Even in the U.S., where discussion of climate policy so often regresses into theological positions of “believing” or “disbelieving” scientific consensus, there are signs of a shift. Polls show rising concern about the dangers of climate change, particularly among younger voters. The Green New Deal may be a mere scrap of a proposal, but it’s nonetheless dragged the politics of climate left. There’s no chance anything like the #GND will be enacted into law while Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell runs the Senate. But Democratic presidential primary candidates now speak openly about scrapping the filibuster precisely to push through legislation on issues such as climate change. If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that while nothing is a given, nothing is fixed, either.
The same applies to the seas on which fossil fuels are shipped across the world. In June, Trump unleashed a tweeted torpedo at the Carter Doctrine when he questioned the U.S. Navy’s role in ensuring freedom of navigation, especially for oil tankers.
Homo hydrocarbon is largely a product of the American-led free-trading era after 1945. Absent the U.S. Navy policing sea lanes, it’s debatable whether oil-importing countries would have allowed themselves to rely on barrels shipped from the Middle East and other hot spots. Yellin’s supertanker is a product of this: a bulk-storage technology adopted after the 1956 Suez Crisis, making it economical to ship oil on longer routes avoiding such chokepoints. Yet these lumbering leviathans wouldn’t have been feasible without the implicit protection of American sea power.
Today, with its shale-inspired sense of energy dominance, the U.S. is rethinking this. China’s planners have taken notice of the potential change: It’s one rationale for Beijing’s pro-electric-vehicle industrial policy. Likewise, faced with the upheaval of the Arab Spring and collapse of Venezuela, oil producers such as Saudi Arabia are trying to remake themselves for a world where oil’s primacy and U.S. backing aren’t guaranteed.
Like the shadow that The Bridge may cast one day, darkness is gathering on the hydrocarbon horizon. There will always be those who doubt climate change, but their platform is literally burning. Even many fossil fuel producers have leapt to politically safer ground. The end of the dominance of hydrocarbons begins with the end of innocence about their hidden costs. The implications of this knowledge will only grow.
Hydrocarbons achieved their preeminence on the back of one overriding imperative: growth. Growth in wealth, living standards, and population. This is how the 20th century world was made, and it’s why we fretted about energy running out. It’s also why we could ignore the environmental and political costs of an energy system that wastes two-thirds of its input as heat.
Now we know that such growth, unchecked, will ultimately undo us. A central argument for fossil fuels’ continued dominance is that humanity will surpass 10 billion at some point, and all those people will want something like the Western living standards built over the past 100 years on the back of coal, gas, and oil. Yet what a poverty of imagination this betrays, especially in light of climate change, which hits the poorest hardest. How can that be the pinnacle of civilization? What even constitutes “higher living standards” in a world where the costs of our existing technologies are so transparent? Far from securing hydrocarbon dominance for another 100 years, the needs and aspirations of future generations demand it give way to something more sustainable.
This story provided by Bloomberg News.