Many are concerned that lower oil prices will slow down the
push to renewable energy. The green
machine believes that lower fuel costs will actually be temporary and will in fact boost the eventual deployment of greener vehicles and power generation.
One might ask why the Green Machine who uses thermodynamics
as his guiding principles is optimistic that good will come of these low
commodity prices. With very low prices
for steel, copper, aluminum, silver, glass, nickel, cobalt, polysilicon, and
other raw materials that are used for the manufacture of new efficient vehicles, PV
power stations, wind turbines, batteries, etc. more of these greener systems will
be deployed around the globe.
The Green Machine is happy to see that China is embracing
small electric vehicles and Europe is moving away from diesel vehicles to
hybrids. Younger people around the world
are not that interested in even owning a vehicle. Younger people are not interested in living in suburbia
and the conspicuous waste of resources. Car
sharing will become a norm, car ownership may in fact drop quite considerably.
OPEC knows the world has gone through a sea change and they
are now dumping oil on the market in a desperate attempt to continue their domination
of the global energy market. That OPEC
is forgoing hundreds of billions of dollars in this futile attempt to turn back
the clock is actually good for the world.
The money that otherwise would have ended up in corrupt hands is
actually being spent on greener infrastructure in countries from India to
Chile. Money is being freed up for many
infrastructure projects as global interest rates are diving.
The Collapse of oil prices and the resulting drop in global
stock markets also means central banks will lower rather than raise interest
rates. This will not spur oil
consumption but will spur investment is more energy efficient infrastructure. 30 years ago a strike in the coal or steel
industry would cripple an economy like the US or the UK. Now those industries are actually meaningless. OPEC in 30 years will be meaningless.
The largest arrow in our quiver to green up the world is
reduced consumption of fossil fuels and other mined or farmed resources via
efficiency and the elimination of waste.
In 30 years I predict we will be using less oil, gas, and coal even with
a population of 9 billion people. In 30
years we will be using a quarter less plastics, steel, aluminum, glass, and
cement on a global basis. In 30 years
folks will look back on the mid years of the second decade of the twenty first
century and remark how the world woke up to a greener way of living. In 2045 I will be 92 years old and will be
very happy to see that I forecasted correctly.
