For its use not for its possesion

Author: Alfredo Colunga 

The possibility of competing for “the use of energy and not for owning it” has happened along several times in History. When Thomas Newcombe invented his “steam engine” coal was in appearance unlimited as new exploitations appeared everywhere.

We’ll explain it as follows:

Let’s imagine a village, with 100 inhabitants, which has an oil well in its centre so the neighbours take oil out with a bucket and rope.

No matter how many stones tied to a rope they through in no one has been able to find out how deep the well is. Therefore, despite everybody knows the dwell must have a bottom; it is in fact perceived as never ending.

The best strategy for the villagers, and the one imposed, will be to have free access to the dwell. (Ominous voices shall not be listened to and no one would allow restricted access to an energy source which appears to be unlimited, as it would be nonsense).

However, one day someone throws in a stone tied to a particularly long rope and finds the bottom of the dwell. From that moment, on every single decline in the dwell level will be understood as a decrease in resources. The amount of oil available has not changed, however, the villager’s attitude regarding it has. What has happened? The village will have gone from a modern to a post-modern stage.

MODERNITY	POSTMODERNITY
The available energy seems to be unlimited	The available energy seems limited
Competition is for the use of energy and not for owning it	Competition takes place for owning the energy rather than for using it
Energy distribution is shared, democratized	Possession will tend to concentrate in few hands
Energy price depends on the extraction cost and its transport to destination	Energy price becomes speculative
Formulations such as “for you and for me” (non-zero-sum games) are possible	The formulation changes to “for you or for me” (zero-sum games)
There is future	Future has an expiry date
Utopias like: energy for everyone, richness for everyone are believable	Non viable utopias disappear
New avant-gardes and philosophical and artistic tendencies which search for new ways of expression are renewed: if there is energy for everyone, let’s claim freedom for everyone, thus generating the archetype which represents them	Existent resources are optimized. Art and Philosophy faced with “no future” become self-referencing. Tales disappear. The artist, in order to survive, joins the dominant classes, representing their pulses and forgetting the Utopian ideals which now seem out of reach

The difference between the expansive (with apparently unlimited energy) and recessive stages can be applied to any historic period. Greece or Rome shared the land as their territorial expansion seemed unlimited. When the limits appeared the conflicts for the land started and finally the land, together with power concentrated. Differences between the rich –owners of the land- and the poor –dispossessed- increased.

Historically, expansion has been the equivalent to democratization, whereas recession has been equivalent to organization in hierarchies and eventually tyranny.
In our time, since the Second World War up to 1970, oil seemed unlimited (new oilfields appeared constantly) and it was joined by a new utopian modernity. From 1973 the situation changed, the new limitation was expressed by the creation of the oil cartel. The world came to a post-modern stage which, with the mentioned characteristics, persists up to now.
This stage is about to change with the availability of access to a new energy which seems unlimited: hydrogen, the new “energy for everyone”. However, the mechanisms for an organized transition to the era of hydrogen have not been designed yet. This presents the pioneers with a great opportunity from both the financial and economic points of view, as well as the philosophical and artistic ones.