If you drive a Hummer, or even a Russian KV-1 tank, you may be pleased to learn that gas prices are declining. Analysts even predict that the trend will continue to decline through the start of summer.
Pinpointing an explanation is more inextricable than straightforward. It is not just Middle East developments, which are far from stable, or that the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed three bills to expand and expedite offshore drilling. There are innumerable factors that nudge the nuanced interplay of supply and demand.
Fossil fuels have helped the environment
Even if you do not drive such gas guzzlers, it is an apropos time to remember how fossil fuels have actually helped the environment. These benefits are often overlooked in a day when demonizing oil companies is politically popular and alternative energy is hyped.
For instance, people burned wood before fossil fuels emerged as a popular energy source. Deforestation used to be far more rampant than it is today. Thanks to fossil fuels, however, the lumber shortages of the past have ended, while forests, natural land, and wildlife have made a dramatic comeback. Whales are particularly grateful that kerosene, a refined fossil fuel, replaced whale blubber to light lamps and furnaces.
Although today’s smog-filled Los Angeles air may not be most thrilling, it is dramatically better than the foul, 19th-century air that resulted from burning wood, not to mention the soot that blanketed entire cities. Fossil fuels are environmentally-friendly in their own right.
From horse-drawn carriages to automobiles
People also rode in horse-drawn carriages during the once upon a time when they burned wood. But the scene was hardly as idyllic as Prince William and Kate Middleton’s royal wedding conveys.
Where there are horses, there is manure and urine. One can only imagine the amount of unsanitary compounds that used to line the streets. Nor does anyone care that they are organic. Now with fossil fuels and the automobile, people do not have to tiptoe the streets as if they were minefields.
Moreover, the inception of the automobile reduced the demand for horses, which reduced the demand for food and land to raise them. More resources became dedicated to feeding people, resulting in increased food supply and decreased food prices — a welcome development in the effort to alleviate poverty and hunger.
And, of course, travel and shipping became more efficient as people and products moved between larger distances at lower costs.
Wind and solar energy still has kinks and inefficiencies
On the other hand, touted green energy sources, such as wind or solar, may not be as green as they appear. In their new book, “The False Promise of Green Energy,” university professors Andrew Morriss, William Bogart, and Roger Meiners and university librarian Andrew Dorchak note that building and installing wind turbines or solar panels requires significantly more land and material to yield the same amount of energy that fossil fuels yield.
Unlike electricity and fossil fuels, solar and wind energy must be used immediately because they cannot be easily stored, given existing technology. This problem is worsened because solar and wind energy are unreliable: There will be no reserves to tap at night, on overcast days, or when it is calm, even if people need the energy.
In addition, large amounts of wind and solar energy are, more often than not, produced far away from consumers. Infrastructure to deliver the energy over large distances requires much more material, not to mention additional energy. The net benefit is small, while costs are greater.
I am by no means saying that no new energy sources should be researched and developed. After all, fossil fuels are an example of a creative people making human progress and exercising the God-given charge of servanthood dominion over the earth.
Wind and solar energy may experience a breakthrough in the distant future. Or maybe there is an existing material that people have not learned to harness; fossil fuels were thought to only be a pollutant before people discovered how to use it as an energy source. Until then, be responsible stewards, drive your cars without a guilty conscience, and have a brilliant summer.
