Oil sure causes a lot of problems, and the United States hardly has any left, and when we invade another country to secure their oil for ourselves, we only end up blowing $132 million dollars per day to import 3 million gallons of petro fuel for our occupying army.
Hey, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s stop using oil and switch to alternative energy sources like biofuels and solar energy and wind farms! Then we can stop having to negotiate with OPEC and the troops can come home and we can build Disney Worlds on every corner with all the extra clean energy!
It seems like I’ve overheard the above paragraph, or a paraphrase, a hundred times around the watercooler. I’ve also heard it’s a pipe dream. And I’ve heard it’s a dream that will come true. So, I ask myself, what’s the truth? Can we really replace oil or not?
Oil: Some Really Good, Good Stuff
Even Alan Greenspan admitted that the Iraq War is about oil, and everybody knows it.
Everybody also knows that over 4100 soldiers have died for Iraq’s oil.
Fewer people realize — or will be honest enough to admit — that a human life has a finite value. When broken down into bodily systems and organs, you might be worth as much as $45 million. And when broken down into your basic elements, you’re only worth about $4.50. Somewhere between the two numbers lies the truth…and just for kicks, I’m going to use the average U.S. wage for 2008, and round it up: Yes, an average human life is worth $20 an hour.
Even fewer people realize what a really really really good deal oil is. Very good approximations have been calculated, and it’s very much in the ballpark to say that one barrel of oil supplies the energy/work of 10,000 hours of human labor (if this sounds somewhat fantastic, go outside, try to push a loaded 18 wheeler up a mountain, and come back; it won’t seem so far-fetched anymore).
Now, let’s bridge those two numbers: 10,000 human hours, at $20 an hour = $200,000.
So, get this…a barrel of oil is worth $200,000 worth of human labor, and right now it’s only going for $140.
And there’s 115 billion barrels underneath Iraq. And there’s 136 billion barrels of the stuff beneath Iran, too!
So, an average human life is worth 45 years * 40 hours per week * $20 per hour = almost $2 million.
Now it should no longer be a surprise what goes on during secret meetings between politicians and oil executives. When the number crunching is done, even a hundred thousand human lives (100,000 * $2 million = $200 billion) in exchange for 115 billion barrels of oil (115 billion * $140 = $16.1 Trillion) is a super fantastic deal! Cheney didn’t even have to think about it, really.
Nuclear Power Plants
Enough war talk…let’s assume we throw out the corporations and lobbyists and Cheney is tarred and feathered. Now, we’re finally going to convert from oil to all that other good clean green stuff. What’s it looking like?
The United States consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day, or 7.3 billion barrels of oil per year, or about 1.34 TeraWatts (Trillion Watts).
The largest nuclear power plants output just over 1,000 MegaWatts (Million watts), so we could totally replace our oil dependency if we built over 1000 new nuclear power plants. We’ll just split it even and put twenty in each state. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this isn’t going to sit well, especially when sites for waste storage are bandied about. And Nuclear energy does produce waste. No, if we’re going to replace oil, lets choose a CLEAN energy this time…
Wind Power
America has plenty of land. And we have wind. What about some wind farms?
The Horse Hollow Wind Farm consists of 421 giant turbines spread over 47,000 acres in Texas. It’s the biggest wind farm on the planet. And it generates 735.5 Megawatts. With only another 1,821 wind farms as big as Hollow Wind, we can kiss oil goodbye.
Hmmm…ok, what I’m starting to realize is that replacing our daily oil habit isn’t going to be easy. But it IS doable. It’s just on the scale of another Apollo space program. Yes, 1,821 wind farms sounds insane. But really, we only need about 728,400 more giant turbines…
Modern wind turbine generators cost about $2000 per kilowatt, so to totally replace oil, we’re looking at chunking out $2.6 trillion dollars, which is only about 4 times what we’ve spent in Iraq. These wind turbines will last over 25 years and pay for themselves in the first 3 months. Sure wish we’d started building those turbines before going on a snipe hunt for WMD and sinking our economy.
Solar Energy
And then, there’s solar energy.
When it’s operational, the 4,500 acre solar generating station coming to Southern California will have 20,000 dishes producing 500 MegaWatts of power. With just 2,380 more farms like that one…we can kiss oil goodbye.
The thing is, if we only built half the wind farms and half the solar generating stations, made solar rooftops standard, and converted all the shit coming out of Congress and the White House into natural gas and biomass fertilizer, we’d be energy independent. Instead, we’re pouring more oil into corn fields, and burning oil to harvest the corn to make ethanol…ethanol, which uses up more energy to produce than it provides, while providing the middlemen with more of our pocket change, and robbing the poor of affordable food.
If Americans can build the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge, and the St. Louis Arch, the Hoover Dam, the Erie Canal, the Empire State Building, and the Saturn V, I have no doubt we can manage a few hundred thousand windmills in our corn patches. What I seriously doubt anymore is that we Americans can overcome the immense greed of corporations and their lobbyists long enough to make our leaders put their country above their self interest.
Read More: Oil, oil habit, replacing oil, clean energy, alternative energy sources, nuclear power, wind power, wind farms, solar energy, solar power
Many Americans are ok with sending their neighbors’ sons and daughters to the Middle East for five years to become paraplegics for oil. But when it starts costing twice as much for us to gas up the 
