Paths to the Future

I'm writing these words on a computer pow­ered by the solar panels on the roof of my house—that's the good news. We're learning, as we've seen in these pages, some new ways that we might power our lives. But might is the operative word. It's not going to be easy, and how­ever well we manage the transition away from oil and coal and gas, the world we create won't be the same. To understand why, consider the intrinsic merits of fossil fuel: It's easy to get at (just stick a drill in the ground, or, tragically, blow the top off a West Virginia mountain), easy to transport, and incredibly rich in power. One barrel of oil, for instance, contains about 5.8 million Btu, or the equivalent of the force exerted by a peasant working 3,625 hours on a farm. That would be, oh, about 15 months' worth of work in the fields. Fossil fuel is magical stuff.