For those “Flatearthers” that still fail to see the madness in our society’s continued urgency to burn every last drop/bit of fossil fuel left on/in the Earth, let me try an economic argument.

For the few that have oil, i.e. those few countries that sit on massive reserves of the black stuff, it does not always lead to nirvana – show me a Garden of Eden story based on the proceeds of oil, where the wealth generated has flown into Government coffers and has in turn, been reasonably distributed or allowed to filter down– none? For the rest of us, oil will continue to burden consumers, industry, agriculture and governments alike. Certainly, continued sales of oil leads to increased taxation flowing into the Department of Finance/Exchequer but this only serves to fuel (pun intended) an artificial distortion of trade, as those that by and large sell us the oil, purchase little of what it is we make in return (most oil seems to be discovered in remote and lowly populated areas in the World – think desert!). We must therefore wean ourselves off the addiction that is oil. Every spike in oil prices (notice at how the cost of crude oil jumps at every piece of positive economic data emanating from the US in particular?) leads to unprecedented levels of global inflation. If oil and the cost of a tank of fuel was the only product impacted then disaster could be mitigated, but all sectors of society are also so heavily dependent on oil, including industry, food production and transportation. Society (and by that I mean individuals) need to accept this fundamental point in order for meaningful change to occur.

It’s not scaremongering to say that climate warming and climate shifts (adverse weather patterns as more rain and storms occur in specific areas, and more droughts in others) and spiralling population growth will become common newspaper headlines for the years to come. Behind these headlines will be ever increasing energy costs coupled with (or in most cases driven by) escalating oil prices. The result will be uncertainty and higher levels of personal expenditure in developed countries (an inconvenience) but starvation for those in third world countries as they are priced out of the market (genocide through economics).

“Ask any heroine dealer the meaning of ‘its true worth’ and not only will he tell you how under-supply increases demand, but how the end-consumers’ willingness to pay more increases.”

The Value of Oil/ The Cost of Oil:

Oil is currently trading behind what markets consider “its true worth”. Ask any heroine dealer the meaning of “its true worth” and not only will he/she tell you how under-supply increases demand, but how his/her end-consumers’ ability and willingness to continue to pay more and more to feed their addiction increases – even “ability” doesn’t cut it for an addict that wants and needs more – they will often pay above what they can, this in turn generally leads to higher crime rates.

The Solutions: Government Policies that can effect real change:

Our governments should focus much of their attention to natural resources/sustainable energy, which although in its infancy (we have yet to figure out a direct way to harness Nature’s most consistent and free energy force, i.e. gravity) offers more economic opportunity.

Sustainable energies will continue to need considerable resources and investments poured into them. Someone needs to take a big lead on this. Our Government should aspire to a multi-generational energy policy. A policy that does not include the burning of fossil fuels as a means to generate energy. It’s a tall order but once started, successive future Governments can contribute to the overall policy with a “continuous improvement policy”. The current Government/Administration can lay the foundation through policy, tax incentives (and disincentives to encourage those that remain addicted to oil wean themselves off – the dreaded but necessary carbon taxes) can be devised to encourage business (new and existing) to develop the ways and means. Once initial targets are met, prices will fall. Industry and consumers will follow (based on sound economical purchasing decisions) – this process of falling prices and increasing business and consumer demand has already begun.  With such Government policies in place there should be no future reason that we should tolerate significant energy related inflation; in fact as new entrants arrive and as new technologies emerge, consumers should see a prolonged period of continued deflation in energy price – unless of course our reluctance as a society to wean ourselves off fossil fuels prevails.

Governments should also encourage transportation that is not oil dependent – taxing that sector that is, to subsidise the sector that is not. Ireland should be proud of the motorway infrastructure that we have completed over the past decade, after being so far behind the rest of the developed world. Rather than calling for motorways to be made redundant by attempting to move all to Public Transport (the infrastructures need to be put in place firstly), we should “clean them up” by making the vehicles that use them Green. Current thinking is that all small cars will be electric within the next 15years and all larger cars and commercial transporters will be run from Hydrogen. So for starters, how about the government abolishing toll charges for electric cars! Think what it would do for those citizens that live within a mile of the M50, etc. This could be upped to a congestion free charge on all electric vehicles (the M50/Eastlink and others should be incentive enough to get consumers thinking green).  Again an opportunity for Ireland to utilise its expertise (tax incentives) in attracting the brightest and best new emerging next generation companies  through encouraging research and development (how about a Tax Free moratorium for businesses involved in R&D purposes only for an initial 5 years, with a further 5years added for actually manufacturing the vehicles here?)

Needless to say we need to take our dependence away from oil and by default we will lead the world in GHG reduction (or at least be up there with the best for a change).