Will ''alternative'' energy ever dethrone oil as the king of fuels?
That question came more than 150 years ago, when the king of fuels was oil -- whale oil. Back then, Nantucket and New Bedford were the Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi of whale oil production. People once thought that it would last forever.
It doesn't take an economist to notice the rumblings of historic change pushing close to the surface once again. Demand for oil is growing faster than supplies and so, oil prices reach dizzying new highs day after day. If this trend continues, much will have to change -- not just in America, but everywhere. Americans use far more oil than anyone else, but China and India and the rest of the planet need fuel to pull their populations out of poverty. Every day that demand increases without a corresponding increase in supply, the potential for serious social disruptions grows more intense.
Driving, building, growing
Is there any way to avoid an oilinduced social cataclysm?
Back in 1843, when talk of finding alternatives worried the whaling industry, The Nantucket Inquirer calmed its whale-wealthy readers. ''Great noise is made by many of the newspapers and thousands of the traders in the country about Lard oil, Chemical Oil, Camphene Oil, and a half dozen other luminous humbugs,'' mocked a writer. Have no fear, he advised. ``Let not our envious . . . opponents indulge themselves in any such dreams.''
Moby Dick aside, whales by the thousands met their demise at the point of the spear of a whaling industry thoroughly dominated by Americans. The whales started to find respite only after the unexpected discovery of thick and plentiful oil just below the ground. The new black blubber proved a problematic, if highly profitable, way to power the world.
Before long, petroleum relegated the use of whale oil for lighting street lamps to a quaint memory kept alive by novelists and Hollywood period-piece designers. The new fuel kept us driving and building and growing. But it also contaminated our world and transferred mountains of money to the dangerous despots all of us strengthen today every time we fill up our tank -- even the tank of a guilt-reducing, fuel-efficient hybrid.
Find another way
Calls to find an alternative to polluting hydrocarbons are nothing new. For decades environmentalists urged us to find another way, shouting mostly into the wind. But much has changed lately.
The best news for the planet -- if not for many of its inhabitants -- came when oil started soaring to these painful heights. Suddenly, tree-huggers, political strategists and worried consumers faced the same enemy. And that enemy has now become the mother of invention.
Even those who dismiss conservation as little more than an unremarkable ''virtue,'' as Vice President Dick Cheney once described it, now agree we need another way.
Global warming skeptics may not worry about the planet, but they worry about the transfer of wealth from consumers everywhere to unpredictable dictators in oil-rich nations. And those who care little about politics or the environment fret about their ability to pay for a tank of gas. Carmakers worry about our waning enthusiasm for road travel, while airlines gaze anxiously at disappearing profit margins. It's a perfect storm for alternative energy.
The storm is about to become even more violent. In 2006, the world's top oil consumer was the United States, at 20 million barrels of oil per day. China was second at seven million. By 2015, based on conservative estimates, China's consumption will rise by 60 percent.
Diverting food to fuel
India will soon start production of the Nano, the world's cheapest car, selling for $2,500. Goldman Sachs estimates that by 2050, the number of cars in China and India will rise to 1.1 billion from 20 million.
Our efforts to find alternatives are already causing terrible problems. America's misguided, pollution-producing ethanol program is diverting food to fuel, contributing to the food riots spreading around the world. But the profit motive will eventually bring results.
Crucially, sound government policy can play a major role in accelerating the arrival of a solution, just as bad policy can delay it.
Fantastic profits await the entrepreneurs who find a way to dethrone petroleum and turn Saudi Arabia into an energy player to rival today's Nantucket. One day, petroleum will join whale oil in the history books. That's the good news. The bad news is that we don't know when that day will come.
Frida Ghitis writes on global affairs.
