Tne End Of - Oil !

It seems that we are on the cusp of an avalanche of electric cars pouring out of the car factories and the petrol station will disappear from the landscape.  We would do well to remember that the era of oil is a component of our more recent history.

At the start of the 1700's the oil we craved came from whales.  Used in oil lamps, it delivered a white light and an absence of smoke but it was expensive and only available for rich people.  The peasants made do with candles that they made from wicks immersed in cooking fat.  In those days they went to bed when the sun set.

The oil bonanza started when American settlers discovered it under the prairie and this coincided with the start of the industrial revolution  and James Watt's steam engine created locomotives capable of bringing the newly discovered oil to refineries, but what they distilled was not petrol.   It was kerosene that fuelled the lamps of that era and brought in the innovative age of education and enlightenment.  Steam driven trains were the means of delivering kerosene across nations.

The start of the twentieth century saw the start of the car era and Henry Ford created the assembly line that brought personal transport into the reach of ordinary citizens.  The search for new oil deposits became frenetic and the advent of two world wars saw it firmly embedded in the arms industry.  Military strength can not move without an adequate supply of both petrol and oil to fuel its engines of destruction.

No wonder car manufacturers and governments are reluctant to force electric cars on the public.  This immense oil industry is structured around the petrol tax dividend to governments offsetting the other oil raw material that flows to the huge plastics industry.  Without the tax levied on petrol the refining of crude oil would need to be spread across everything else derived from that oil base - and that is everything from the thin membrane wrapped around the food we buy to most of the garments we wear.  Just look around the home and office.   The world of plastics is everywhere and the price is subsidized by the tax we pay on petrol.

Perhaps the electric car will alleviate one of the thorniest problems afflicting humankind.  Plastic is so cheap that it is widely used so indiscriminately that our wasteful habits with it are polluting not only the world oceans, but the land and even the air we breathe with minute particles.  Within half a century we anticipate the waters of the ocean will contain so much plastic that it will equate with the quantity of fish.

We may be heading into an era that sees the end of "cheap" plastic.   If the price doubles or trebles we will have an incentive to use other less polluting material, and we will have to fit those price increases into our standard of living.   The move to electric cars will not be without cost.   It is probably inevitable, but we would be wise to contemplate the costs and balances before we wave goodbye to the internal combustion engine  !