Goodbye Petroleum. Transformation Now!

On August 28, 1859, George Bissell and Edwin L. Drake made the first successful use of a drilling rig on a well drilled especially to produce oil, at a site on Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania.

by Zvi Baranoff
The petroleum industry is holding the world hostage. It is time to shut down petroleum. A rapid phase out is needed and we now have the technological and resource availability to act.

We have reached a point where the writing is on the wall for fossil fuels but those that profit from them are acting as obstructionists to slow the transformation and continue their economic domination for as long as possible. We need the political will power to move more quickly. The phase out needs to be as immediate as actually possible and not based on the bottom line of a dying industry and their claims of feasibility.

First things first. Governments need to stop all subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, both the obvious and hidden subsidies. The obvious are tax breaks and incentives given to these corporations. Less obvious is the military protection that governments provide to keep oil flowing. Nearly obscured are the health and social costs of the use of these fuels that we share without the industry paying for the damages done. They need to pay for the full and true costs of their operations before claiming and spending any profits.

No new permitting of infrastructure development for the industry should be allowed. No new exploration, drilling, pipelines, rail cars, refineries. We need to be moving towards phase out and continued investments in outdated technology is not wise.

We must invest in the mechanisms that will most rapidly displace the use of fossil fuels. We have reached the point where going forward, the alternatives are less expensive - even in the short run - than continued use of the outdated techniques.

The transformation is assured at this point by economic pressures and ecological realities. The rapidity and short and medium term nature of the shift is quantified by how we act and what we do politically as well as within our personal and shared financial actions.

Divestments from fossil fuels are beginning to have some effect. Reinvestments in alternatives doubles the effect.

By elimination of all governmental subsidies to fossil fuels the corporations that profit from them would bear the full costs of doing business. The increased tax revenues and the decrease of government expenditures would ideally be invested in the development of our alternatives. Simple elimination of the subsidies evens the playing field but reinvestment changes the game.

In the USA we now have a new tool at hand to speed the shift away from the petroleum dominated economy. We have long hypothesized that hemp could replace petroleum as a fuel but have been hampered in testing the theory due to the continued prohibition of cannabis. In 2014 however, an experimental program allowing limited cultivation of hemp was introduced. The experiment has proved the viability of the crop for the USA and beginning in 2019 hemp will be reintroduced at a significant level throughout the country.

The industrial infrastructure to utilize this resource will determine how quickly we can move from the dependence on the extractive petroleum to the agricultural based alternative. Investment in that infrastructure through consumer and farmer cooperatives has the potential to encourage a significant economic diversification while displacing the outdated dominant financial force of petroleum. National and local governments of course can encourage the development of the processes through incentives, loans and infrastructure investment. With or without governmental assistance, investment capital will seek out profitable options.

The simplest and quickest way to use hemp as fuel is the utilization of seed oil. Diesel engines, oil burning power plants, homes that heat with oil and oil lanterns for that matter can all function as well or better using hempseed oil. Hempseed is also ideal as an industrial lubricant and as motor oil. The machinery for pressing hempseed oil already exists. The oil at this point is used primarily as a health food supplement. A shift of that level alone would make a fundamental change in energy consumption, air quality and global warming. Beyond that, anything made from petroleum can be derived from hemp when the infrastructure is in place.

The most optimistic outlook for phasing out of the internal combustion engine involves decades. Full development of hemp as a biofuel will allow us to displace petroleum within a few years with a far better option for a liquid fuel. The distribution networks for liquid fuel are already in place. Today's gas stations will pump tomorrow's hemp fuel. This allows us a rapid withdrawal from petroleum without the deep shock of cold turkey.

What can we do in the next growing season and can we now seriously approach the transformation in terms of a five year plan? By guaranteeing markets for seed, American farmers will certainly cultivate what the consumers want. Now we can put the pedal to the metal and see how things work where the rubber hits the road. The only road is forward.