On the arid plains of West Texas, the frigid North Dakota prairie and in the Ohio and Pennsylvania backcountry, a revolution is taking place. Led by the likes of Exxon-Mobil, Shell and other multinational oil companies, the American countryside is being scoured by oil and natural gas drillers wielding a new technological marvel designed to provide a source of supply for our latest fix of fossil fuels.
That technology, hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is a testament to human ingenuity and the lengths to which corporate America will go to feed our addition to oil and gas. In short, fracking consists of injecting, at extremely high pressures, a witch’s brew of chemical fluids in oil- and gas-bearing rock formations. The combination of chemicals and pressure breaks open the rock, freeing the trapped oil and gas,and allowing the precious hydrocarbon resources to be recovered for human use.
To say that fracking is controversial is an understatement. While it allows previously inaccessible energy resources to be harvested cheaply and efficiently, it presents tremendous environmental risks, not least of which is the potential contamination of groundwater with highly carcinogenic fracking compounds. Another possible danger, discovered by many unlucky homeowners in areas where fracking is taking place, is the contamination of groundwater by natural gas – which can make tap water flammable. Not exactly what you want when you take a shower in the morning. Another wonderful side effect of fracking is earthquakes. Yes, you read that right, earthquakes. A recent U.S. Geological Survey study said that a spike in low-level earthquakes is the U.S. is “almost certainly due” to fracking activities.
But fracking represents just one end of the last, mad dash to produce fossil fuels. West Virginia mountain tops are literally being blown to pieces as mining companies blast apart entire mountain ranges to get at the coal underneath. That entire ecosystems and communities are often poisoned and destroyed in the process is of little consequence compared to the energy and profit bonanza that coal represents. And, of course, there are the final plays for traditional oil resources in the depths of the ocean and the polar wastes in the melting arctic. This, too, involves tremendous environmental risks, as any Gulf Coast resident can attest.
The irony of this new boom in fossil fuels is that it is coming despite the clear evidence, now confirmed by nearly all scientists who have examined the question, that burning of fossil fuels is behind global warming. Even a scientist taking money from the Koch brothers, such as long-time climate-change skeptic and Berkeley physicist Richard Muller, has announced he can no longer deny the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change. So convincing is the evidence, he says, that “humans are almost entirely the cause” of warming.
More to the point, Muller’s new research findings even date the beginning of climate change to around 1750 – a date familiar to any economic historian as the approximate year that the industrial revolution, fueled by coal-burning steam engines, really began to take off. So, as the climate warms, we are in many ways returning to our past, full steam ahead, in our search and consumption of fossil fuels. If, as seems likely, we consume the full inventory of fossil fuels that energy companies are now claiming to be able to recover and now count as assets on their financial balance sheets, the additional carbon dumped into the atmosphere will more than push us past the point-of-no-return tipping point climate scientists are warning us about. If that occurs, then not even Kansas will be in Kansas anymore, Toto.
The saddest aspect of this entire looming environmental catastrophe is that it is so unnecessary. Fossil fuel companies and their army of lobbyists and puppet politicians say the world needs energy, and coal, oil and natural gas are the only way to provide it. Limit fossil fuel use, goes the argument, and the lights go out and people starve. Trends in the renewable sector, however, point to an altogether different story.
Germany, an advanced, modern economy by any standard, now gets 25 percent of its total energy supply from a combination of solar, wind and biomass sources. Denmark, a tiny country in all but wind production, gets fully 20-25 percent of its energy from on and offshore wind farms with plans to meet 50 percent of its energy needs via wind by 2050. This dedication has turned Denmark into a wind-turbine manufacturing colossus, with Danish manufacturers responsible for making half the wind turbines installed around the world today.
And the examples of working or planned energy alternatives don’t stop there. In the United Kingdom, for instance, plans are afoot for the construction and installation of offshore tidal power facilities that could account for a major portion of Britain’s total energy needs. Iceland is powered nearly entirely by geothermal power. Australia has 750,000 homes with rooftop solar panels – producing the equivalent energy of two nuclear power plants. Algeria, another sun-drenched country, is planning to install massive solar-power collectors and then ship the energy via high-capacity undersea power lines to continental Europe. China, of course, is plotting to massively expand its investment in solar power manufacturing while Japan is planning to construct large offshore wind farms to wean itself off imported fossil fuels and domestically produced nuclear energy.
Even in the United States change is afoot. In Illinois, Iowa and Indiana, regions more known for farming than energy, wind farms are popping up like corn and soybeans. Texas, the home of Exxon-Mobil and other American oil giants, has quietly built up a huge wind-energy capacity as well. On the great lakes, plans are in the works for the construction of offshore wind farms of the type that power Denmark. Meanwhile, in California, Dow is now advertising solar-power shingles for rooftop home solar-energy systems while, nationwide, there are now more people employed in the solar energy industry than there are coal miners.
All these trends, taken with the now massive, global investment in renewables, mean that even as we go to and poison the ends of the Earth for fossil fuels, quietly and behind the scenes a renewables counter-revolution is emerging that will at first challenge the dominance of and then replace entirely our need for these dirty, politically-problematic, energy resources. The switch will come, but how quickly will depend upon on our willingness to adopt new, untried energy systems and how big a fight the fossil fuel industry puts up as it faces the end of its existence. One can only hope that in the race between runaway climate change and our adoption of carbon-free renewable energy, that political opposition from the fossil fuel industry can be overcome as quickly as possible – something to think about when we cast our votes this November.