To the Editor:

Now that the Senate XL Pipeline bill contains the affirmation that climate change (e.g., global warming) is happening and is not a hoax, and now that New York State has banned hydraulic fracturing as a way to extract natural gas from shale, it seems like a good time to ponder just what dangers to our lifestyle, economy, and general well-being are posed by fossil fuels of all kinds.

The Senate amendment is not quite the Pyrrhic victory that some claim it is.  It is unclear what exactly the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma) considered to be a "hoax":  climate change, global warming, human-caused climate change, or human-caused global warming.  He has mentioned nearly all of these different things at one time or another, along with "global warming conspiracy" and "catastrophic global warming is a hoax.”

This is important because it closes the question whether global warming is actually happening.  What remains are the questions: (1) What is the cause(s) of this trend?; and (2) Whether humans are part of the cause or not, can we do anything about it?  Clearly, it will be easier for us to mitigate the effects of global warming if we are part of the cause.

But there are many excellent reasons why we should be (very) worried about the rate at which we are mining and burning fossil fuels, quite apart from any questions of climate destabilization, environmental degradation, or national security. The fact is, we'd better leave fossil fuels before they leave us.

This would be a profound problem even if there were no adverse environmental, health, or security effects of climate change (or even if there were no projected climate change at all).  We usually just hear about the energy implications of declining coal, oil, and gas reserves, but almost never about the immense number of products and processes that also derive from petroleum (e.g., petrochemicals).

When the well runs dry, we surely must have found a replacement for this technology in all areas of our economy.  But we show few signs of trying to do that.  We are so surrounded by petrochemical products that, like fish in water, we simply don't notice them.

The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers notes that petrochemicals are used to manufacture thousands of everyday products like plastics, medicines, cosmetics, furniture, and appliances as well as parts used in every mode of transportation, solar power panels, and wind turbines (ironically).  Some say that about 6,000 products are made from petroleum.

The AFPM also observes that the petrochemical industry supports about 1.4 million American jobs, including about 214,000 employed directly in petrochemical manufacturing plants (http://www.afpm.org).  According to the American Petroleum Institute, the oil and natural gas industries support more than 9 million American jobs (www.americanlaboratory.com).

Just consider, for a moment, how much of our daily lives is permeated by petroleum quite apart from transportation, heating, or electricity.  As you look around your home, what do you see?  Perfume, hair dye, cosmetics, computers, toothpaste, artificial food flavorings, vitamin capsules, plastic bags, polyester, nylon (and other synthetic fabrics), detergents (glycerin), synthetic rubber, medicines (benzene), asphalt (ok, in your driveway).

Or look around your barn: fertilizers, pesticides, nylon rope, foam insulation, latex foams, latex paint, food preservatives, house paint, automotive parts, antifreeze, brake fluid — well, you name it.  There's probably petroleum somewhere in the background manufacturing stream.

As with alternative forms of energy production, this situation offers a golden opportunity for Big Oil, Big Coal, and (dare I say it) Big Gas to get ahead of the curve.  These outfits are not in the oil, coal, or gas business; they are in the energy (and secondarily, the petrochemical) business.

So, while they will need to abandon a 19th-Century technology, they stand to make vast sums of money in developing, deploying, and servicing the new foundations of energy and chemical production.

This means, in part, that local, state, and the federal governments must offer disincentives for continuing to burn fossil fuels (and extracting them using increasingly expensive, dangerous, and intrusive technologies), along with incentives to ramp up research and development and manufacturing of other ways to produce energy and chemical products.  And we should be assisting the entry of these technologies into the global marketplace.

Estimates vary widely, but these seem to be the numbers for how long various fossil fuels will remain a viable object of extraction:

— Coal:  Recoverable coal reserves, over 200 years;

— Natural Gas and Oil:  The United States Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration expects world oil demand to grow by 50 percent by 2025.  If large quantities of new oil are not discovered and brought into production somewhere in the world, then world oil production will no longer satisfy demand.  [The] ratios of world consumption to reserves for oil, coal, and gas show if the world continues to consume fossil fuels at 2006 rates, the reserves of oil, coal, and gas will last a further 40, 200, and 70 years, respectively (Energy Policy 37, 2009: 181-189).

In other words, we don't have a lot of time to figure out how to get along in the energy and petrochemical business without fossil fuels.  And this problem does not even begin to address the effects of global warming on the environment and world population, which are too well known for me to repeat here.

I assume a reliable authority on global warming to be the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, even though it is often thought to be too conservative in its projections.  So, for whatever reason, we must begin now.

After all, we were kicked out of Eden because we didn't take care of it, and we're about to be kicked out of what's left (Genesis 2:15).

T. McFadden

Guilderland