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The Top Ten Technologies: #2 Hydrogen Economy Enablers
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Posted Jul 14, 2004 PT by the Health Ranger (Mike Adams)

The hydrogen economy is important for the advancement of humanity for several reasons. First off, the oil economy is fraught with problems:

Pollution: burning fossil fuels generates alarming levels of pollution that affect every living organism on the planet. We pollute our cities the worst, contributing to tens of millions of premature deaths each year due to the disease-causing effects of inhaled by-products from combustion engines, coal plants and other machines powered by fossil fuels. Fossil fuels also contribute to global pollution through oils spills, oil extraction, oil refining, and other processes.

Global warming: although this topic is aggressively debated, there is growing consensus that the burning of fossil fuels contributes strongly to global warming. The true impact of this warming is often lost on the general public, because it seems so remote from modern life. The natural consequences of global warming are quite severe: rising oceans, disappearing coastlines, mass extinction of ocean life, severe and unpredictable climate change, a sharp increase in natural disasters, and so on. Essentially, global warming makes the planet an unfriendly place in which to live.

Control of resources: this is perhaps one of the most damning aspects of our global dependence on oil. Because oil is so vital to the economies of nations, its control escalates to "national security" priority. Accordingly, the 20th century (and now, the beginning of the 21st century) witnessed unprecedented death and destruction in the form of military conquest primarily motivated by control of resources. World War II was largely fought over oil resources. (Japan's primary motivation for attacking Pearl Harbor, for example, was the U.S. oil blockade.) There is little doubt that today's military actions in the Middle East are largely motivated by oil interests, regardless of their advertised justifications. (If Iraq were nothing but sand, dirt and huts, do you honestly think anybody would bother fighting over it?) A shift away from the oil economy to a clean, renewable and widely available energy source would ease tensions that have historically surrounded the control of limited resources.

Limited supply: fossil fuels are, indeed, running out. There is a finite supply of oil to be found on the planet, and once that oil is consumed, it simply cannot be recreated without waiting hundreds of thousands of years for nature to create more. Estimates of the number of years remaining for the fossil fuel supply range from 20 to 200 years. Extraction technologies continue to improve each year, so there is little agreement on exactly how much oil we have left as a civilization. What is not in contention, however, is that the supply is finite.

Beyond the problems with the oil economy, there are additional reasons why a hydrogen economy offers unprecedented benefits to the quality of life of people everywhere:

Hydrogen is everywhere: Hydrogen is in water and can be easily extracted with solar power. Hydrogen is found in abundance at the bottom of the ocean in frozen gas hydrates (see below). Hydrogen is in natural gas, petroleum, and the byproducts of microbial activity. Hydrogen isn't limited to a few geographic regions of the planet, and that makes it a resource that automatically reduces geopolitical tension over the control of limited oil resources.  continues on page 2 →

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