Oil, Beautiful Oil, Beautiful Oil: Why Fossil Energy Still Powers Civilisation, By Paul Walker

At a moment when many on the political Left seek to consign oil to the dustbin of history, it's worth taking a sober look at what oil actually represents: not some filthy symbol of the past, but the most powerful and flexible energy carrier humanity has yet harnessed — and the very backbone of our modern technological age.

1. Oil Built the Modern World

It's not an exaggeration to say that the industrial world — cities, global transportation, mechanized agriculture, and modern healthcare — exists because of abundant, dense energy. Oil's energy density — high energy per unit volume and weight — makes it uniquely suited for mobile and heavy applications. Nothing else in our current energy mix matches the combination of energy density, transportability, and versatility that oil provides.

Unlike electricity or hydrogen, liquid petroleum fuels can be stored and transported easily across long distances without complex infrastructure or large energy losses. They barge across oceans, fuel trucks and jets, and power machines that simply can't run on electricity today. That's why transportation — global logistics, trucks, tractors, commercial shipping — still overwhelmingly runs on oil.

2. Oil Is Embedded in the Fabric of Technology Itself

Oil isn't merely an energy source — it's a feedstock. Plastics, synthetic fibres, rubber, paints, and even the components of many renewable energy systems (like wind turbine blades and solar panel housings), are derived from petrochemicals. Without oil, the global manufacturing base that supplies semiconductors, circuit boards, and everything from protective casings to data-centre cooling systems would be fundamentally different — and far less mature.

The hard truth is that modern computing depends on material and energy supply chains that are deeply linked to fossil fuels. From metal refining to semiconductor fabrication, from logistics to datacentre construction, every link in the technology stack runs on reliable, abundant energy — and for now that means fossil energy.

3. Renewables Are Not Yet Enough for Baseline Energy Needs

Even as solar and wind capture the public imagination, they face real technical limitations. Renewable sources are intermittent and geographically constrained — the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow. Storing large amounts of grid-scale energy is still expensive and materially demanding.

Oil and other fossil fuels deliver energy on demand with very high reliability — an indispensable quality for critical infrastructures like hospitals, data centres, and industrial manufacturing. Until energy storage, grid flexibility, and base-load renewable capacity improve by multiple orders of magnitude, fossil fuels remain the dependable core around which the rest of the system operates.

This is not wishful thinking — it is the current state of play: oil and fossil energy continue to supply by far the largest share of global energy, because alternatives simply can't match their utility at scale today.

4. AI Energy Demands are Immense

Artificial intelligence — particularly large language models, machine learning training, and extensive inference workloads — is driving demand for ever more energy. Datacentres require constant, high-density power delivery with near-zero downtime. While some operators source renewable power contracts, the energy grid that supplies them is still dominated by fossil sources in many regions, including the U.S. and China.

This means the current expansion of AI — and the infrastructure it rests upon — remains tied to fossil energy for grid reliability and consistent baseload. Even where renewables feed into the mix, they often depend on fossil backup to maintain unwavering power delivery during peak computing loads.

5. Pragmatism Over Ideology

Idealistic visions of a fully renewable future capture headlines, but real economies don't run on slogans — they run on reliable, high-density, and transportable energy sources. Oil's longevity is not just because of industrial inertia; it's because, in many critical applications, no alternative is yet as effective or economically viable.

This isn't to say renewables aren't important or that innovation should stop. But for transportation, heavy industry, petrochemical feedstocks, and the reliable energy required by advanced computing — including AI — oil remains central today.

Conclusion: Oil Still Matters — and Will for Decades

Oil is not merely a relic of the past; it's a practical foundation of the present. Until technology — especially energy storage, grid infrastructure, and alternative fuels — advances to the point where it can match oil's convenience, energy density, flexibility, and existing infrastructure, society will continue to rely on it. And that isn't just political rhetoric — it's grounded in physics, economics, and engineering realities.

To dismiss oil as simply "dirty" or inherently backward is to misunderstand how modern civilisation actually functions. It's beautiful not because it's perfect, but because it has enabled the astonishing complexity and energy-intensive innovation of the 21st century — from global transport to artificial intelligence itself.

Oil is thus, civilisation as we know it.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/01/oil_is_beautiful.html