Synearth | The consumption of fossil fuels took about 200 years to go through the first half of the supply. The second half will disappear much faster because the energy consumption per person keeps increasing. Market forces keep driving this consumption continuously upward.
The fossil fuels not only supplied our energy, they supplied most of the raw materials for the production of goods for our society. Imagine a world without our current plastics, many of our drugs, current construction materials (like asphalt and paint), clothing material and the list goes on. Virtually the entire chemical production system will have to be reinvented to cope with these changes. This new system is likely to be based upon biochemistry.
The transformation of the infrastructure to satisfy future needs will be even larger than the infrastructure created from 1800 to the present. It took 200 years for our old system to evolve. We do not have that much time for the future reconstruction. A realistic estimate is about 50-100 years.
There is another lesson from history. This lesson is that the more complicated that governments or societies become, the greater is the strain upon the resources available to that ruling body. All of the ancient empires fell because of this problem. The Egyptian, Sumerian, Greek and Roman empires are examples. They all became larger or more complicated than their resources could sustain. This problem is now facing the entire world not just a single government.
Cooperation
In order to transform the infrastructure of the world, the governments of the world (at least the major governments) are going to be forced into scientific cooperation as never before. There may be healthy competition between the scientists of various countries but the “best” work must be shared by all the countries. To do otherwise is to invite more wars. The monopolization of resources and new technology must be avoided at all cost. There are no “free market” entities that can accomplish projects of these magnitudes. Research and development must be conducted on a “wartime” basis like the Manhattan Project. Time is the enemy.
Whatever the new infrastructure is going to be, it must stay in balance with nature. The systems proposed here attempt to sustain carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and water “neutrality”. This should help prevent us from killing ourselves. Doing nothing to create a new infrastructure will guarantee that most of humanity will die in a struggle for survival.
The route to overcoming the loss of fossil fuels will eventually involve the politics of many countries. It is sad to say that this may be the greatest impediment to success. Programs enormously larger than the space programs and the Manhattan Project will be involved. Research and development will require worldwide cooperation. Financing these endeavors is beyond the scope of private enterprise or a single government. Mankind may not be capable of such cooperation. Nationalism may destroy success.
The outline presented here for creating an exhausted fossil fuel world infrastructure is certainly not the only one possible. More ingenious solutions may exist. The route to these solutions must not be decided upon by political or economic methods but by scientific ones. Politicians are not likely to accept these restrictions of their power. Business leaders are also not good choices for directors of such projects. Military leaders would be problematic also.
The time allowed to complete a restructure of our old infrastructure will be measured in decades and not centuries. An overarching program of this magnitude has never been attempted. Such things are accomplished in Science Fiction but not in the real world. The end result of doing nothing is to return to the feudalism of the past. Living in a new world based upon the old paradigm of “one man, one mule, one plow, one gun” is not a happy consideration.
It is hoped that mankind will begin to take action now to replace our entire fossil fuel based system. This not only decreases global warming, it actually preserves some of our irreplaceable resources. Population control will also have to be initiated. Population expansion is limited by the resources from the sun.
