liberation' of 'the working class'.

SO, is this the only way? Are we to convert our cars into horse-drawn ploughs, and switch computers for shovels, and work the land like serfs once more? Or is there some way that industrial civilisation can survive fake crises like Peak Oil and Global Warming, and real ones like The New World Order?

First, I do not deny or try to hide from the shortcomings of fossil fuels. They do cause pollution at many points (oil spills, coal contamination of water, coal releases radioactive particles, etc). However, it is generally agreed upon that they are a useful energy resource.

But for the future?

I'm telling you, fossil fuels will be obsolete before they 'peak'. Probably long before. Look at the potential of nuclear power and geothermal power. As long as the Earth is, you know, very hot (though not quite 'millions of degrees' like Al Gore says), you can drill deep enough anywhere on the Earth's surface and pipe water down towards the mantle to boil it, then drive the resulting steam through a turbine on the way back up. Power. No burning fuels needed. As for nuclear, it should be the backbone of 21st century energy, duh! The issue of waste is much politicised but not that significant since even nuclear may be a stepping stone to bigger and better things. (as an aside, I reckon most other 'renewable' methods are a bit rubbish for mass production, but what do I know)

Hydrogen engines are in my opinion something of great potential. This will replace the petroleum engine I am sure. Just takes time. Processing the hydrogen from water requires electricity, which we can generate using nuclear or geothermal power. In the engine hydrogen is converted into energy leaving water as the only waste product. Hurrah! Life without oil; cleaner, in-the-long-term cheaper, and bountiful standards of living for all, without global carbon taxes or depopulation!

Food is a major issue today. Some Malthusian minded people think there is going to be global food shortage as a result of overopopulation. Well if that happens it would largely be down to biofuel cultivation, not 'too many people'.

How do we feed the world? Tough question but here are my suggestions.
1. HEMP. The more I learn about this crop and its uses (food/medicines/textiles/paper etc), the more I am amazed that a) most people have no idea about hemp unfortunately, and b) it is often subject to legal restrictions on production even if it is drug-free. See here
2. ALGAE for food (some types are incredibly nutrient-dense). See this report on the subject
3. SEAWATER as non-polluting, nutritious fertiliser. This is an exciting area which I honestly know little about, but it seems to have great potential. See report here
And only if we are really in a tight spot:
4. CEASE ANIMAL FARMING AND FARM PLANTS ONLY. This would provide a significant increase to food output if it was really necessary to prevent some kind of famine. See here

I doubt that genetic modification, as some suggest, increases food yields in the long term. Much of this is mere propaganda put out by the biotech industry (the Monstrosity known as Monsanto). Besides, there's a lot more evidence that GM food causes cancer than there is that it increases output.

The point of all this rambling, which was set off by a comment someone left on my earlier Peak Oil post, is that people will look back on today, and ask 'did they see the potential shown by new technology and methods, or did they fall for the lies of Malthusianism?'

Imagine what things would be like today if, instead of being visionaries who looked for new ways to grow and expand humanity, our ancestors decided 'the forests are running out' and implemented one child policies and 'tree carbon taxes'. I think we'd know what to say to them!

Imagine if we could speak to our distant descendants. Or rather, they could speak to us. Would they want us to build and grow our species, or cull it and return to the dark ages? What future would they want us to leave them?

That choice, alone, represents the difference between real environmentalists, real human beings, and evil, negative, cancerous, anti-human Malthusians. There are solutions today, but the Malthusian doesn't care about whether solutions are there or not, they just want everyone else to think as backwardly as they do. Balance. Cull. Restrict. Limit. Neuter. Destroy. Die Off. Ex-ter-min-ate...

Malthusians, I used to think like you because that's how I was taught in school. Population bomb. Finite resources. But what of the infinite human potential! Somehow the masters of our little society here on Earth have stolen that thought from our minds. Or tried to steal it.