Was Oil Humanity’s Biggest Mistake?
The Hydrocarbon Industry
Humans have used petroleum (or oil) for thousands of years to make medicines, illumination and weapons. Evidence of Chinese oil transportation via bamboo has been discovered as far back as 600 B.C. There has been a petroleum industry of sorts for millennia. However, this usage was infinitesimal compared to the surge since the Industrial Revolution. People in the business call it the Hydrocarbon industry. It sounds fancy, scientific, almost elitist. It means drilling, production, refining and burning black oil.
Serious production began in the US in the 1860s following discovery of oil and subsequent drilling at Oil Creek in Pennsylvania in 1859 by Edwin Drake. Oil production started slow, at first, and then quickly gained momentum and soon went exponential. Growing global oil appetite was fuelled by the advent of the internal combustion engine, the mass-produced Ford Model T and an explosion of new automobile companies across the globe. 100 years later, in 1959, oil production had developed worldwide in thousands of oil fields producing 20 million barrels of oil per day. This has since grown to 95 million barrels produced per day in 2021.
Humans have developed an addiction to oil. Entire economies have been built on its production and refinement. There are, and have been, oil supply crises and cartels influencing the price of oil for over a century - causing geopolitical instability, economic recessions and wars. The burning of oil and oil related products is the primary cause of climate endangerment, global warming and air pollution. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that the fossil fuel industry in responsible for 89% of Co2 emissions and associated global warming.
History won’t look kindly on the oil age.
Refined, it produces a great degree of energy at a relatively low cost. This energy has powered our cars, planes, ships, trains, our homes and factories. It powers our electricity stations and helped build tires and plastics. Oil is prevalent in millions of everyday products. You can’t completely put the oil industry down. It gave humanity the kickstart to exponentially develop. Oil provided the spark that ignited the fire to propel humanity, in the past 150 years, beyond even the wildest dreams of previous generations. However, like the end of the stone, iron and bronze ages the oil age is coming to an end. It was brief, relative to human history, incredibly beneficial to human development but catastrophic to the health of our planet. In just 150 years we have near destroyed our climate and increased global temperatures to the point where our very existence on this rock is in real jeopardy.
Oil could possibly be our biggest mistake. The result of over 150 years of burning the fossils from the past has been catastrophic for the delicate balance on earth. We have utterly destroyed our planet’s atmosphere and biodiversity. Prior to oil, Earth experienced a relatively calm climatic period. In the past 2.6 million years, known as the Quaternary period, and apart from ice ages cause by periodic wobbles in earth’s rotation around the sun, it’s been bliss. These last 12,000 years have been particularly tranquil, known as the Holocene epoch. During this period predictable seasons allowed life to flourish and adapt. This life and biodiversity in turn helps to balance the atmosphere by absorbing C02, methane and other greenhouse gasses. This rhythmic absorption and release, self-cools the planet.
Other elements like the vast polar ice caps help reflect a large proportion of the sun’s energy back into space, further cooling our world. It’s not just the emissions of cars but the extraction process of oil itself from the ground that produces unsustainable levels of CO2. The movement of crude around the world (powered by diesel tankers) is hugely detrimental to marine life. There are estimated to be over 800 very large crude carriers (VLCCs) in service worldwide, each caring around 2 million barrels of oil. These giant hulks, with a full belly of black gold, produce over 100 million tons of CO2 per year alone as they traverse the world’s seas. Oil then needs to be refined before being again shipped by pipelines, rail and road tankers to your gas station. Oil is moved by burning more oil!. Scientists have concluded the Holocene is over. According to the International Commission on Stratigraphy we are now in the Anthropocene period. Human activity ended the Holocene epoch, abruptly.
As earth evolved over millennia and life came and went, the remnants of that life, and the carbon it contained, were ‘stored’ away - forever - it’s not supposed to come back! Geology is the study of time. When the dinosaurs died off, together with millions of other plants and animals, the carbon in their bodies broke down into compounds. Over time the layers of dust and ash built up to form rock. The pressure of gravity gradually crushed these compounds into liquid oil. It’s deep underground in most cases, where it was supposed to stay, forever. That is until a small hairless ape took a liking to it and decided to bring it back to the surface! The cumulative effect of deforestation, destroying the lungs of the world, combined with burning of fossil fuels has increased the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere to dangerous levels.
Continued rise in CO2 levels at the same pace will lead to a planet on which humans cannot live, in one hundred years or less. The earth can simply not recycle itself fast enough to cope with our scale of impact. Oil has simply got to go. Now.
