How Spoiled We Are!

Today we live like kings and don't realize it. How spoiled we are! Let's compare our lives to the those of the ancient Romans. Tonight when you sit down to dinner, look up at the light that lights your table. That 100-watt bulb or 18-watt CFL is the equivalent of a slave on a pedal powered generator pedaling away to illuminate your table. How many cords of wood would you need to burn to cook your meals or heat your home this winter? How much work is done when you burn one gallon of gasoline in your car? What is the value of that energy? Sure, about $4, right? Crank up your car and drive from home until that gallon runs out. Now, push your car back home. How much was that gallon worth? $4? How much would it cost you to cover the same distance in a wagon pulled by 200-400 horses? How much would all that hay cost? The petroleum we are using was assembled by millions of years of sunlight, harvested by plants and then crushed and baked by the weight of rocks and sediments over millions more years. We are about halfway through burning all the oil we have ever used, just in about 150 years. In much less than the next 150 years, we are going to need alternatives. We simply can't burn the remaining the same way as the first half. We need to start now on the alternatives, as well as save as much as possible of the remaining as a feedstock for the synthesis of products like pharmaceuticals and dies that only come from oil. We need programs in America like the Germans instituted to put solar cells on homes to generate electricity from sunlight. We need better batteries to store wind- and solar-generated power to feed back into the grid when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. Finally, we need to value our remaining oil realistically to match the elevated lifestyle it gives us. We live like rulers, like kings of old, through the application of cheap oil. We should become good stewards of our energy resources, so that our grandchildren and their grandchildren won't have to live like slaves.