It’s a Wonderful Fuel
George Green had reached the end of his rope. Humanity just didn’t get that its large and growing appetite for energy was killing the planet.
As Earth Day approached, his mood took a dark turn. Poised at the rail of the bridge stretching across the river that flowed through Bedford Falls, he mused how much better the world would be if there were no fossil fuels . . . and no George Green.
It was then he saw the man struggling in the swirling current below. He tore off his jacket, leaped into the frigid water, and pulled the drowning man to shore.
After they dried off, the man thanked George and introduced himself.
“My name is Drake,” he said. “I’m an angel who was sent here to save you from your despair. If I succeed, I’ll earn my wings.”
“Save me?” George scoffed. “It’s the earth that needs saving from fossil fuels.”
Drake looked skyward and after a brief and seemingly one-sided conversation announced, “Well, I see you’re going to be a tough case, so I’ve just cleared it with the folks upstairs. I’m going to grant your wish. Fossil fuels have never been discovered.”
“Yeah, right,” George said searching the pockets of his jacket. “You must have bumped your head. Let me get my smart phone, and we’ll Uber into town.”
“Your phone isn’t there,” Drake told George. “Mobile devices were never invented. You see, without fossil fuels, there was no way to produce the materials that go into your phone or to power it and its network reliably. No tablets or televisions either, I’m afraid.”
Unconvinced, George responded, “Hmmm, it must have dropped into the river. Looks like we’ll have to walk. Hey, does this bridge seem a bit creaky to you?”
“It does. This bridge is made of wood. The one you jumped off to rescue me was made of iron and steel. Making those metals requires fossil fuels and metallurgical coal. Without them, it wasn’t possible to run the large mills needed to forge enough iron and steel for things like bridges . . . or cars or airplanes or skyscrapers, for that matter. Remember your high school buddy, Abe Darby? Well, he’s the town blacksmith.”
“Huh? Abe owns a brew pub. Look, I really have to get back. I promised my wife I’d help her plan our summer vacation tonight. We’re going to take the kids whale-watching and then camping in the forest.”
“But George, there are no whales to watch anymore,” Drake replied. “Because there was no kerosene to light the lamps and no coal to fuel the dynamos that powered Thomas Edison’s light bulbs, hunters long ago killed off the whales for their oil.”
“Are you kidding me?” groaned George. “Next thing you’ll be telling me we can’t go camping.”
“Sure, you can go camping. Just not in the woods. America’s forests are a thing of the past.
Deprived of fossil fuels, people kept using the next best thing to heat their homes and power their industry—wood—and today most of that’s imported.”
“Impossible,” George protested, though lacking his earlier conviction.
“The truth is, George, nowadays when politicians aren’t ranting about the evils of ‘Big Wood,’ they’re scolding Americans for their addiction to logs, claiming it just enriches the OTEC cartel.”
“OTEC?”
“The Organization of Timber Exporting Countries.”* Taking in his unfamiliar surroundings, a confused George felt his defiance flag. Then it hit him. “What is that stench?” he gagged.
“Oh, that’s the tons of horse dung being, ah, deposited in town every day. After all, with fossil fuels unavailable, there was no way to build cars in commercial quantities or to fuel them, even with batteries or ethanol. So America never progressed beyond using horses to get around. Henry Ford invested a bundle trying to mass produce buggies on an assembly line, but without an adequate source of electricity, he could never make a go of it. He wound up raising horses for a living.”
“Horses?”
“Yes. Mustangs.” Drake added, “Anyway, as bad as the stink and the insects and the diseases are, the indoor air pollution created when people burn the stuff in their homes is even worse. But in time, you’ll grow used to it.”
As the horrible reality of the situation washed over George, the angel said to him, “You’ve been given a great gift. To see what the world would be like without fossil fuels.”
Frantic, George turned on Drake, gripping him by his lapels. “Where’s my wife?” he gasped. “Where’s Mary? Is she still the town librarian?”
Drake hesitated, then answered, “I’m sorry, George, there is no town library. The great philanthropist Andrew Carnegie never made a fortune in the steel industry because there never was a steel industry to speak of. So he never donated the funds needed to build the library where your wife would have worked. She’s home churning butter.”
“You see,” the angel continued, “hydrocarbon energy has been of tremendous benefit to mankind, helping to fuel the largest flourishing of human health and welfare in all of history. I think you appreciate now that affordable, plentiful, dependable energy is the not the problem for what ails the world, it’s a big part of the solution.”
An enlightened George nodded his head. “Please, Drake, I want to go back—no—I want to go forward to my wife and kids and modern way of life.”
“Very well, George, I’ll send you forward again. And this Earth Day, be sure to spare a thought for the energy pioneers who made modern life possible and to the roughnecks, miners, frackers, oil refiners, IT specialists, nuclear engineers, grid operators, solar-panel and wind-turbine manufacturers, and countless others who every day deliver the energy services that make your lives, well, wonderful.”
Oh yes, and Drake finally won his wings.
*A version of this article originally appeared on RealClearEnergy.