Oh no! Not another Rey C. story...
Just hear me out and comment if you like.
When I was a little boy, my parents had a coal stove in our home. And one of my "jobs" was to go out to the building where my dad stored the coal and bring in buckets of coal to feed the stove. When I was about 10, my parents installed baseboard electric heaters in the house and replaced the coal stove (which was messy, dirty and produced lots of soot) with a wood stove - which was marginally cleaner and less messy than coal. Now my mother primarily uses electric heat, but has a kerosene Monitor and a wood stove as secondary heat. In my home I have a heat pump with an electric furnace and propane gas fireplaces as secondary heat sources. I do have a wood fireplace in the living room, but other than to impress a date with some crackling romance, it's never been used as "real" heat. The first elementary school that I attended had a coal fired furnace which fed radiators in the classrooms. The second school that I attended, after the first one was shut down after my 3rd grade year, was a newer building and had heat from an oil fired furnace in the classrooms.
I'm probably somewhat older than many of you... but I'm not
that old - this was all in the
1970's, not the
1870's. So, does anyone here know of
anyone who still uses coal to heat their home or business these days? :dunno: I don't. It is just a fact of human history that as technology progresses, the forms of energy that we use also progresses to something newer/better/more plentiful/cost effective. That's just the way it is. Here's a little known fact that I didn't know until I saw the amazing docudrama, The Men Who Built America: John D. Rockefeller built a massive fortune in oil. And one of his primary profit centers was kerosene. That's what people used to light and heat their homes in the mid to late 1800's. Rockefeller greatly opposed the introduction of electricity, because he knew that it would kill his kerosene business. J.P. Morgan backed Thomas Edison's plan to light homes with DC electric power. Unfortunately for him, Nikola Tesla (a former Edison employee) had a better idea with AC electric power. And in the end, Morgan ended up dropping Edison from his own company and wound up backing Tesla/Westinghouse. But no matter which form of electric power won out, kerosene was going to lose the energy war.
But here's what Rockefeller found (that I didn't realize): one of the by-products of producing kerosene is gasoline, for which there was absolutely no use at that time... it was actually dumped out on the ground. Then, along came Henry Ford about that time, with a way to mass produce internal combustion engines, and guess what?
All I'm saying is, people can hang onto whatever idea they want to hang onto. The problem is, if you hang onto it for too long, and the market passes you by, well, you're going to be screwed. Although I'll surely be dead by then, I don't believe that coal or oil will be primary energy sources in 100 years. Coal really isn't now. But as alternative energy sources are developed and they become more cost effective, I believe that more developed nations will also move away from oil. The internal combustion engine (as we know it) will become largely a relic and coal fired energy plants will be to the people 100 years from now what kerosene lanterns are to us now. The pace of technology is so much faster now than it was 100 years ago that I believe that is a relatively safe assumption to make.
And anyone who studies economic or business history should know that to point to the failures in alternative energy start-ups today is a serious folly. The exact same things happened in the late 19th and early 20th century with respect to automobiles and electricity. That's how it works: there are always failures before new technologies take hold. That's quite simply how technological progress takes place. It was true in ancient Rome (the very first aqueducts didn't work as planned) and it is still true today. Live & learn... or don't.