Starting from the very best:
A: An ideal outcome for the world 2008-2012:
2007 arrives, water power breaks and scientific advances show special electrolysis at 100%+ magnitude. Media trumpets this new energy source, billions of dollars of capital are expended to produce energy in this new way and to close coal and nuclear plants. The lowest price of energy since 1880 comes from these new power plants, and shuts down nuclear and coal and natural gas plants, immediately reducing pollution to sub-Kyoto levels. Car companies immediately switch to producing these powered vehicles and update their toolings and designs to account for them. Some oil powered cars are still produced for the next year, but the majority of refineries are unprofitable and close.
Food supplies are increased dramatically with the production of closed circuit greenhousing, with engineered ecosystems. The costs of producing these systems are reduced dramatically by low capital input free energy.
I suppose the market would require a considerable level of investment to make the switch. This could come from Chinese capital resources. It could come from credit, with an almost assured stellar return rate considering the projects. The labor could be acquired from light industrial production. The losers of the industry, particularly the Saudis and other oil bearers and the owners of power companies could defeat their losses by shifting investment into the new fields. They could also be destroyed by an anti-trust law and by producing lawsuits against GM and other companies holding patents that deprived mankind of these advances for perhaps 35 years, and the collected pollution and healthcare expenses and other industrial and shipping expenses and lost wages that it caused. That is remarkably substantial, and would clear many losers from the market and provide their capital funds for new investment.
The cost of most goods would plummet from their direct energy input costs being obliterated and the cost of shipping being destroyed. A diesel freighter driving 100k miles annually and getting perhaps a generous 10mpg would use 10,000 gallons of fuel. This, at nearly $3 a gallon, would translate into $30,000 per truck per year. With an American fleet of perhaps a million shipping trucks, this would come to a whopping 30 billion dollars. That money could be chopped directly off of all products they ship. Similar cost reductions from mining machines, shipping raw materials, running machining drills and equipment, and the costs of energy used in making that equipment would save perhaps 2/5 of the costs of all products, and increase mankind’s productivity by an even greater margin.
Because energy is not a factor, products like carbon fiber would be far cheaper to produce. The heat of the furnace would not need to be paid for, because an electric furnace or a hydrogen furnace would operate forever without upkeep expense other than installation and material maintenance. All fuel could be free. So it would make sense that there would be no fuel vendors, and instead, all products would have attachments to produce their own fuel, or all homes would have energy producing mechanics.
This would change the course of economics, and eventually eliminate all meaningful forms of pollution.
B: A good outcome for the years 2008-2012:
We hit peak oil in 2008, but the above technology is produced in time and no major wars are fought over resources. The issue remains largely economic and not military, but since we are taken more unaware, the economic trench is lower, many major businesses fail, but eventually we dig our way back out of it.
C: A potential outcome for the years 2008-2012:
We hit peak oil in 2008, and the technology is not accepted rapidly. We seek the oil based and chemical resources and find ourselves invading foreign nations and going to war over resources, but heads of the 1st world do not clash with one another on their homelands. No major nuclear exchanges occur. Massive economic destruction entails, but within 4 years the technology is turned to and we will eventually be restored to the ideal state, perhaps by the mid 2010’s. We may be affected by serious pollution aftereffects.
D/F: Anything less pleasant than C, probably involving a world where these energy technologies are not released or are somehow kept from mainstream use.
We will get what we deserve. Some parts of the world may experience different level outcomes than others.
Because this is so important and because the fate of mankind may be at stake, God will be involved with this activity. If Satan were allowed to have free range of this era, no one would survive. However, because this is not God’s will, God will change it, and we will experience a very pleasant outcome!
