It seems to me that the AGW argument, although it still has some force – CO2 is still below the point at which the models start coming up with terrifying predictions – is by no means the best argument for the reduction in use of fossil fuels, specifically oil and to a lesser extent gas.
A much better argument is that the transfer of capital from the civilised West to tribal barbarians, with ideas straight out of the Dark Ages, that want to see us all dead or enslaved is a very bad idea – and reducing oil consumption reduces that distortion. In other words, reducing oil consumption means less money in the hands of those that want to kill us. (The same applies with rather less force to gas consumption – Western Europe has a large and growing problem with its gas supplies being in the hands of Russia).
Spending some of the money currently being sent to Switzerland via the Middle East on research into (coincidentally carbon-neutral) “alternative” energy sources has to be a good idea. Some of them have already been shown to work and simply need some investment; example ocean thermal. Some of them will almost certainly work but need some research done; examples oil-producing algae. Some are somewhat speculative; example Polywell fusion. And some are really blue-sky (although the principles are sound); example SPS.
A combination of some of these would make the civilised “West” (some of it is pretty Eastern from an American point of view) independent of tribal barbarians. And this solves one of the world’s other major problems as well; once all this stuff is working, lay a minefield in the Persian Gulf, blow up all the pipelines leading out of Mordor, confiscate all their Western assets – and let them find out whether oil is edible. Oh, and throw out every last one of the barbarians out of every Western country, make their treason and idolatry illegal and dynamite their “religious” edifices while we’re about it.
Spend some time, expertise and money on alternatives to oil, and we not only shut up some of the shrillest of the ecofreaks, but cut down the money tree for terrorism as well. Why don’t we get started?
