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Ronald Stein
Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”
The U.N. COP27 conference was held in Egypt and attracted the global elites and more than four hundred private jets. All attendees recognize that the climate change is occurring, like is has for four billion years, but it seems that most lacked basic energy literacy that starts with the knowledge that renewable energy is only intermittent electricity generated from unreliable breezes and sunshine, as wind turbines and solar panels that cannot manufacture anything for the 8 billion on this planet.
The indisputable unpleasant facts are that renewables, like wind turbines and solar panels, CANNOT manufacture any of the oil derivatives that are the basis of the thousands of products that are the foundation of societies and economies around the world.
Fossil fuel products were the reasons the world populated from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years. As much as world leaders wish to rid the world of emissions from fossil fuels, the world has yet to identify the replacement for the oil derivatives that are the basis of more than 6,000 products and fuels for our various transportation infrastructures.
COP attendees should also know that crude oil is useless unless it can be manufactured into something usable like the fuels for the heavy-weight and long-range transportation infrastructures of ships and jets and the derivatives that make the more than 6,000 products and fuels that have made our lives more comfortable.
- Today we have 50,000 heavy-weight and long-range merchant ships that are moving products throughout the world.
- Today we have 50,000 heavy-weight and long-range jets used by commercial airlines, private usage, and the military.
The World Economic Forum (WEF), the UN and their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and banks that promote ESG, are an extremely dangerous precedent as the eight billion people on this planet never voted to give governments this sort of control over the products demanded by the eight billion on this planet.
COP27 attendees wishing to achieve zero emissions at virtually any cost, will face major supply chain issues of those exotic materials like lithium, cobalt, copper, zinc, and silicon, as well as the challenge of affordability. In addition, the availability and affordability of electricity from breezes and sunshine, and the ethical challenges from the mining of exotic materials that are exploiting folks in poorer countries, just for the elites to drive an EV.
The supply of lithium for current EV batteries is already extremely limited in the world and initiatives around the world to open lithium strip mines and ore processing plants have caused a public uproar as environmentalists and the local population are fearful about the impact on nature and people’s livelihoods.
A few other darks clouds on the lithium supply to meet demands of EV batteries:
- The Chilean Supreme Court stopped the mining of lithium in Salarf de Atacama, Chile – a huge chunk of terrain that holds 55 per cent of the world’s known deposits of lithium.
- The European Chemicals Agency’s (ECHA) risk assessment committee is aiming at labelling three lithium compounds as dangerous for human health.
Before the U.N. jumps out of an airplane without a tested parachute, the U.N. needs to have a plan to be able to support the demands of the eight billion on this globe for all the products and infrastructures that exist today that did not exist a few hundred years ago.
Where is the U.N. plan to keep the planet’s eight billion alive and well with the products now being manufactured from crude oil?
Efforts to cease the use of crude oil, without a planned replacement, could be the greatest threat to civilization’s eight billion, not climate change, and lead the world to an era of guaranteed extreme shortages of fossil fuel products like we had in the decarbonized world in the 1800s, which may result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths trying to live without the fossil fuels that are benefiting society.
It’s perfect nonsense that functional, civil societies can live without coal, oil and gas. Today’s life without fossil fuels is symptomatic of an uneducated cohort who haven’t the faintest idea about what makes their safe and utterly privileged little lives possible.
Those clean renewables, like wind turbines and solar panels, can only generate ELECTRICITY, and intermittent electricity at best from available breezes and sunshine.
Electricity from wind and solar CAN:
· Can charge your iPhone, but cannot make your iPhone
· Can operate a defibrillator but cannot make the defibrillator.
· Can operate your TV but cannot make the TV.
Electricity from wind and solar CANNOT:
· Cannot make tires for the billions of vehicles.
· Cannot make asphalt for the millions of miles of roadways.
· Cannot make medications and medical equipment.
· Cannot make water filtration systems.
· Cannot make sanitation systems.
· Cannot make fertilizers that come from natural gas to help feed billions.
· Cannot make pesticides to control locusts and other pests.
Getting down to basics, even all the components of wind turbines and solar panels are all made with products from fossil fuels. Thus, eliminating fossil fuels would eliminate all the components of wind turbines, solar panels, vehicles, merchant ships, jets, and more. Again, where is the U.N. plan to keep the planet’s eight billion alive and well with the products now being manufactured from crude oil?
Life Without Oil is NOT AS SIMPLE AS the U.N. MAY THINK as renewable energy is only intermittent electricity from breezes and sunshine as NEITHER wind turbines nor solar panels can manufacture anything for society. Climate change may impact humanity but being mandated to live without the products manufactured from oil will necessitate lifestyles being mandated back to the horse and buggy days of the 1800s.
World leaders and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement leaders that are setting policies to rid the world of fossil fuels seem to forget that poor nations should also have inalienable, God-given rights to develop, using fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power – and petroleum as feedstocks for fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, plastics and hundreds of other miraculous life-enhancing, life-saving products.
