Comment by tordrt
7 hours ago
The fossil fuel part doesn't seem like a rational decision to me.
Why are we pretending that fossil fuels dont provide an immense amount of value for humanity, and that its horrible to invest or support building out any fossil fuel production whatsoever.
Lets not do produce it ourselves, lets just instead outsource it to the gulfs and Russia…
Nobody is pretending fossil fuels are not producing value, if they did not nobody would bother using them in the first place. The argument is about the fact that they produce relatively short term value for the person using them, at the externalized expense of polluting the atmosphere and causing long-term environmental instability and destruction for every subsequent generation for the foreseeable future. Coastal regions (and whole islands like the Maldives) disapppearing under the ocean is immense and ongoing value loss for humanity. Ocean acidification destroying marine ecosystems is an immense and ongoing value loss for humanity. More frequent and more extreme hurricanes is an an immense and ongoing value loss for humanity. And on and on...
I think a lot of people actually dont realize the value it gives humanity. Lots of people think we would have been better of in an alternate universe where we never discovered oil & gas.
How is this short therm value for people using them? They are drivers of the most fundamental stuff in our day to day lives. Either enabling billions of people cheap efficient transport, efficient agriculture producing cheap food, cheap and efficient global shipping of goods, a great portable and ajustable source of electricity.
I think as of now its a question on how much you are willing to sacrifice human welfare over preserving current nature/environment. Extreme weather has largely been solved for humans, the trend is still less death and starvation caused by extreme weather, we are immensely adaptable and resilient.
Im not sure our current pace of reducing emissions is that horrible. There are reasons to why it takes time. I might be too optimistic, but I think we will largely solve human issues. Nature as you point out, im worried about, although I know less about. And its hard to quantify what the value is for us.
If oil and gas would not exist, then liquid fuel would be produced from coal. With the latest processes the cost of production is like 80 dollars per barrel, but with processes that Germans developed during WWII it was probably like twice of that in modern money.
In alternative universe that would be cheaper due to massive scale, but the era of very cheap liquid fuel would never happen. So electrical cars on big scale will happen much earlier. And given that coal is much more evenly distributed on Earth, one can speculate that there would be much less reasons for conflicts.
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> I think a lot of people actually dont realize the value it gives humanity. Lots of people think we would have been better of in an alternate universe where we never discovered oil & gas. How is this short therm value for people using them? They are drivers of the most fundamental stuff in our day to day lives. Either enabling billions of people cheap efficient transport, efficient agriculture producing cheap food, cheap and efficient global shipping of goods, a great portable and ajustable source of electricity.
People who oppose the fossil fuel industry do not suggest we return to the 17th century tomorrow. They suggest being less wasteful with the resources we have (nobody would die from eating lentils instead of beef, even though this would cause 98% reduced CO2 emissions) and investing in alternative solutions that achieve similar outcomes but cause less harm to the environment. Some things being more expensive or less convenient would not be a global humanitarian catastrophe, and since you strongly believe humans are immensely adaptable and resilient I think you would agree we could adapt to this as well if working together.
> I think as of now its a question on how much you are willing to sacrifice human welfare over preserving current nature/environment.
No, it's about how much you are willing to sacrifice the quality of life of the current generation to preserve the quality of live of subsequent generations. The worry about causing instability in the environment is not an aesthetic concern about the purity of nature being lost, the worry is that such instability will cause real and tangible death and suffering for real humans and have long term negative consequences for future generations.
> Extreme weather has largely been solved for humans, the trend is still less death and starvation caused by extreme weather, we are immensely adaptable and resilient.
You will have to provide some better source than your gut feeling and a cheerful attitude for me to believe you on this over the countless of people who have done actual analysis and vehemently disagree with you. Just a single example to get you started:
"This report’s projections of morbidity and mortality from climate-intensified natural disasters, cumulatively close to 15 million deaths, more than two billion healthy life years lost, and $12.5 trillion in economic losses by 2050 bring into focus the dimensions of the crisis. The risk from global warming threatens to destabilize both the healthcare ecosystems and the planet. [1]"
You claim to be against irrational decisions, but seem to base your "rational" view on very simplistic analysis about economic value always being good and the 17th century being bad, combined with a scoopful of wishful thinking.
[1] https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Quantifying_the_Impact_of_...
> Lots of people think we would have been better of in an alternate universe where we never discovered oil & gas.
Who? Other than strawmen, I mean.
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The fossil fuel industry is both the most subsidized industry worldwide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_subsidies) and the second most expensive source of energy (at least for electricity production). The only energy source that is more expensive is nuclear (!).
The second most expensive source of energy is misleading in terms of whole picture. They are using a theoretical cost per kwh generated. You have to account for the much higher infrastructure and systemic cost of electricity generation you can not control (wind/solar). You cant simply use wind or solar without pairing it with an controllable source like hydro, gas, coal or batteries. Which is why the world is still very much using gas and coal (and still building more). Renewables are a cheap and good supplement to these sources, you just cant replace them cheaply (yet).
Regarding "the most subsidized industry worldwide", this wikipedia article does not mention any tax revenue and taxation of these companies. Which are stil very often government cash cows and often pays much more taxes than other corporations. The subsidies are straight to citizen's gas tanks and heating bills.
