No. of Recommendations: 20
It's not just the companies who make fossil fuels that capitalize on it. It's all their customers, too.
I've been tracking fossil fuels for some 70 years now. I don't recall anyone who ever bought fossil fuels because they "liked" them. They bought products derived from fossil fuels because they liked the benefits they received from them. The benefits, in their views, outweighed the costs. No one was ever forced to buy gasoline, or jet fuel, or natural gas for heating and cooking, or plastics for clothing, medical equipment, food packaging, because they loved their sources. They liked the benefits they received at the costs they paid. Demand drives supply.
Modern civilization happened because fossil fuels supplied energy (via steam engines and ICI's, then electricity generation) that had previously been available only by manual labor (own and slaves), domesticated animals, and limited use of wood for fuel, wind for sailing, and flowing rivers. That's what kept human productivity limited for thousands of years. New sources of energy from fossil fuels broke that bottleneck only circa 150 years ago. Then followed the industrial revolution followed by the electric revolution and then the information revolution from the internet. The anticipated AI revolution will also be powered by fossil fuels for a long time. Wind and solar only contributed some 3% of the world's power in 2024. The building blocks of modern civilization - cement, steel, plastics, and fertilizers - all come from fossil fuels, and cannot be replaced by electricity.
Now we're faced - as a civilization - by the consequences of using fossil fuels for power: climate change and overuse of earth's resources. And, so far, we're unwilling to pay the costs of removing the CO2 generated by fossil fuels. We don't like the consequences of using them, but we like the benefits more than reducing their use for power and materials.
We're either going to have to adapt or change. So far, we're unwilling to do so. Also, because of abundant power, we've outcompeted other forms of life for earth's resources. Our numbers grow - they're going extinct.
This can't go on forever. Somethings must change. It's not fossil fuels that are the problem, it's all of us. We've evolved to compete for resources. Now we've overdone it. Can we change our behavior?
I doubt it until the pain of not changing outweighs the pain of changing. That's going to be a tough period. And pretending it isn't real isn't going to prevent it happening.
