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May 9, 2008 Make electricity obsolete. And, let the free-market system actually work for providing energy. This will be an exercise in attempted futuristics. Oil is the pretext, electricity is the main context. The real argument here, therefore, is to go well beyond any supposed right or left political considerations about the use or non-use of oil as the main means of empowering Western civilization, which means, in effect, all of modern civilization itself. And yet, of course, one needs to know that the truly genuine need for electrical power is growing exponentially on this planet. It is simply a pertinent fact, nonetheless, that contemporary civilization is obviously petroleum based in its techno-functional reality in providing ever higher standards of living, superior material prosperity and its unevenly distributed benefits, for ever greater numbers of people in the world. The alternative energy industry (wind, solar, etc.) has not yet (unfortunately) provided necessary and sufficient amounts of energy as basically compared to the oil industry, meaning this organic energy source and its cognate derivatives. And yet, every generation, for at least the past 80 years or so, has seen, repeatedly, wildly incorrect predictions that petroleum resources would eventually become virtually nonexistent, while continuing discoveries of new oil fields, new extraction technologies for both new and old fields, ever deeper wells, discoveries of reserves, etc. add further lies to the obviously absurd prognostications of assumed future scarcity. Admittedly, it is well known that China, especially with its military program’s needs, and India are very heavily competing for this precious liquid gold in their thrusts toward aggressive modernization, which clearly pushes up the price for this universal energy commodity. Oil, as one ought to know, is extensively used for petrochemicals for various plastics, fuels, medicines, cosmetics, fertilizers, etc.; in short, to actually, fully, give up and completely renounce the current petroleum-based situation would require retreating substantially back at least into the early or mid-19th century (or even much earlier). Few people, nonetheless, would actually wish to have a necessarily (and forever) retrograde situation for their lives or, more so, future generations, which would then logically mandate decreased standards of living, especially so, in all Westernized countries. The numerous benefits of electrification (which would have seemed literally miraculous to all past [pre-electrification] generations), meaning ever higher standards of medicine, medical treatment, human hygiene, cleaner food processing, air conditioning, etc., would be, at a minimum, extremely hard to dispense with in just a casual manner. But, it is yet critically contended here that the ultimate and real crux of the overall problem is, in fact, not oil but, rather, the actual need for electricity to power and, thus, substantively enable the very existence of all of modern society and its multifarious demands and requirements. Upon much thoughtful reflection, all of human history can be neatly divided, moreover, between pre- and post-electrification to better help illustrate dramatically just how much electric light, this artificial and automatic source of illumination, has greatly meant to socioeconomic, sociotechnological, and sociocultural development throughout the world. The rather too obvious and heavy dependency upon electrification is, therefore, rather dramatic whenever major power failures do (and will inevitably) occur; and, the higher technological level a society reaches, the much more technologically vulnerable it becomes during such intense failures of the main power grid(s). Terrorists easily know this for a fact, even though they would also wish to cut off oil supplies if they but only could. If another but totally nonelectrical power source could be found and properly developed to substitute for all advanced energy sources, the debate about oil would be (almost totally) ended. This is because, as correctly pointed out, the genuine issue is truly the insatiable and ever increasing need for obvious exploitation of energy sources of many different kinds for the (ultimate) production of electricity (and its many interrelated and interconnected civilizational consequences). An alternative would become a great technological advantage having, of course, many enormous implications. Until such a vital source can be realistically found and made ready for use, oil will figure into the general equation of how to provide requisite power for the modern reality, the petroleum-based civilization that most people in the advanced, socio-technological countries will simply not do without, even regardless of any, e.g., carbon credits sold as economic indulgences: paying for “eco-sins” without having, in fact, to do any real (read: pain-filled) penance. Thus, the Learjet Liberals, by buying the carbon credits, can now hypocritically fly to their numerous anti-greenhouse gases conferences without offending their (morally warped) sensitive consciences, heat and air condition their mansions, and swim in olympic-sized pools, while lecturing poor and working-class people to greatly do their part to prevent the supposed dangers of “global warming.” Perhaps, the socioeconomic divide will, in the future, be between the poor, working class, and lower-middle class, on the one hand, and the (Liberal-Leftist) upper-middle class and upper class who can afford carbon credits. If the political-ideological debate going on, however, does