This is the attitude many have had for decades. We had a recent debate about drilling in Alaska and many said "things are different now, and the ecological impact would be small." We don't need to drill in these places. We aren't going to run out of our current sources for decades. In time prices are going to rise and people will be forced to drive smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles, but it is about time.
Very soon fossil fuel won't be a problem. Investment levels are at historical laws, and without new drilling, the output will inexorably decrease over the next years.
Yeah, because at the end of the day you're burning the oil. If everyone stopped consuming oil, the oil companies will stop drilling. The inverse doesn't really hold. Just look at how gas prices have doubled yet everyone's still driving their cars.
This applies to most natural resources including gas and oil.
There's never going to be a moment when we squeeze the last drop of oil out of the Earth's crust. It's just going to keep getting more expensive as we drain the easier sources and have to look harder and drill deeper in more and more remote areas.
We _can_, but will we? We're not fated to discover new resources to sustain ourselves. Fracking opened up new oil reserves, for sure, but that didn't mean that the concern wasn't valid.
> It's going to be the same for every other resource.
That's superstition / survivor bias.
Is your statement that far off from "the house is on fire, but I'm not going to move from the couch because a fire crew will be here sooner or later"?
I disagree that drilling will help. The key point of the article is that it was a cultural rather than a resource based shift that helped Denmark become energy independent.
I read a recent estimation that America has enough oil for 3 years at it's current rate of consumption. Unless consumption is dramatically reduced drilling is just going to tap out a resource that would be best saved for a real emergency.
Europe has been coping with smaller more efficient cars, and driving habits for decades. American can too.
You'll end up paying higher prices for their stuff now due to decreased supply, have some new technology come about that makes fossil fuels worthless, then get stuck with a bunch of useless fossil fuel in the ground.
Not likely within the next few decades, but very possible over the span of hundreds of years. Remember, we've only been using fossil fuels for only about 150 years. Before that, it was considered an absolute disaster to hit oil when digging a well.
Underwater drilling doesn't really supply a whole lot of energy but does bring a ton of risk. Aside from people who think shouting "drill baby drill" repeatedly is an energy policy, nobody really thinks it's the future.
The ultimate solution is getting past oil, by giving real funding to sustainable energy projects. Europe and China are going to kick our ass at this unless we step it up.
If not here, then elsewhere. We're decades away from a green economy.
We would be decades away even if we decided to invest what was necessary to get us there, and with the current levels of investment, I would be unsurprised if we're still drilling for oil full blast when I die.
Well, some of us at least. I'm convinced that some countries won't make the necessary investments to switch quickly enough, and will continue to be primarily dependent upon hydrocarbons for energy. The fact that El Cheeto and his friends are opening up lands in the Arctic for drilling a few days ago is one example.
When I say we're running out of oil, I mean we're running out of cheap, easily accessible oil. We'll have oil for quite some time; it will just get more expensive. Maybe I'm wrong and the peak of global oil supply is still a ways off. In that case, we'll have made a less painful transition than we would have otherwise. The longer we continue to use energy as we currently do, the more infrastructure will be built based on that consumption, and the more new infrastructure we will need to build in the future to accommodate lower energy use.
"When we get into "potential environmental damages", unless you're prepared to make a risk-reward argument with hard statistics we're treading on personal opinion ground."
It is personal opinion. I don't see the problem with that. I like my shorelines sans oil spills. I don't think the risk is worth a couple of cents a gallon off of gas. Any quantification of the risks and rewards of offshore drilling will be equally subjective as my assertion that it isn't worth it. If the rest of the country agrees (which looks unlikely at this point), then more offshore drilling won't happen.
"doesn't the market provide the most goods at the lowest prices, thereby helping the poor much more optimally than a government policy would?"
Yes. Cheap energy for the poor would be nice, but the decrease in price of energy caused by offshore drilling isn't worth the potential environmental damage in my opinion.
"But you're talking about potentially billons of people who will have a harder time reaching their potential for decades while we re-tool."
It sounds like you're talking about more than just offshore drilling here, as that would have a tiny effect on people reaching their potential. As far as broader governmental efforts that will raise the price of oil, I don't think we should go any further than pricing in the externalities of oil usage. Paying for the damage you cause isn't that radical of a notion.
It may not be popular, because it is just not very logical or pragmatic. Setting aside the vagaries of politics, as those will eventually change the same way pendulum swings, the simple reality is that we simply won't be able to dig around for coal, gas and oil for that much longer. Something has got to give.
There is every likelihood that we could in principle just keep drilling new oil. Our ability to extract oil at a cost effective rate scales almost exactly with the depletion of easy reserves. The reason we need to switch out is the devastating environmental impact, and only the devastating environmental impact.
Wait, are you saying we will never run out of cheap oil? Sure, there will still be drillable oil in my lifetime but it isnt going to be used to push cars around. I am also willing to bet, insofar as getting rid of all my ICE vehicles and getting solar going etc, that petroleum products are going to be prohibitively expensive in the next 10-15 years. There is more intrigue to oil than just the cost of turning it into gas.
Realistically, right now the US has enough sources to produce huge exports without touching the Arctic (or the Pacific Coast, which has enormous untapped resources). Economically, it makes sense (I'm not addressing environmental concerns) to hold off on exploiting this oil. Currently there is so much global supply that adding more would just depress prices while encouraging unnecessary economic growth.
While it would have an enormous environmental impact, there may come a time in the future of America where we are obliged to tap these resources for our economy.
But the whole story are the new extraction methods which make reserves inaccessible or uneconomical to extract before, accessible and economical.
Yeah people need to get real: any and all hydrocarbons will be dug out at some point. Unless you want to make a pact to nuke the countries that do it beyond a certain level (which can double as a nice way to mitigate global warming at least for a while). For some nations such as Saudi Arabia, digging and selling hydrocarbons is the core and essence of their existence and is what separating them from bedouins/forest people living in the wild in total savagery. There is absolutely no way they could do something else for a living.
Developed nations could stop doing it. Europe for example, almost did (it has even more shale oil and gas than U.S. does and made a conscious decision to ban it's extraction), U.S. could do too if it wanted, but many poor countries just can't.
Yes, pretty much every educated person realizes that.
When people say "stop using oil", it really means stop using it for fuel because that is the vast majority of usage, and if we eliminate that then what's left is not a significant problem. The worldwide demand could probably be satisfied by a handful of drilling rigs instead of the thousands we have now.
That seems to be an excuse that's been in use for decades. Meanwhile, we're just dragging our feet about stopping oil use and kicking the can down the road for the next generation to deal with.
Ultimately, it's a very poor excuse to state that because we can't stop immediately, that we might as well continue digging as much oil as possible out of the ground for burning.
I can imagine a point in 30 years where there are new, safer and better ways of getting the oil out, and oil is necessary for processes that don't involve burning it into the atmosphere, and the price is considerably higher than it is now.
I despair of (my current home country) Australia's attitude of digging up all the resources it possibly can and selling them for cheaper than everyone else. And being proud of this, like it's a good thing. These resources are irreplaceable and belong to the whole nation. Maybe leave some in the ground for later when the prices have gone up?
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