Fossil fuels, the non-renewable energy resource that makes modern civilization possible, will one day run out. Civilization as we now know it will change long before that occurs, as our way of life is not sustainable. Modern civilization is built on five pillars: electricity, transportation, materials, medicine and agriculture. All pillars are inherently made possible by products from petroleum, natural gas and coal.

The 2017 World Café, an event sponsored by the Justice and Peace Studies Department at the University of St. Thomas that brings people together for interdisciplinary dialogue, dealt with environmental justice and climate change. The basic gist of its activities was how carbon through the burning of fossil fuels is destroying our planet and what its future ramifications might be.

Although there are few scientists who disagree with the reality of human caused climate change, and the conversations that ensued from this year World Café are, in themselves significant, I am of the opinion that a knowledge gap exists in the understanding of how imbued our civilization is in fossil fuels. Bridging this gap through an exploration of the five pillars of civilization would help us understand the current discourse on fossil fuels and the future of our planet.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the three main sources of fossil fuels account for 80 percent of the total U.S. energy consumption in the last 100 years.

An exploration of the five pillars of civilization with respect to fossil fuels gives the following:

Electricity: Many of us take for granted the value of switching a button to light a bulb or plugging a device to the wall to get juice. This is made largely possible by fossil fuels. Fossil fuel based energy sources make up 67.2 percent of the entire U.S. energy mix for electricity generation.

Transportation: Petroleum is the major energy source for transportation. From the gasoline our cars, motorcycles and light trucks use, to diesel oil that powers trucks, trains and buses, to kerosene that makes it possible for our jets to fly and residual fuels that sets out ships sailing, fossil fuel accounts for 92 percent of the U.S. transportation energy sources.

Materials: Most of the clothes we wear are made from synthetic fibers like polyester, nylon and vinyl, and these are derived from fossil fuels. In 2014 they made up 67.5 percent of the global textile production. Plastics, according to the EIA are manufactured from hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGL), a by-product of petroleum refining and natural gas processing.

Agriculture: Fossil fuels transformed our society from a subsistence hunter-gatherer society to an industrialized one. The green revolution from 1950 to 1984 led to a 250 percent increase in the world’s grain production was fuelled by fossil fuels. Fertilizers, made from natural gas and pesticides, herbicides, etc. all made from oil have been identified as the drivers for this revolution. Currently it take about 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to make 1 calorie of food. The U.S. agriculture industry in 2012 used 800 trillion British Thermal Units (BTU) of energy. That’s about as much energy used by the entire state of Utah.

Medicine: Petroleum is widely used in health care. It is used as a raw material for the manufacture of many pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. It is also used as transport fuels for ambulances and medevac helicopters. Nearly 99 percent of pharmaceutical raw materials and reagents are derived from petrochemicals.

Without mincing words, modern society as we know it would most likely have been impossible without fossil fuels.

There would be no cause for alarm, with respect to fossil fuels, if we were not impacting our planet by burning them and if petroleum was essentially unlimited like water. The EIA estimates that less than half of the world reserves of conventional oil will be exhausted by 2030. Establishing an exact number with respect to the amount of fossil fuel reserves left is very contentious and political, but one thing we know for sure, is that one day, be it 40 years from now or 200 years from now, fossil fuels will run out.

Hence, to prevent the collapse of our civilization, we need to find alternative fuels that can hold these pillars upright, providing energy at the planetary scale we currently use them.
We have used fossil fuels for the development of products, some of them critical to life in medicine, agriculture and materials, that a transition to alternative fuels may not be practical and may even be impossible, but for the pillars of electricity and transportation there may still be hope.

Currently, for electricity, the only technologies that exist to produce electrical power at the planetary scale are hydroelectric generation and nuclear power. Solar photovoltaics and wind power, with storage, are probably acceptable for residential and light commercial applications, but for large commercial and heavy industrial applications they do not match consumption versus time needs and must be supported by grids using generation enabled by petroleum. Charging a cell phone is very different from powering an electric arc furnace to melt steel. The fear mongering of nuclear power and environmentalist issues with hydroelectricity generation have thus curtailed the wide exploration of these two forms of electricity production.

For transportation, the utilization of electric vehicles might become ubiquitous as the prices of storage fall. I believe, based on the ubiquity of fossil fuels as a transportation energy source, a more realistic alternative is the hybrid option. A solution that offers the use of fossil fuel-powered engines and electric batteries to bring about locomotion.

The future looks bleak, but I find solace in the words of Greg Mowry, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of St Thomas, who does energy research and whom I interviewed for this piece: “I am not optimistic, but I continue my research with the hope that I am horribly wrong about the timing of these events.”

According to Dr. Mowry a pessimistic optimism with respect to the end of low-cost fossil fuels and the future sustainability of civilization might be the practical world view to have as we brace ourselves for a cloudy and uncertain future.

Tam Kemabonta can be reached kema4033@stthomas.edu.