The war of energy titans

George Carlin, the famous American stand-up comedian, once made a mockery of nature preservationists.

“Who the heck you think you are,” he said.

“Have some modesty? You truly believe that you want to preserve mother Earth from plastics and gas emissions? Come on. For God’s sake. Earth is 23,000 times as old as man. It has survived big bangs, tsunamic natural catastrophes before you. You need to worry about your own safety,” he concluded.

The battle that is waged between the Bs and the Gs is called the underlying reality of the war of titans. According to HRH Prince Hassan, the first is oil, or black gold, the other is G, or the green lobby.

It seems that if the Gs win, they will stand to earn trillions of dollars in solar, wind, thermal and hydraulic power sources.

The losers will be atomic energy producers, oil producers and those related to them.

If Camp B wins, then oil producers and atomic energy producers will win.

This camp believes that all this back and front door lobbying for nature by emphasising doomsday scenarios are mere exaggerations, not for the sake of life, but for the profits hoped to be made.

The truth must lie somewhere between the two.

There is no way to deny that gas emissions cause quite a degradation in the quality of air, water and soil.

No one can deny the catastrophes of Chernobyl, Fukushima and even in the US.

Yet, the probability of an atomic accident like those is rather low, although its consequences are very grim.

On the other hand, the cost of moving from traditional to renewable energy is extremely high, and has not been calculated.

This cost has not deterred investment in the unstable and unsustainable electricity generated from renewable sources. However, we will continue to rely on hybrid electricity systems for some time to come.

It is estimated that investment in solar energy in 2015 exceeded $270 billion. This number has been growing since 2010.

When the price of oil tapered off, it was expected that such investment figures would lose their vigour.

Well, they did not.

In many ways, we should expect that in two to three decades electricity generation, gas stations, cars and even roads as we know them will become relics of the past, which is today.

Assuming that the world population of 7.3 billion (estimated to reach 9 billion by 2050) will be using renewable sources of energy, what will be the outcome?

According to laws of thermodynamics, we could be suffering from high degree of entropy.

Moreover, if the size of energy in nature is fixed, the transfer to solar energy would enable us to use much more of it.

If that happens, what will our children and grandchildren be told of the dangers of this “clean gas-free” energy?

The wars waged in our troubled region are the result of great rivalry among economic powers when it comes to energy sources.

But if for them this rivalry takes the form of cold war, the  wars in our region are very hot.

The writer, a former Royal Court chief and deputy prime minister, is a member of Senate. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.