Trucks and vans burn fossil fuels to bring food from the fields and factories to grocery stores. Vehicles use fossil fuels to transport people between home and school and work. Aircraft burn fossil fuels to fly people and freight. And fossil fuels are used in the making of electronics, fertilizers and plastics.

Fossil fuels are central to the capitalist system. No fossil fuels, no accumulation of capital for the super rich and corporations.

Moreover, the system’s reliance on fossil fuels is fouling the air, land and water. This global process is lived locally. Take “bad air days” during the summer when car smog blankets my hometown of Sacramento. The city's poor air quality is in large part a result of its geographic location in a valley surrounded by mountains, plus people who depend on cars.

And Americans know a thing or two about driving cars. According to the New York Times, America has 770 cars per 1,000 people versus 10 in China, 30 in Egypt, 148 in Mexico and 552 in Japan.

Meanwhile, global oil consumption was 76.4 million barrels a day during October-December 2000, an increase of 10.1 million barrels a day since 1990, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In 1996, the IEA forecasted that, “World demand is projected to rise from 70 million barrels at present to between 92 and 97 million barrels of oil per day in 2010.” Two years later, the IEA reported, “Fossil fuels are expected to meet 95% of additional global energy demand from 1995 to 2020.”

Thus future energy alternatives to fossil fuels will be no alternative through 2020. The IEA report doesn’t come out and say this, but there it is.

The 1996 IEA report continued: “Rising fossil fuel consumption implies rising greenhouse gas emissions [mainly carbon dioxide]. By 2010, world carbon emissions could be between 36 and 49 percent above their 1990 level.”

Six billion tons. That’s the amount of carbon dioxide dumped annually into the atmosphere worldwide. The U.S. contributes 1.5 billion tons of carbon emission to that total. U.S. oil consumption was 19.8 million barrels per day during October-December 2000 versus 17.3 million barrels in October-December 1990.

Burning fossil fuels for energy creates greenhouse gas emissions. This process, in turn, traps the Sun’s heat near the Earth. The result is global warming and climate change.

According to the U.S. Commission on Geosciences, Environment and Re-sources, “The warming trend in global-mean surface temperature observations during the past 20 years is undoubtedly real and is substantially greater than the average rate of warming during the twentieth century.” According to the National Research Council, during the past 100 years of capitalist industrialization, the Earth’s surface temperature has climbed about 0.4 degrees Celsius from 0.7 to 1.4 degrees.

“You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows,” sang Bob Dylan in the active 1960s. That was true then and now. However, today’s winds are blowing hotter than ever.

“Global warming appears to be heating not just the air but the ocean waters—and it is the thermal energy of the water that sparks storms,” writes Leslie Logan in Native Americas. “Scientists are warning us that with such warming, the twenty-first century may introduce us not only to more storms, but furious storms of unimaginable magnitude.”

I experienced a super-storm in 1986 in Sacramento, which barely escaped severe flooding. (The Sacramento and American rivers run through the city.) Then in 1997, the amount of rainfall in Sacramento nearly matched 1986’s downpour. The city’s 1986 and 1997 storms dropped 60% more rain than storms in the 1956-1985 period. Local flood control projects are in part a response to global warming, unmentioned as a result of fossil fuel consumption that’s carbonizing the environment.

Seth Sandronsky lives in Sacramento, California. ssandron@hotmail.com

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