Modern-day cars run on gas; one of the most significant complaints people have with society comes from high gas prices. That’s something an overwhelming majority of people have heard at least once. Nearly every single car and every single electrical appliance we rely on so heavily today runs on petroleum.
That would work perfectly fine if not for one thing: there’s only so much petroleum oil on earth. Once we use up all of the oil, it’s gone forever. You’ll hear people complain, “Oh, the gas prices were so good back then! This new society is all crooked; everything costs more!” Yes, gas prices did cost less back then, but many fail to realize that there was just more oil to go around the world. Everyone uses gas cars; electric cars do exist, but they’re nowhere near as impactful as gas cars have been ever since their inception.
I imagine you can already see the problem here: if there’s a limited amount of petroleum oil, and everyone’s using it in their car-based societies and their electronic devices, many of whom use these for their livelihoods, then we’re on track to run out of the fuel that forms a cornerstone of the world.
One of the biggest problems in the world comes from the quest to find an alternative energy source. Electricity is one option, but electricity runs off of oil; even if we all switched to electric cars, we’d be running off of oil just centralized to the government. Wind turbines and solar panels exist, but they don’t offer nearly as much energy as oil and are weather dependent.
The most important alternative fuel we have today is nuclear energy. It already powers 1/5th of the United States’ electricity but doesn’t work as a liquid fuel for cars and planes.
We need to work on alternatives while we still have the time, and it does bring me some security that we already mildly rely on non-petroleum fuels. A worldwide switch will take decades, if not longer, as oil-related cars will get phased out if we don’t find an alternative oil-like fuel. Therefore, I think people should work towards a worthy, cheap biofuel that can replace petroleum.
The biggest thing stopping progress is the worldwide oil industry fighting to keep power of the world and use every last drop of petroleum to make bank. The world could potentially end if we don’t work on alternative fuels before petroleum runs out, but the oil tycoons don’t care.
The sooner we work on viable alternatives, the better. I understand that it’s challenging, but it matters for the future of the society we know today.
