In approximately a hundred years or so the diminishing reserves of fossil fuel will have reached a critical level. There will still be billions of gallons of crude fuel locked deep underground in shale throughout the world. The easy stuff will be used, the crude with a low amount of sulfur content. What is left is the oil that requires a lot more refining and therefore more expensive to produce. Much more expensive may make it uneconomical to continue using it.
Looking back in human history, the advances in technology, science and medicine have been absolutely phenomenal. Mankind has gone from horse drawn wagons less than a hundred years ago as ground transportation, balloons for flight and Birch bark ground up for curing headaches. From there to automobiles with hydrogen burning engines, jet aircraft with the capacity of six or seven hundred passengers and in the medical field, heart and lung transplants, reattachment of limbs and cloning animals.
Having the research capabilities now available to mankind at the present time there is very little that we as a species cannot find a viable answer to, or an alternative for, anything.
At the present time there are a number of substitutions for fossil fuels already in use such as biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, wind, solar, geothermal. Hydroelectric and atomic reactors will further reduce our dependence upon both foreign and domestic oil. Less dependence means that we will stretch those reserves for a few more years into the future. We will continue to use coal for some time and there have been ideas put forward about electrical generators using the motion of the waves offshore.
Had someone told a person in 1909 America about things commonly used by the general public today they probably would have thought them fantasies. The advancement of knowledge has increased exponentially over the last hundred years, the next hundred is going to increase much further than the last. We have trains that float on a magnetic field achieving speeds of three hundred miles per hour now. This was totally unheard of just a few years ago.
I believe people will be riding mag lift, hydrogen or solar powered automobiles, vacationing on the moon or perhaps Mars and living well over 150 years because of less expensive medical procedures and cures of disease with nanotechnology. A specialized pill containing thousands of miniature machines entering the bloodstream to perform repairs and curing ills without the necessity of surgery, radiation or chemical therapy.
The information age has blossomed throughout the world. If someone would stop you on the street and relate the ideas I’ve put forth as being possible in a few years, you might just ask, ” Don’t we have that now?.” The advances we have tend to breed more, the exponential growth factor of knowledge is so high, soon we will have ways to not only shake our dependency of fossil fuels, we will also be able to feed the entire population of the world through hydroponics or bi-products of solving our present problems.
Soon, perhaps in only a few years, the plastic we currently use that is made from oil will give way to similar material produced from vegetable matter or from possibly new chemical compounds grown in vats for say, building materials or inexpensive and nutritious animal fodder.
Don’t worry, your grandkids will watch their kids riding on their mag lift wheel-less bikes, doing now impossible acrobatics and pleading for them to be careful, wear their helmets and be sure their anti-gravity suits have a full charge so they don’t get injured. Two hours in the hospital time out ward while being mended, is no fun. They will do all this and much more sans fossil fuels. It is indeed a whole new world.
