Alternate fuels – Politics

I would like to say something about alternate fuels. Lets see the most famed alternate fuels are solar energy, atomic energy, wind energy, tidal energy, electric energy, geo-thermal energy, hydrogen etc. I am not writing this post to discuss the merits and demerits of each energy source (I am sick of listening/reading them). Well then what am I writing now for? Have you ever thought of why we weren’t unable to develop technologies for producing alternate fuels? I will currently talk about some stuff related to that. First of all we need to understand some ground realities and current politics before discussing about this. First read this.

We know today’s economy is depended on oil and we also know that arab countries are rich in fossil fuels. But if we look at them, except for a handful of countries, majority of countries which have oil are still third world countries like Iran, Iraq, etc. Well why aren’t they becoming rich when they have that kind of money? First I want you to read the above mentioned essay to understand what I have to say.
Now oil is traded throughout the world in only on two stock exchanges – the NewYork Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange(which is owned by an American company). So if you want to buy oil you should use only US Dollar. Without them you can’t buy oil. So we have to export our goods to US to get more currency for buying oil which we use partially for developing the same goods which are again going to be exported to one of these countries. This means if any country was able to develop technology based on alternate fuels, then they no longer need to export goods to US and other European goods which means end of sovereignty of US.

Now let’s see the countries which are in position to develop technology for alternative fuel, but won’t do that.

USA: This the country which put a man on moon and I don’t think if it was necessary, they can’t develop technology for alternate fuels. But the question is will they develop? The answer is a big NO. Because the moment they develop all countries can produce fuel on their own which means no country will be willing to buy dollar by exporting goods. This makes US to fight with other countries for manufacturing cheaper goods. It has to devalue its currency and increase its manufacturing. But currently the US economy is driven by consumerism and not by manufacturing. This is the reason why US doesn’t allow the technologies to develop.

European countries: Once world-rulers, which are now in a really bad shape. Moreover if there is any alternative available to US dollar, its going to be Euro and hence whatever applies to US applies to European leaders.

Now who else in this world has such a manpower and capability to develop such technology?
Russia: There are only few countries which are left in the list and Russia will be the one. Russia is the major part of what once was USSR and USSR is the first country to send a man to space. As USSR is broken into pieces, Russia is left destitute and it needs money to rebuild. It is noteworthy that Russia is the second most oil exporting country outside of OPEC. As long as Russia needs money, it will keep selling oil and its like shooting his own head with a double-barrel gun if they develop technology for alternate fuels. No doubt they got tons of money in the recent soaring of oil prices. This eliminates Russia from the list.

China: Now china is the other growing country which keeps away from headlines. If we look at china, it is the most populous country in world which means it has more energy needs which in turn means more dollars to buy oil. China doesn’t have enough oil reserves to meet its energy demands. So it has to depend on US or European countries for dollar or for Euro. China is ready to do that and it already accumulated one trillion US dollars. It is willing to devalue its currency and export goods to US. It is doing so. And now it is having a huge pile of US Dollars. What is it doing with that money? China is offering to buy yahoo which made yahoo to give secrets to china. China is supporting war in Somalia. It spends its money on space program on how to shoot satellites down. China is the first country to develop that technology. In timeframe US is one year lagging behind china in this issue. So china is safe by having a stock pile of dollars and so it doesn’t want to develop alternate technologies and hence China is eliminated from the list. Also it can bring US to knees by either releasing all its dollars once or by stop exporting goods to US.

India: Now India is the country that is left. Yes India can develop technology, but it takes time. It recently had sent a satellite to moon. It is exporting services to US. India is the second largest country when ranked by population. It has a large demand of energy and hence oil and so Dollar or Euro. Finally it seems like the leadership of India had got some idea about this and they are doing something about this. The bad news is they are going on wrong direction. They are going on asking other countries for technology instead of developing them. Offcourse it takes time and money for developing technology, but it will pay off when India can self sustain for energy on itself. Unfortunately there are no steps taken in this direction from Indian leadership. It is solely due to lack of understanding about global politics and lack of foresight from Indian leadership what is preventing India from develop technology for alternate fuels.

Brazil: The other country which can develop such a technology is brazil and it is on its way. It already had developed technology for biodiesel and doing more. And Brazil is safe on economic terms.

So here we are today, no major power doing their job of developing alternate technologies.