For decades, globalization was sold to the Western world as progress. Move production wherever it was cheapest. Import what others could make for less. Allow markets and supply chains to span the globe, and prosperity would follow.

At the same time, many of the same voices promoting globalization told us that the West could move beyond its old industrial economy. We are going to transition. Manufacturing could go somewhere else. Mining could happen somewhere else. Increasingly, even energy production was treated as an activity we could constrain at home while continuing to consume its products.

Globalization and deindustrialization were not separate ideas. They reinforced one another.

Some have even been convinced – it is just progress and change is always eventually for the better. In this case, it has changed, but not for the better. And governments decided it – it did not come from the same economic processes that drove change before. This has been deliberate. We import energy, we import everything, we import when we don’t have to. We now rely on materials and components we can’t make locally anymore. All these conditions have made our global energy systems worse, our grids are worse, energy is more unreliable now than it has been in 50 years.

Politicians underestimated what we were giving away, if we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt. If we’re not, this might be purposeful by anti-capitalist authoritarians and politicians selling out our way of life. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide.

We did not simply lose factories, mines, mills, refineries, and industrial jobs. They weakened an entire ecosystem of knowledge that had been built around producing goods and understanding where the raw materials necessary to make them come from.

I recently saw a photo of a coal mine in England, on the last day of production, with miners in front. Where are they going to work now? The idea was that the land would soon become a high-tech energy hub. But now, where are they going to get the energy for all this tech they are going to bring in for their hub? There are so many countries burning more coal today than before the war on fossil fuels started. People stood against pipelines and clean natural gas, which made them feel good for a second, but never mind that it just encouraged more coal to be burned in other places – burning more coal to build more turbines.

The Coming Workforce Crunch

For the geosciences, that loss carries another consequence that might take a generation to fully manifest. Industry has always been one of our greatest recruiting systems. Young people entered geology, geophysics, engineering, and other applied sciences because exploration and production were visible around them. They knew people who drilled wells, mapped formations, worked mines, ran refineries, built pipelines, operated plants, and solved real physical problems. Industry created not only commodities and prosperity; it created curiosity.

It created the next working generation.

When a society stops producing, eventually fewer of its young people learn how those goods are produced. When exploration disappears from view, fewer young people imagine themselves becoming explorers. And when we separate ourselves from the industries that depend upon the subsurface, we should not be surprised when fewer students choose careers devoted to understanding it.

On top of this, too many universities have gone along with the false narrative that we don’t need real industry that brings tons of value and carries on the culture of many communities.

Go look at Bakersfield, Calif. That community has been dying. The companies are leaving, the jobs follow, then, after years of “intellectuals” promoting energy “substitutes” and environmentalism, the funding dries up to support geological departments and programs. There was a generation of faculty who knew the truth but they are moving on now into retirement, and they were replaced by people my age who listened to teachers and media since the fifth grade tell us that the planet is going to burn to a crisp and we’d be living in Waterworld with Kevin Costner by now.

There are departments with faculty who still can’t figure it out – Where did all the money go?

Prosperity only grows with real industry – real jobs, real degrees. Innovation occurs when there is abundance of cheap reliable energy to dispatch. Our population grows when there is energy available.

Our new Energy Minerals Division President Bryony Richards wrote in the August Explorer about the lack of students in geosciences and departments barely interested in keeping geoscience doors open.

We are now discovering how difficult it is to rebuild capabilities that took generations to develop. The irony should concern every geoscientist. The world needs enormous quantities of energy, critical minerals, metals, fertilizers, construction materials, and water. New technologies have not reduced our dependence on subsurface resources. In many cases, they have expanded it. Yet, at precisely the moment when the subsurface is becoming more important, we risk losing the human infrastructure required to understand it. As representatives of the National Petroleum Council explain elsewhere in this issue, a new NPC study warns that the shrinking geoscience workforce threatens the nation’s ability to assess its subsurface resources and proposes a funded training and residency program to rebuild that expertise.

Can We Bring It All Back?

A nation can import a commodity.

But it cannot import community, neighbors, generational values, grit, pride, or legacy.

Energy and materials exploration and production should not be politicized. Today the U.S. Department of Energy is putting money aside for universities and for exploration of critical minerals. I’m always aggravated when they spend our money to fix problems they helped create to begin with.

The Western world has been pressured to surrender its inheritance instead of exporting responsibly the generational values that inherently come with sharing. Collaborating back and forth, not giving it all completely away.

I slowly see more job postings as a possible energy-and-materials crunch looms. Hopefully, universities are already reacting and are deciding to keep their doors open and to focus on petroleum and economic geology. I do think industry is coming around, I think now is a great time for new students to seek out great programs who still graduate great geos. There will be plenty of work soon.

The AAPG is doing all it can to support geologic departments: writing letters to try to keep universities from shutting them in, trying to help create more student chapters and bring in opportunities to interact and collaborate with industry. We provide a platform for faculty to come share their work with colleagues and industry. And we still have the Imperial Barrel Award – a global competition that promotes a real-world experience for students while connecting them to the AAPG and to industry. We are working to support our sections and regions. We want to have local events to support students and working members as well. We are working to bolster the EMD and Division of Environmental Geosciences. We want to have a place for all geos to be able to find the support they need to collaborate and create.

Thanks for supporting the Explorer. Until next month – same bat time, same bat channel.

John Casiano