not move significantly beyond oil versus non-oil based energy, the stupidity and hypocrisy will, thus, just continue to grow exponentially. Also, plain insanity seems to be growing during the artificially caused food shortage crisis of 2008 because, among other major reasons, the US government is massively subsidizing (corn) farmers just to make ethanol. [What future historians may say about those societies that literally burned up their food supplies for environmental reasons is rather interesting to speculate.] This activity necessarily raises food prices for various crops by weirdly distorting market forces through such absurd political intervention (read: biofuels) that has caused, in April of this year, many poor people in Haiti to be literally eating dirt, their “dirt cookies,” to just survive! Of course, once again, the free-market system, free-enterprise economics, will be wrongly condemned for, in fact, what governments do in the name of green technologies that are plainly uneconomic, are against free-market economics; it is not hard, therefore, to honestly see the irrational ideology of environmentalism (which is not necessarily the same as a rational concern for the environment), consequently, as a mere euphemism for what really represents contemporary socialism/communism. All the now current forms of advanced energy sources, inclusive of nuclear (fission or potential fusion), coal, oil, gas, water power (almost all hydroelectric, … besides geothermal, of course), solar, biofuels, etc., still require conversion, sooner or later, of the energy, directly or indirectly, into forms of electricity for its main practical usage; this means logically wanting to have such energy for large-scale productivity as to its usual and basic usage: electrical power grids, power plants, etc. Revolutionaries, among many others, have recognized how the control of electricity has revolutionized human life. A now “classic” remark by V. I. Lenin, when asked for a short definition of Communism, said that it was: Bolshevism plus electrification. The latter situation, of course, made industrialization and modernization fully possible on a grand and sustainable scale of achievement hitherto totally unknown to all previous ages; but, even electricity has its inherent limitations (that can yet be overcome through free-market economics). An entirely new and, perhaps, presently inconceivable energy source is, therefore, urgently needed that does not need any such conversion into electricity for its practical utilization. This is easier said than realizable, of course. But, what’s being talked about here is the expressed desire for a true quantum jump beyond the present and noted limitations of electricity and its known consequences. Until then, however, it is highly probable that, e.g., ugly poles with electrical wires attached to them will remain the anachronistic 19th century means of energy transmission well into the late 21st century, which ought to be thought of as shocking. It is visually shocking in terms of its prevalent technological backwardness, techno-crudity, observed across the supposedly postindustrial landscape of the USA. But, the United States will not be truly postindustrial, as a supposed classified condition of genuine modernization, until all these unsightly throwbacks to a bygone era are completely made unneeded relics of the tired industrial past. Some creative power source must be invented, by which a new quantum leap can be intelligently taken to surpass all present concepts of power generation, that would exist without any electrical-based transmission required; this fundamentally monumental achievement will be at least the equal or better as an accomplishment than the electrification of all major cities in the world as a techno-achievement worthy of a then true postindustrial era. It is, to say the least, a tremendous challenge, therefore, to inventive genius everywhere to try to come up with such a unique and powerful source of new power, of supremely techno-advanced energy. Could, as a guess, the fourth state of matter, meaning plasma, offer any possibility for research as to such a source of power? The three regular states of matter, solid (e.g., wood, coal), liquid (whale oil, petroleum) and gas (natural gas), have already provided sources of energy; it would appear that plasma is the logical candidate for a truly postmodern energy source. But, logically, nothing actually becomes considered by people to be a natural resource, e.g., coal, until really used as such. Thus, society awaits the civilizational arrival of the next quantum leap in energy technology done through deliberate inventive genius (or, perhaps, just by accident?). True factories in outer space supposedly capable of genuinely mass producing the once-promised super-technologies (e.g., foam steel) for creating the assumed super-civilization do not yet exist. Other “promises” made, in the past, by, e.g., superconductivity, cold fusion, etc. have not been kept. So, can a plasma-based energy technology succeed where other things have failed? The future alone awaits the real answer. But, electricity, due to its (physical and other) limitations (e.g., damned wires/power lines), must be made obsolete if this great dependency upon oil is really to be very substantially reduced in the future of this 21st century. ------------ About the author: Joseph Andrew Settanni, CRM, CPC is a Certified Records Manager and Certified Professional Consultant with 30 years of professional experiencein data, archives, records and information management. 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