Only problem is it's not completely perfect, and no matter how awful the current situation, due to lobbyists and special interest groups, we'll never be able to replace oil with something short of COMPLETELY PERFECT, until it simply runs out.
You'd think people would realize that while nuclear, or wind, or solar, are imperfect, each one is better than fossil fuels.
I get that this is a problem, but comparing it to oil as being the better alternative is not convincing: oil have been at the center of terrible wars, corruptions and ecological disasters for decades. Entire populations have been displaced, robbed, poisoned, conned and/or killed for oil. Let's not pretend it comes with less suffering attached, not to mention we had almost a century to improve the process, and we are comparing it to electrical cars, something that had been barely marketable to the public for 10 years.
Part of the problem here is that we have/had the option to have a world pretty much like the existing one, except that it was one in which oil and coal companies went out of business or lost trillions of dollars, and got replaced with renewable and nuclear power generation and electric vehicles etc.
But those trillion dollar industries fought against their own destruction, and continue to do so, and all of the other alternatives are worse.
The best time to fossilize the fossil fuel industries was 30 years ago. The second best time is right now.
Anytime alternative sources of clean energy come up there are always comments about the problem with using them (What happens if there is no wind, water, sun etc), or about storing excess energy (we can't create a reliable battery network). The reality is that the fossil fuel sources we currently use had tons of engineering issues that had to be solved for it to work at scale. It took decades but we got there.
I'm confident with enough bright minds we can solve all of these problems with clean energy. It will just require time and energy and actual investment that isn't lobbied against by big oil. For example I'm confident that if we commit to nuclear energy we can find a way to get reactors built in under five years. And even if we didn't if enough were being built in parallel you could have one being onlined every year in every state just like how a new phone comes out every year, even though it takes years of development to make the next one.
Actually there are plenty of realistic replacements for oil, the issue is more about lobbying and PR than anything else. IF we as Americans wanted to invest in things other than the military, it wouldn't be that hard to get things moving withing a decade. What if we spent $800 billion a year on implementing solar technology? Obviously that's an overstatement but the point stands. The oil companies have payed hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby congress over the years to keep their dominance in the energy market. I'm not naively suggesting we could go solar tomorrow, but I think it's amazing when people so blindly accept the status quo. This is a willpower issue, not a technological one.
This is my thought when I see people railing against the fossil fuel companies like they are purposefully trying to force a product on us we don't want or need solely in an effort to watch the world burn.
Oil is a dense fuel source that is easily transported. If we somehow magically permanently capped all current and future oil wells today we'd be in the middle of a crisis that would dwarf any concerns we might have about climate change down the road. We're making great progress on renewable energy sources, but we're not there yet. More protests isn't going to change that. Personally I wish we'd go all-in on nuclear power and work to remove the road blocks that make that so expensive and take so long to bring up new power plants, so that we could add that to the mix and get to the point where a complete loss of the flow of oil wouldn't end civilization as we know it.
OK, great. But if we stick to oil for those 100 years, we'll continue killing planetary biodiversity, which will cause unknown knock-on effects that will make it hard to grow food the normal way, even if we're only looking at effects on humans. Is that really a good way to live?
Saying that the current situation is imperfect is like saying that jumping off a bridge puts you in a situation that isn't ideal. We need to pull our collective heads out of our collective asses and start investing in alternative energy sources - now, not in 10 or 20 or 50 years.
You have to understand the world to answer that question. Energy is the food of nations and keeping them tied to oil gives you power over them. Why do you think we still use a 150 old technology of combustion engines whereas basically every other aspect of civilization has come so far? It's a choice, not a misfortune.
What's wrong with solar, wind and basically everything that would solve the problem? - Power. Humanity would cut the strings attached to it, nobody wants that.
Yea, I agree. But what about the FACT that it's so much denser of an energy source than any battery we have? The straight up truth is that right now, unless there is so amazing innovation, we are going to use every drop. In the short term at least the world's militaries will burn as much oil as they can. Regardless of what you hear in press releases, major industry, military, aerospace will not move from oil until there is a performance reason, not ethical not cost reason to do so.
The reason this issue is so hotly contested is because there is no way (probably) for the fossil fuel industry to solve this problem, other than to cease existing, or completely convert themselves to another business. Yes I am aware of geo-engineering ideas and sequestering ideas, but nobody has a practical plan that can really work. If it was as simple as using a new refrigerant or putting catalytic converters on cars, the industry would have done that, as they did with carbon monoxide and ozone layer issues. This problem's solution is much much much more painful. I think our only hope is for solar/wind/nuclear to get so good nobody wants fossil fuels any more. That isn't easy either, but it could happen, and we should be trying really really hard.
The depletion of fossil fuels is not the problem. In fact, the opposite is true: we need to leave a very large proportion of present-day fossil fuel reserves in the ground if we're to avert catastrophic increases in global radiative forcing, and leading fossil fuel states don't particularly want to do that. Renewables, and potentially nuclear, can deliver all the energy we need if we are intelligent about it. Some things will be more expensive in the medium-term (producing extreme high heat, flying), but that's far from a doomsday scenario. Other things (average electricity prices, road and rail transport) will be cheaper.
Agreed, the only way to truly get rid of oil is to make it outdated by replacing it with better (where better equals cheaper mostly) energy technology.
The worry is overblown. Oil is still used all over the place because it's cheaper than the alternative. When it's not, it'll be replaced.
You can straight up synthesize an oil analog from biological sources, and even if you couldn't the oil necessary for non-energy purposes is far far less than that used just to burn.
Solar is what is going to replace fossil fuels mostly, it's already cheaper than coal.
Like it or not, most of the motivation for change will be economic. With the price of energy in the current times of war and inflation, solar is looking quite good.
Industrial chemistry always has alternatives. Ammonia based fertilizers can always be produced with air and water instead of air and natural gas, it's just somewhat more expensive.
While also figuring out how to make fossil fuel safer for the environment.
Don't get me wrong, solar/wind and especially nuclear are great, but it's gonna be a loooong time before we're completely rid of gas, coal and oil.
There's so much of it and they're all so energy-dense and/or cheap that humans are gonna use them either until our planet turns into Venus or we figure out ways to reduce/eliminate those emissions. I'd prefer the latter.
You also gotta consider the reality that it is pretty clear that our current use is totally unsustainable, and pollution is just one of the downsides we are seeing.
Things aren't entirely good or entirely bad. It can both be true that fossil fuels have created great wealth in a variety of different ways, and is also systematically dooming our future in a variety of different ways. In fact, that is what the truth is.
You'd think people would realize that while nuclear, or wind, or solar, are imperfect, each one is better than fossil fuels.
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