Fossil fuels are everywhere, in every corner of daily life. I turn on the lights, and the place where I am currently at the electricity comes from a natural gas plant somewhere near. Everything I see on store has some link to oil, whether it’s the packaging or material itself. It’s surprising how subtle it all is, this vast network that powers everything.
I grew up in Nepal. There, electricity mostly came from hydropower. There are dry seasons, so when the hydroelectricity drops, some coal-based electricity had to fill the gap, but in my mind, this was normal, like, sure, maybe not hydro everywhere, but each country must have their own version of clean (free) electricity generation. It wasn’t until I really started looking into it that I realized just how fossil-heavy the global system is. For a long time, almost all electricity in most countries came from coal and gas. Only recently have wind and solar become cheap enough to compete, and even now, the global grid is still mostly fossil-fueled. And that’s just the energy part. The rest of the system, transport, materials, industry, is even deeper into it.
Just imagine a world without coal and oil and gas. It’s a nice thought, at first. Solar panels on every roof, vehicles that hum, factories with no energy carbon footprint. But then we’re talking about hundreds of years of built-up dependence, from the big cargo ships that carry food across oceans to the plastic containers in our kitchens. Replacing all of that isn’t as simple as swapping light bulbs or switching to clean electricity. There’s a thousand hidden things bound together in ways that aren’t easy to unravel.
The hardest part is the industrial side. It’s not just electricity for my room or someone’s commute. It’s steel plants that need extreme heat, and refineries that make materials we use in medicine and electronics. It’s cargo ships running on bunker fuel, and airplanes crossing entire continents without a single pause. These things exist because, for a long time, we had a cheap and abundant way to power them. Mankind built the entire global system around these resources, and now it feels like we’re locked into them.
Some people argue it’s just a matter of technology: invent better batteries, figure out hydrogen, invest in solar and wind, and it’s solved. Others say we should change the way we live, use less energy, consume less stuff, maybe travel closer to home. But no matter which angle you take, it’s a lot of work. It’s infrastructure that has to be replaced, political and economic forces that need to shift, and a mindset that has grown comfortable with flipping a switch and expecting energy to flow, no questions asked. The grid we have now wasn’t made for this. It wasn’t made to take power from rooftops or to swing with the sun. It’s old, tired in places. And building the new costs money. Mountains of it. The kind that scares politicians and tests the patience of the public. Jobs would vanish in one sector and rise in another. Oil towns might rust unless someone teaches new trades. There would be winners. Losers, too. And then there are the rare earths needed for new batteries, the cobalt and lithium buried deep in foreign lands. We’d need those, and people would fight over them. They already are.
Policy has to keep pace. It hasn’t, not really. Fossil fuel subsidies still run deep. Carbon isn’t priced like it should be. And across the globe, everyone’s rowing in different directions. Some sprint toward the clean future, others cling to what they know, afraid of the dark without the old fire.
The worst part is we know the clock is ticking. We can’t stay on this path without consequences. We hear warnings about climate change, we see the pollution in cities, and we notice that prices go wild whenever there’s a scare about shortages or sanctions. I remember 2015 blockade to Nepal from our southern neighbor India, cutting off everything.Fuel prices skyrocketed, everything went up as a result of it. Yet the system lumbers on, because it’s huge and complex, and changing it fast feels almost impossible.
We all catch ourself doing small everyday things that rely on fossil fuels. It’s humbling to realize how entangled we all are, and it makes me wonder if we’ll ever fully break free. Maybe there is hope, but it will take a long time, and probably a lot more creativity than we’ve shown so far. Hope we don’t stumble too late.