#195 / Oil Is Bad For Us

We spent the last century basing our world on oil because oil seemed to have so many advantages.

Of course, there were problems, too. Mistakes were sometimes made, and oil related pollution is one of our greatest and most enduring environmental problems. Still, we tend to exclude "mistakes" from our analysis when we evaluate past, present, and future projects. We judge our projects based on the assumption that everything will go right.

But everything doesn't go right.

The problem with oil, however, isn't our mistakes. We have now found that the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels is putting the future of our world in peril. Global warming isn't just "inconvenient." It's life threatening.

Even if there are no mistakes, oil is bad for us.

If we try to have another "Oil Century," in the next hundred years, we are probably not going to be around to see the end of it. Hard as it is to contemplate going to a "no oil" world, that's just where we need to go. It took us a hundred years to get so deep. It may take nearly that long to dig ourselves out.

And just remember that "first rule of holes."

If you are in a hole, and want to get out, the first rule is to "stop digging."