Sunset for Petroleum - Shut it Down! A Five Year Plan

by Zvi Baranoff

The transformation from a petroleum centric economy is inevitable. The timing and nature of that transformation is in many ways up for grabs. There are multiple vested interests. We all have skin in the game.

Petroleum has for the last century increasingly dominated our economy and centralized wealth while wrecking havoc to the global environment. This destructive and systematic pattern needs to come to a halt in a rapid, yet orderly process. The petroleum industry would like to drag that process on as long as it will be tolerated, continuing to profit from this malfeasance. Delay is in no one else's interest.

We need a social policy that recognizes the urgency of this transformation and a commitment to facilitating this on every level.

The auto industry is in the process of transitioning to all electric cars. Additionally, solar and wind are beginning to displace fossil fuels for generating energy.

All that said, we have millions of internal combustion engines on the road that will continue to be on the road for decades assuming that fuel is available for those vehicles. We also have functioning oil burning power plants and homes heated with oil. That oil we burn, however need not be petroleum. We have other options.

The quickest way to end the strangulating control of petroleum on our economy and our environment is to facilitate the processing of other liquid fuels for the transition period away from the internal combustion engines.

One way forward would be for a combination of consumer co-op and farmer co-op and incentives and infrastructure investment by local, state and Federal government to speed forward fuel production. With that level of commitment there is no reason we cannot shut the petroleum industry down in an orderly fashion over a five year period.