Thirty Year Energy War

Michael T. Klare paints a picture of how energy types and usage will change in the next 30 years. He is talking about oil and coal no longer being the dominant fuel and is placing his bet on more decentralized easy to install systems like solar in its present usage.

ZNET: The New Thirty Years’ War

Why 30 years? Because that’s how long it will take for experimental energy systems like hydrogen power, cellulosic ethanol, wave power, algae fuel, and advanced nuclear reactors to make it from the laboratory to full-scale industrial development.


Thirty years from now, for better or worse, the world will be a far different place: hotter, stormier, and with less land (given the loss of shoreline and low-lying areas to rising sea levels). Strict limitations on carbon emissions will certainly be universally enforced and the consumption of fossil fuels, except under controlled circumstances, actively discouraged. Oil will still be available to those who can afford it, but will no longer be the world’s paramount fuel.