That said, in 2018 we have little excuse for our current track. We couldn't have done solar or nuclear instead of oil 100 years ago, but we can today, and the fact that we're not is shameful.
Not even close, diesel/gasoline stores 35 MJ/l, a good battery (lithium-metal, much better than lithium-ion), 4.32 MJ/l
Now, if only we could extract 90% of that diesel stored energy.
An awful lot of energy consumption is just fine with waste heat, it doesn't need a heat engine. There you get 90% efficiency even with heating oil.
that said, diesel is mainly used in large trucks and shipping vessels, where I would imagine energy per unit volume would be more important than energy per unit mass. if electricity were much cheaper than diesel fuel, it could certainly become the economic choice for all but the longest routes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine#Major_advantages
Regenerative braking helps more for stop-and-go driving in cities but it's basically meaningless for long-haul trucking or shipping.
Meanwhile, the average passenger car in 2000 created 11,000 pounds of co2 over the course of a year... I don't think I had seen that number before - no wonder there's a problem. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaust_gas
"Grandpa, tell me again about combustion engines."
"Well, they burned gasoline in a series of tiny explosions, and they were set up so that the timing of those explosions would generate motion."
"Haha, that sounds like a Rube Goldberg machine."
"Yes, and the worst part is that fire is hot. So even though gasoline contains a lot of energy, the process of turning it into motion was fantastically inefficient. They turned so much of the energy into useless heat that they needed whole separate systems just to throw it all away so the darn things wouldn't melt."
I was looking at concept drawings from Walt Disney's original conception of EPCOT, back when it was supposed to be a living community and not just a theme park. What struck me is, that sort of environment doesn't just seem to offer a more pleasant and human way of life; it's also probably way more efficient, both economically and environmentally, than typical communities in the USA.
So, yeah, development was fast, but it followed a greedy search and got trapped in a local optimum.
Well, as of the 70s we were doing both. Hell, Jimmy Carter even put solar panels up at the White House. (Reagan took them down.)
"An electric vehicle held the vehicular land speed record until around 1900."
(from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...)
They were not solar panels (for electricity), they were solar water heaters, and they didn't work very well, which is why they were taken down.
I think we've finally reached a point now were the market is offering both individual and larger scale commercial/public energy solutions. It takes time for new infrastructure investment - it's lots of small efforts. Given the reality on the ground in most of the developed world I have to imagine it takes another 50 years to get to majority renewables.
So what's a petroleum producing world power to do? Seems like ensuring a balance of power and energy production for the next 50 years of world development is a responsible thing to do.
Depends on what is understood by the standard of living. The situation where some people have to spend 6 hours a day trapped inside their vehicles just to get to work and back home, hardly can be seen as a high standard of living.
I tend to be quite sceptical about the claims that high energy consumption is imperative for higher standard of living.
But there has been a pretty clear increase in standard of living, even if you consider that some people have long commutes in climate-controlled vehicles with comfortable seats and media devices at their fingertips, on their way to jobs where they earn a PPP-adjusted income that's historically and globally very high.
Think of the global decreases over the past century in starvation, disease, infant mortality, maternal mortality, illiteracy, accidental death, etc.
Things aren't perfect because they'll never be perfect, but that doesn't mean we haven't made progress overall.
There is no denying that fossil fuels have brought an unprecedented level of wealth and prosperity. But what we need to do is face up to the fact that we will lose all of those gains if we arent willing to sacrifice some if them to avoid disaster. Sharing renewable tech with developing countries, ending fossil fuel subsidies, taxing emissions, legislating with a healthy environment as a first priority - they will make many a little bit worse off, but are utterly crucial for any hope of a prosperous future.
> The Kapauku people of Papua think it is bad luck to work two consecutive days. The !Kung Bushmen work just two-and-a-half days per week, rarely more than six hours per day.