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| Letters to the Editor |
Astral Projections
11/01/2005
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Dear Editor:
In response to Matthew Simmons’ article, “Fuel Fossils” (August 2005),
the author states that transportation accounts for 70 percent of oil use and
that increased oil costs will force corporations to reorder supply chains to
minimize shipping costs. For thousands of years, human empires developed robust
intercontinental trade fueled by wind-powered ships and horses. Humans have
always overcome adversity, and an oil shock will only bring out the best in revolutionaries such as Paul Allen and Burt Rutan, who built the first privately
funded and owned spacecraft.
 Dwindling supplies of expensive oil will not end international commerce.
Aircraft can be made more efficient. Automobiles, trucks and trains can use
alternative fuels such as hydrogen, vegetable oil and natural gas. France
acquires over 50 percent of its energy from nuclear power, Germany obtains
significant energy from solar power, the United States and China have enormous
coal reserves and dams. Progress requires exploiting these alternate resources.
As oil prices rise, alternate energy, which may be expensive today, will become
more competitive.
In the future, as ever-increasing demand for diminishing natural resources
accelerates, humans will have to seek new mineral, water and energy resources
off our planet.
There are two possible futures for civilization. The first is a nightmare
scenario in which humans keep depleting the Earth’s resources. As world
population rises toward 10 billion, we begin a cycle of continuous war over
decreasing resources to feed an unsustainable population. Eventually, war,
starvation and disease would overwhelm the human race.
In the second future, humans would venture beyond Earth to access the limitless
raw materials of outer space, which would easily accommodate any number of
humans and allow wealthy countries to continue consumer-driven economies
unabated while avoiding resource wars. A serious space exploitation program is
the only way that humans can sustain unlimited consumption economies.
Our greatest conquests, such as Columbus or America’s western expansion, were
about securing more resources. In the 21st century there is little unexploited
land left on Earth, so space is the logical place for growth. Our solar system
has enough resources to outlast humanity, so an oil shock should not threaten
us.
As long as we have visionaries such as Allen, Rutan and Richard Branson,
the future of international trade will be secure.
William Hubbell Miami
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