The future is brighter than ever.
When
they fist discovered crude oil, they studied it to find all the
different uses they could come up with it in such diverse fields as
fertilisers, plastics and medicines. Look around you, there is
probably nothing in your environment that doesn’t have some
connection with oil - not just the freight component. And the report
came to the conclusion that it was far too valuable to burn as fuel.
So
what did we do? We burned it as fuel.
To
me, it’s like saying
“Right
people, we have a million dollars in notes here, what are we going to
do with it?”
“Let’s
set it on fire and keep warm for a short while. Yay!”
Really?
Just
think about it: the petrochemical companies spend a fortune each year
turning crude oil into fuel and then shipping it hundreds of miles to
thousands of garages spread all over the country for people to buy at
a pittance of a profit per can of crude oil. Yet, they could get rid
of all that costly infrastructure and make a more valuable product
that is easier to ship because the smaller number of outlets and so
make more money for less expense.
But
they don’t.
Why
not? Well, it’s the classic problem: the petrochemical companies
make massive profits every year by selling it as fuel, so why should
they bother to do any more work to earn more money? They stll get
their bonuses by supporting the status quo. Also, national
governments actively want them to continue because they’re the ones
making most of the money from fuel sales through taxes. Where I live,
for every £1 I spend on fuel, the government gets about 60p. And
that’s (allegedly) without the 25% VAT they pay on mainland UK.
So,
what’s the future going to bring?
As
oil becomes less abundant, the petrochemical companies will be forced
to raise the price of fuel products making them less competitive in
the market place. The first to go is industry. They are already being
forced to drop oil-based fuels by their competitors who have already
moved into cheaper, more efficient alternative energy sources. Later,
consumers will follow when they start to see other people make
savings on their travel expenses. This will lead to a drop in demand
(as is happening now) making it less attractive for them to turn this
valuable resource into fuel. At that point, they may get off their
lazy arses, dust off one a gazillion reports that show how to use oil
in a useful way to improve life (that just so happens to be more
profitable) and they will stop making fuel.
Then,
they may even start investing in businesses like mine who have
technologies for turning plastics - all plastics, including the stuff
that can’t be recycled at the moment - back into oil using passive
solar ovens. So, they will actually pay to help clean up plastic
pollution because the plastic is worth more as (say) medicines.
I
reckon in a 100 years time, they’re going to look back on the 20th
and early 21st century as the Dark Ages of Petrochemical Use where
they look upon us with pity for being little more than cavemen
banging rocks together.
Credit: The header image
is available as wallpaper from wall.alphacoders.com
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