On September 20, 2023 UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres will host the 2023 UN Climate Summit in New York City. It will likely be thoroughly reported on and touted by the NY Times and other legacy press outlets as a great success. The UN Summit will fit into the NY Times’ editorial agenda better than one they recently decided to downplay or ignore.
That of US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholme’s electric powered “Great American Road Trip”. It was a short one—from North Carolina over the border to Tennessee, but all did not go well. Hoping to underscore the practicality and usefulness of electric vehicles for the traditional American road trip, Granholm staged an electric car motorcade. But the trip had recharging troubles all the way. The well publicized trip, got the Secretary back to DC safely, only because it quietly included a huge gas guzzler SUV— just in case. The rest of us who can not afford an electric vehicle AND a gas powered SUV to visit grandma in Florida can take note…
Secretary Granholm and the other participants for Gutteres’ Climate Summit will all surely arrive in New York via fossil fuel guzzling private jet or propeller airplanes, diesel powered helicopters, or gasoline powered motorcades. Perhaps a few like Granholm (?) might drive up in the Ford 150 “Lightning” she had someone drive during her Tennessee trip.
However, the difference between participant’s transportation and arrival method will mean very little. All these vehicles still depend on fossil fuels —some by burning fuel directly under the hood— or others permitting the national electric grid to burn fossil fuels so electric vehicles may travel to a recharge site—and take a few hours out of the trip time to recharge their batteries. That is if that charging venue is even in existence in that rural town, is functioning, and not in use by others.
Then too, let’s not forget that the nation’s electric grid is fossil fuel dependent to the tune of about 73% of the power it uses. But the owners and drivers of these “green” vehicles will be happy to inform you that even with that “73% problem” they try to ignore —electric vehicles do produce about 15% less carbon “footprint” than a gas driven one. (Though those numbers do not include the “carbon costs” of recycling the old vehicle, and building and transporting the new electric vehicles.) That 15% seems small potatoes to me.
But that is not all. These climate participants will drive into the City on roadways paved with asphalt-a thick gooey by-product of the fossil fuel industry. The “rubber” tires of their motorcars or electric vehicles are made from fossil fuels too. The automobiles themselves are colorized with paints from fossil fuels, and use metals extracted from ores by fossil fuels, then wrought into useable iron and copper and aluminum by fossil fuel furnaces. The plastic that makes up much of the modern low weight vehicles themselves is all derived from petroleum. The automotive seats and the interiors are finished with fabrics, cushioning and “faux” leather all chemically generated products sourced from fossil fuels.
The well dressed participants are likely wearing fossil-fuel-derived footwear (soles and uppers), Their clothing is likely heavy with petroleum derived rayon, nylon, polyester and even faux leather belts to hold up their pants—or skirts. Even the underwear participants are wearing —even if it is composed of natural silk or cotton, the threads that hold it together are polyester and dependent upon fossil-fuel-derived-chemicals. The female participants will primp and powder their faces, line their eyes and color their lips with cosmetics—all which use petroleum too.
These folks are all arriving with the express purpose of denigrating and eliminating all these existentially essential and ubiquitous products we use daily and are surrounded with. Their plans call for us all to give up all of these products and work-saving systems we are so familiar and dependent upon.
Ignoring these facts they are gratified and content to think of themselves as being the nation’s most intelligent, progressive, “scientific”do gooders. Then they will go home —to their fossil fuel heated abode, composed of fossil fuel derived, sourced and transported materials. They will rest their heads and fall into a peaceful dream-filled sleep on a fluffy Latex Dunlop foam pillow, and stretch out on a Gel Foam and Memory Foam mattress (all derived from petroleum). They will sleep away soundly, blithely unaware they are living in a fossil fuel world, a world so completely dominated by the one product they so ferociously want to eliminate. With even its pollution— a fossil product. Sadly they ignore history and reality. All our food, all transportation, our supply chains of fuels, goods,clothes, our manufacturing sector our entire economy depends on fossil fuels..
Humans have long ago lived through the Stone Age—the Copper Age—the Bronze Age—and Iron Age. Eighty years ago we quickly passed through the “Coal Age”. And like it or not— we all now live in the Age of Petroleum.
The Petroleum Age gave us so many advantages. Its huge energy source enabled us to ignore the fearful prognostications of Malthus’ trap or population bomb— to produce— via petrochemicals and raw energy—more and more food—so that our human population has surged above the 8 billion mark. We grew fat and happy with billions of more mouths to feed, and more and more mineral extraction industries and more manufactured materials to sell to our surging populations.
But the poison pit within the luciouos fruit of our system is that: each person on Earth requires the equivalent of about 13 bbl petroleum each year—every year of their life—to live in our high tech world. Thus each one of us and every added human produces so much more carbon dioxide to enter our atmosphere and cause warming. We did it with our technology and our fecundity.
Like the Granholm Great American Electric Road Trip, the UN Climate Summit is “only for ‘window dressing’ purposes”. It will solve no problems. Make no breakthroughs. pWe are not ready to turn back the clock to the age of rubbing sticks together for warmth, or walking south to visit grandma in Florida.
Our petroleum dependent economy will require changes that will take a long, long time to occur. It can not be put in place overnight. The necessary new technology, new industries and new ideas will require a vibrant powerful—fossil fueled—economy—not one limping along in scarcity and decline.
The necessary changes must be an evolutionary change..our very existence and survival insists on it.
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