We can make alot of plastics out of other materials, or we could use a different base feedstock, like natural gas or coal. Oil, is a chain on carbon atoms with a boatload of hydrogen atoms sticking off it, and some other atoms in trace amounts. Gasoline, is a chain of Carbon about 5-10 atoms long. Natural gas is 1 atom long, things like Keroseen are longer(12-15 atoms). We have the ability to cram natural gas together to make any length chain we want, and we have HUGE amounts of natural gas. The problem is that it is hugely expensive to do it when comparied to getting the earth and a few million years to do it for you. We wont run outa plastic, well just use plastic in a much more efficient mannor and find substitutes for the disposable stuff, low value stuff.
As for the arguments about oil not being able to be replaced, and we’ll all just have to live very close together and not drive/fly and such, I just dont agree. Will things be a cheap as in the past. No. Will we need to start prioritizing our consumption? Yes. Will things grind to a hault and only the super rich be able to fly or drive? no.
Two reasons, eventually we will have gas/electric plug in hybrids. Considering 84% of the oil used today goes to make gasoline, and the average driver drives less than 60 miles a day while tests have shown this to be a reasonable distance that can be obtained from a battery. Therefore a replacement of todays cars with electric hybrids would be a substanial reduction of the total amount of gasoline we use. On the order of 50% or more. Reductions like this are not priced into peak oil priceing, (batteries of this size can be recycled, and many already are) which is the main defense of why today isnt a bubble.
Second, the defense here of current oil prices is a breakdown of the energy potential of gasoline versus human power into potential energy. That energy can also be obtained from far better sources than the human muscle. Geothermal, wind, water, and solar powers can all be brought to bear on the market much better than they are today. Add in nuclear, coal, natural gas, all of which are in abundant supply, and we have plenty of energy, we just need to get at it better than we have been. Oil is one of the most energy rich substances on earth, and their is alot of it. That doesnt mean that there isnt a bunch of other sources of energy around all far better than human muscle and many we already understand how to use.
If we want to price energy in potential energy…..
I have a close friend who works in the energy field (BP). We have discussed this repeatedly and the thing he always tells me when I get down on energy is this:
Everyday energy(10.55Zettajoules) hits the earth from the sun. As a world we used 0.471zetta joules in 2004! We use rougly 4% of the enegry hitting the earth in a day in a year. A 100 square mile area of the southern Arizona desert turned to the best solar arrays we have now could run the country. 100 square miles. That is renuable and uneneding with no real costs going into the mix except maintaince once completed. The problem other than the enviromental and political issues is simply that it would only cost a few trillion dollars to do. Once up and running and paid off, energy would cost near nothing. We have the ability to store energy for overnight needs, we have other sources of energy in Vast to enless quantities, and we have an unflagging demand. What we dont have is the will and the capital, because as soon as anyone has been willing to think of this stuff oil taps are turned on around the world and prices crash. No intellegent capital will do this until Saudi Arabia doesnt have the ability to crash prices if they so choose. Add in oil interest lobbying and the fact that this would spell doom for the coal and oil states (WY,WV,AK,MS,TX), plus drive a global collapse in the world economy as economic powerhouses such as Russia, Norway, the entire Middle East, and near collapses in Canada and Mexico, African countries and a few others kill global GPD growth.
We have PLENTY of energy for the next 3-5 billion years, the probelem is we need to learn how to get at it better. This isnt a problem of supply, it is a probelem of delivery to market, and some very smart individual is going to get very rich some day figuring that one out.
