Future is seasonal and regional
For far too long has the World be seen through communication’s “eyes”, it is time to see it through transportation’s.
How many brilliant and ever-younger sermonizers tread TED’s, or equivalent, stages every year boasting the virtues of inter-connectivity? How many times a year do we hear about the wonderful success story of a newborn networking company?
Today’s economy model advocates for more exchanges. Any kind of cross-continents exchanges, from goods to ideas, from tangible to intangible. Together with the rise of the Internet and the new economy, appeared a modern mentality continuously promoting common values worldwide.
Communication allowed us to interact with one another situated across the Globe, destroying borders and easing the merge of concepts and ideas. Humanity has challenged Nature, as in many developed countries, one could still enjoy eating a fresh strawberry right in the middle of the winter and drink water from a faraway spring all year long.
Traveling during a single night in order to be on the other corner of the Planet the following morning. A continuous procurement of basic needs, raw material or even more unneeded sophisticate food and devices allowed by the never-ending ballet of boats, trucks and aircrafts covering the surface of the Earth.
An amazing quality of life for few, relayed by a foolproof industry of transportation. If communication enables to convey the impalpable it is only because transportation allows us to carry the palpable. An order must be followed by a delivery.
This makes transportation the heart of our economies far from what it so often describe by young informatics genius or open-minded social Medias entrepreneurs on so many stages.
Not a single Industry, from high tech, to banking or catering, would today even consider that transportation could fail. Their entire business models lie on an unremitting influx of trades and a constant capability of sending or receiving manufactured products or basic needs for their factories at a very low price. A crazy bet on inexhaustible fueling that even the most audacious Venture Capitalists wouldn’t dare taking in all conscience. One could also observe that insurance companies are therefore playing with fire.
A Global Economy fueled by perfusion of cheap energy. This is precisely the matter of concern.
Silicon tech entrepreneurs display the arrogant speeches of a united World without even mentioning what is currently allowing that to happen. The Internet God to worship, is not the reason. Internet is only the result of the discovery of a cheap energy that flows into the veins of our Economy.
Nowadays stuck around 100 US dollars, a barrel of oil is the equivalent of 25 000 hours of human labor. But, what if tomorrow’s price of oil suddenly doubles? And continues to peak?
Today, the debate shaping energy talks revolves around alternative energies. From wind to solar up to waves or even the controversial nuclear, the goal would be to replace the skyrocketing 90 million barrels of daily oil production and injected to secure our life standards. The masterpiece some specialists managed to create for the past decade has been to derive the topic away. Explaining on every media support, that we can create electricity in order heat our homes and run our factories. Yet, never, the debate highlights the transportation matter.
Some researchers argue that it would take at least between 20 to 50 years to manufacture energies able to fuel our volume of transportation. Do we have that time, considering that results are far from being at all convincing?
It is not a marginal quest we are dealing with here. It concerns the safeguard of our societies. The effort in order to preserve the enormous quantities of exchanges (more than 17,000 billion of US dollars’ worth of merchandises exported in 2013 worldwide) should be made in collaboration and done together as one.
Yet, it is not. Only side projects compiled by independent adventurers. Of course, electricity needed for our megalopolis will not disappear over a night, but commercial aviation could… and will.
In less than 20 years our main oil provider, Saudi Arabia, won’t be able to export a drop of oil as its internal consumption wont stop rising.
Iraq? The forecasts for the coming 20 years are not reassuring.
Russia, Venezuela, UAE, Kuwait? Their reserves start to show a decrease.
Iran? We could bet Western relationships with the country will magically be softened…
A 100% sure fact remains, Oil & Gas time is about to end. Then what?
Solvay’s Solar Impulse to substitute the myriads of massive air-cargos in 20 years from now? Electrical cars to supersede millions of daily tractor trailers? Wind to sail outsized container ships?
