John Gardner: The inheritance we're denying our grandkids is fossil fuel

"Intergenerational theft!" That's the battle cry started by John McCain on the floor of the U.S. Senate last January, speaking at the time of the stimulus bill. The strains have been picked up by groups around the country, most recently in a series of demonstrations on April 15. Yet the same charge of larceny victimizing those not yet born can be laid at our feet, in terms of the way we're "spending" our endowment of fossil fuels.

According to recent estimates, the federal budget is on track to be spending as much as twice as fast as we're bringing in. There are a lot of ways to present the numbers, but everyone can agree on the simple principle that spending more than you make year in, year out is not sustainable. Economic theory aside, you quickly find yourself in a situation where the portion of your income allocated to interest payments on your loans (called debt service) swallows more and more of your budget and the debt increases exponentially.

There's a striking parallel between the issue of fiscal responsibility and the larger picture of energy sustainability. For the past 300 years, civilization has been living large, with no concern for our energy budget. Our energy income is sunlight, which conveys over one thousand times as much energy as society uses.

Rather than using the sun's energy directly, we rely on a non-renewing endowment of fossil fuels to power our economy. And it's getting harder to get the remaining endowment out of the ground. That energy expended to recover the fossil fuels is parallel to debt service. The most ironic part of the parallel is that, for the most part, we don't even bother to cash our paycheck and use the energy income from the sun!

Fossil fuels are incredible substances with very high energy density. They are solar energy, concentrated by generations of plant life and millions of years of geologic processes.

By some estimates, it took 2 billion years to create this endowment. By similar estimates, we have already burned through half of this gift. That number continues to be hotly disputed, but it's clear that we've already extracted the majority of petroleum and methane that's easy to extract. But the actual numbers are less important than the simple fact: Fossil fuels are limited. No more are being made, and we will eventually run out.

Imagine being left with substantial inheritance by a wealthy relative. Would you hoard the wealth instead of investing it? Would you dip into that account for all your expenses, while not even bothering to collect your salary? Would you respond to criticism of this behavior with the observation that you've still got some of the inheritance left, so no need to worry? Finally, would you feel some moral obligation to leave some of that wealth to future generations, giving them the same benefit you've enjoyed? This is the mentality of our current energy usage.

Getting back to the economic analogy, people are rightly upset that our nation is spending at a rate twice our income. On the other hand, as a civilization, we're spending our fossil fuel endowment millions of times faster than it was produced. These substances have a multitude of agricultural, pharmaceutical and industrial uses. Nitrogen-based fertilizers, the backbone of modern production agriculture, require massive amounts of natural gas to produce. Petroleum is the feedstock for the entire plastics industry.

What will future generations say as they read the history of our era?

Will we be remembered as the generation that decided to put a halt to the most massive program of intergenerational theft and begin to live on our income, or will we be just another link in the long chain of short-sighted and irresponsible people who put physical ease and quick profits above the needs of future generations?

John Gardner is Boise State University's associate vice president for energy research, policy and campus sustainability.