"Subsidies are mainly on consumption,[3] such as a lower sales tax on natural gas for residential heating; or subsidies on production, such as tax breaks on exploration for oil."
In my country Norway for example, we have tax breaks on exploration to incentivize investment in exploration, but you have to take into account that these companies have an 80 corporate tax rate! In many petro states they are straight up nationalized companies.
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The oil companies pull out oil from the ground, a non sustainable resource which also creates direct damage to our own planet due to it being consumed/burned.
This is a subsidie.
Wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels this is absolutly true. Plenty of people around me have solar panels on the roof, a heatpump and energy storage. They are independent of any oil company like shell (who earned great thanks to the oil shortage?!).
Your argument regarding cost was borderline a few years ago and it might still be borderline in countries were oil is very cheap and we still ignore any ecological impact and responsiblity but overall no oil is more expensive.
Btw. just that you are aware of: A Heatpump can make out of 1 energy unit gas more energy. A EV engine has an efficency ov 95-99%.
So everyone who just burns gas directly (ICE or heating at home) is wasting energy.
It would be more efficient if you would make that oil/gas into energy, use the process heat of it for remote heating and use the elictricty directly in an EV or for a heatpump.
It is a tricky situation isn't it? We wouldn't have gotten where we are without fossil fuels, but now we realize they are not sustainable to be dependent on and we cannot continue this level of growth. I don't think it is actually possible using current means to power what we have come to know as a "first-world lifestyle" for the majority of the planet.
Thats not true. We don't know if we would be able to be were we at.
There is also no value in this. If we owuldn't known about progress through oil and gas, who would say that we would be unable to get to the same point just a 100 years later?
No own would be hurt if we would have achieved this 100 years later but healthier.
It was also ignored on purpose. Oil companies knew very well, researchers knew. Apparently there were big demonstrations here in germany in the 70ties so our parents knew too.
Life came inbetween apparently.
And from a pure calculation point of view: Its actually very easy to switch over to renewable. As of today, we do have everything we need.
The only thing missing is people doing it.
And just to be clear: it would repay itself.
How would we do the whole industrial revolution thing on whale oil and lumber? Whales would most certainly be extinct by now, thats for sure.
100 years later is an immense amount of extra human suffering, not to say that reaching current level would most certainly take much much longer than 100 extra years.
Im sorry but this whole tirade is just delusional. Its cheaper and better to replace all use of fossil fuels with renewables? Why are we not doing it? Waiting to here your grand conspiracy as of why people are not "doing it".
Why did china build over 50(78GW) new large scale coal plants last year when they could get so much cheaper renewable?
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It’s more about trying to help the cleaner energy sources get off the ground, rather than a purely financial incentive.
How much extra investment to you think green tech companies get for pension funds excluding investment in this sector? They also only invest in publicly listed companies, not green startups. To me it seems like the exclusion is based on them viewing it immoral to invest in these companies..
I think the right way to go about this is to tax consumption of fossil fuels in countries where we can afford it and use the money to subsidize green tech/industry.
If it's so valuable why don't you want to buy it from the Russians and the Gulf?
I think Europe happily buys from the Gulf currently, and reluctantly buys from Russia if they have to.
Its more about being self sufficient. This is something that can easily be weaponized against us. E.g. Russia using Europes own money to finance their invasion of Ukraine.
We do want to buy it from the Gulf. It’s just that a certain country started a certain war and this is now off the table.
The slavery part doesn't seem like a rational decision to me.
Why are we pretending that slavery doesn't provide an immense amount of value for humanity, and that it's horrible to invest or support building out any slavery production whatsoever?
Lets not do produce it ourselves, lets just instead outsource it to Africa...
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Snide comparisons aside, I'd just say that we can accept that fossil fuels played a gigantic and important role in getting us to where we are, and also acknowledge that we'll continue to need fossil fuels in the near future, but that does *not* mean that we need to accept that investment in even more expansion of the fossil fuel industry is a good idea.
Slavery is evil. Fossil fuels is actually still a net good for humanity. E.g. the consequences of removing access to these energy sources, would be overwhelmingly more negative for humanity right now, than the consequence of global warming.
The transition is moving ahead, it just takes time, and we need more technological breakthroughs and innovation. Trying to attack production instead of solving demand, can cause serious consequences, in which the poorest countries in the world would suffer the most.
Oh sorry, I forgot to look at my D&D alignment charts before making my comment, I didnt realize that slavery was evil and thus impermissible. I guess there's no possible comparison to be made with other economic practices that cause massive harm to some people, but benefit others in the short term.
For the sake of argument though, what if we lived in a situation where a very large portion of our agriculture, and other vital forms of economic activity were reliant on slavery? What if there were alternatives, but they weren't quite as economically entrenched, and an overnight banning of slavery would cause an economic collapse that'd cause large scale suffering.
In this hypothetical scenario, would we say that slavery is a net good for humanity? Wouldn't it be okay for our pension funds to invest in more slave production?
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Fossil fules is not a net good for humanity.
We have everything to switch over and while we do nothing more and more people are affacted by it daily and in longterm.
co2 is in the athmosphere for a long time.
In the only world were this is true, is a purely capitalistic society which values poorer people less.
Doesn’t one major fund reducing investment in fossil fuels and increasing investment in renewable energy precisely migrate towards the notion of helping solve demand and encourage technological breakthroughs and innovation?
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