Some argue that the end of Oil time should be embraced as a salvation. Hollywood starlets moved by some cute little polar bears suffering climate change, while wearing out of price Dior lipsticks, Louboutin manufactured shoes, shiny nail polishes and drive AC and seats heaters provided SUVs, all manufactured and shipped thanks to hydrocarbons.
Begging the question, how would the US suburbs based cities model survive in case of delivery collapse? The Louboutin pair might be of discomfort in order to reach kilometers away supermarkets that would remain unsupplied.
Faith in human creativity.
That’s the main argument for two kinds of persons. Energies specialists who lack answers and shamefully provide with this fairy tale in front of accommodating detractors.
And, complete ignorant of the matter, who still didn’t understand that an alternative was needed for yesterday already, not for tomorrow. People who don’t quite get that the greatest challenge is not to cool fridges down but rather to route foods inside them.
As Matt Simmons, an investment banker whose career led in the Energy sector once said:” I love hearing economists say that technology and human genius will change it all. I usually answer them- leave the technology alone, I know all its aspects and I tell you, we lack of new ideas-“
Numbers hate fancy stories
If it wasn’t for a cheap energy, some argue that World population would be divided by 7. Thanks to the revolution initiated by hydrocarbons derivatives devices in the medical sector as well as allowing the developments of hygiene standards, the World population growth followed directly the rise of the Oil & Gas industry. A collapse of the sector would directly jeopardize the health and medical activities in such a way that it would drastically reduce the number of human beings. Without forgetting to add the devastating effects of an expensive energy itself.
In 2012, Oil remained the most produced and consumed energy across the Globe. According to BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2013, humanity produced 4 119 million tonnes of oil and consumed 4 130 million, making it the only energy that is more consumed than produced. Coal is coming in second position with a production of 3 845 million tonnes of oil equivalent for a consumption of 3 730 million. Then followed by gas making Hydrocarbons kings in their kingdom.
Transportation is by far the first sector that is directly dependent upon oil. In the US, some surveys indicate that 70% of the oil is used for transportation. OPEC World Oil Outlook 2011 reminds that “Transportation, consisting of road, aviation, internal waterways, rail and international marine bunkers, accounted for 55% of total oil consumption in 2008” worldwide.
Signs are all over
The huge amount of civilian aviation companies that simply disappeared, punctuated our past two decade’s industrial adventures. The rise of low costs companies are just few trees concealing the forest of unsuccessful businesses.
Since 1990, 189 US airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection or went out of business. As for the rest of the World the list of defunct airlines still grows every year (list here).
Even worse, companies now battle upon ultra-expensive journeys making no secret about what they have already chosen as their next market targets.
Pr David L Goodstein, physicist at CalTech, provides us with a terrible reasoning “A graduating student asked me once if his grandchildren would be able to afford a plane ticket. This is a relevant question because the answer could very well be: no”!
The US space program has been the first widely seen victim of an expensive energy effect. Forcing the NASA to rely on Russian Soyuz, and indirectly raising the question: Who really won the mad Cold War race to space?
Witnessing this mass of creative and visionary minds still tabling on a constant and cheap energy, as well as a reliable transportation sector, can therefore only be seen as quite ironic if not pathetic. Inspiring speeches of a fully integrated World where boundaries and distances are slowly erased were prophetical back at the end of WW2; nowadays they are simply false and greatly mistaken.
The smartest minds are not always the ones preaching at international symposium facing an already seduced crowed applauding for the prediction displayed before them is filled with poesy and positive dreams about the future. They are rather already at work, not with a confined layered vision of the World, but opened to one of the biggest challenge human race is about to face. The forecasts might not always be joyful but it doesn’t make them disappear and these minds are in deep and urgent need of support from states which should undertake courageous policies like Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Tomorrow’s World will not be international; it will be regional. We won’t go back to Stone Age, yet time will slow down. Together with relearning the virtues of time, seasons will shape our daily lives and once again we will have to cultivate our gardens…
Coley Nathan’s “We must cultivate our garden”
