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Let's take a fictional trip twenty years into the future, where we'll explore two dramatically different worlds: one where we are still dependent on oil, and the other where our need for fossil fuels has long since been ended. What will these two worlds be like? How will they differ? What will the pros and cons be of these parallel dimensions? Let's find out if growing up in the city where Twilight Zonecreator Rod Serling called home has granted me some sort of mystical powers of peering into the future. Strap on your seat-belt, crank up your favorite Huey Lewis album, and let's hit 88 MPH as we send ourselves into a future with oil, and then a future without it.
The Future, With Oil
The Peak Oil crisis has drastically deepened, and as the nations of the world struggle more and more to cope with supply and demand woes, the human race finds itself warring over resources more than it ever has before. The price of oil is staggeringly high, with prices nearly two-dozen times the rate of inflation, which has since spun the global economy into a tailspin, causing the worst contemporary economic depression imaginable. The price of oil skyrocketing has driven up the costs of producing and shipping goods, bearing heavy affects on consumers and eradicating the middle class. The increased demands for oil have also put a dramatic strain on our ability to drill it, leading to oil spills, rig explosions, and other disasters. The ill effects of global warming/ climate change have drastically worsened, causing nightmarish weather patterns akin to a scene from a disaster movie from our own time. Politicians talk of alternative fuels and ending our dependence on oil, but just as it was in our own time, nothing comes of these promises. The world as we know it will most likely end by the conclusion of the century.
The Future, Without Oil
Cars run on hydrogen fuel, producing only clean water as exhaust. With only a few more years of dedicated research, the development and implementation of hydrogen alternator technology will be introduced, allowing cars to turn their water exhaust back into fuel, drastically improving fuel efficiency and lessening the number of visits consumers need to make to fueling stations. Big oil took a pretty serious hit when the sale of oil was finally prohibited, but they all came back stronger than ever as "big hydrogen." Corn and sugar farmers have entered a grand renaissance, selling ethanol to any number of industries, including energy/ electricity, shipping, transportation, aerospace, and more. In fact, the United States has become wealthy as the world's number one exporter of fuels, experiencing its most tremendous period of financial growth by leaps and bounds in the nation's history. Solar, wind, and hydroelectric power is cheaper than ever, with a large percentage of American households boasting solar panels on their roofs. With energy companies ditching oil and coal in lieu of ethanol, wind, solar, and hydroelectric power, energy bills have plummeted and consumers have been left with more disposable income. Concerns over global warming/ climate change are a thing of the past, or in the very least the ill effects of it are no longer growing exponentially. The United States isn't a perfect Utopia, of course, but thanks to ending our dependence on oil once and for all, it's as close to a Utopia as we could ever realistically hope for.
I of course presented two extremes in this article, and naturally I realize that reality would most likely fall somewhere in the middle. But however you look at it, our future is going to lean in one of these two directions. So ask yourself this question, if you wouldn't mind. Would you rather we were leaning in the direction of a future with oil, or would you prefer we were leaning toward a future without oil? The result we experience is entirely up to you. This is a decision that you yourself will make in the coming days, weeks, months, and years. We can have whichever future we prefer... we just need to work toward it.
The latter future has been promised to us by just about every politician in government since the 1970's. Democrats, Republicans, and almost everyone in-between has, at some point or another, promised us a future without oil. I think it's about time we cash in our chips, folks. Let's tell our government, without yelling and acting like buffoons of course, that we expect them to end our dependence on oil within the next ten years. We want real legislation on the table by the end of this year that will prohibit the sale of oil in ten years, and will put funding toward the research and development of alternative fuels, like hydrogen. If we don't, we're just complaining for the sake of hearing ourselves talk.
