Via Ezra Klein, I found this post on the future of globalization. Emptywheel brings up a point I’ve wondered about for a long time, knowing that the end of Big Oil is approaching:
Here we were, burning up jet fuel so we could arrange to ship goods all the way around the world to a bunch of people, an entire country, who can’t or won’t pay their debts. But the words kept streaming by. THIS FLIGHT CAN’T GO ON ANY LONGER. GET OFF THE PLANE, IT’S GOING TO CRASH, the newspaper headlines might as well have said.
I’ll leave the business end of the discussion to Emptywheel. Here’s my thing: Oil is just going to get rarer and harder to get from here on out. Yeah, hybrids are the wave of the future, but Americans demand “performance” (read: high speeds) so coming hybrids aren’t particularly fuel-efficient. But eventually it’ll hurt enough and we can all move to bikes or buses or whatever. Fine.
I’m wondering about the big machines. The trucks. The planes. The cargo ships. What are they going to run on? Is there some plan afoot to find an alternative fuel for the jumbo jets? I don’t think they run on electricity. Or are my kids doomed to see Paris only from the pictures on TV? How are we going to export and import goods around the world if the cargo fleets are sidelined?
I don’t have any answers for this. Just something I’ve been wondering about.