But, so much of oil production and consumption and everything associated with it is horrible and disgusting and a potential ecological and economic disaster waiting to happen. (...Deepwater Horizon...)
What about all the good it makes possible? Fossil fuels made it possible to build and run the hospitals that save our lives. Try running an ICU on wind and solar power alone, without a huge, expensive and very uneconomical battery. Think also of the food we eat - while you can quibble about the merits of particular diets, there's no way that the 7 billion people alive today could get the calories they need to stay alive without tractors, fertilizer, etc. These two examples are the the beginning - our lives are made possible by oil.
While burning fossil fuels may have a negative effect on climate, is that effect so bad that we should abandon them? Fossil fuels give us such good control over our climates that climate-related deaths (everything from storms to hurricanes, etc.) have dropped precipitously over the past century: in the past 80 years, there has been a 98% decrease in deaths due to climate. Couple those facts with the abominable track record that everyone has about predicting the severity of future conditions (remember the shrill predictions of the 60s and 70s?), and fossil fuels come out ahead of everything else out there, short of nuclear.
Global GDP increased by twenty to forty times in the twentieth century. Life expectancy has doubled. That depended hugely on fossil fuels.
If moving away from fossil fuels was free we'd do it. The problem is the huge cost. Hopefully it will happen over the next 100 years. Most people would happily spend 100 / year to get off fossil fuels. But 10K? 5K? That's the question.
Now we can spend money on research which has a huge payoff.
Do you allow any room at all for a compromise? Or must you assume that I mean, "completely and totally abandon fossil fuels even where it doesn't make sense to do so"?
> Fossil fuels give us such good control over our climates that climate-related deaths ... have dropped precipitously over the past century...
What? Are you sure this isn't due to better construction materials and practices? I haven't heard this before.
> ...and fossil fuels come out ahead of everything else out there, short of nuclear.
This probably isn't true, although it depends a lot on how you measure "ahead" and which numbers you choose to run with. If we're looking at EROI (or EROEI -- I guess it's lost a letter recently), then oil is somewhere between 10:1 and 5:1, and falling, and that puts it behind wind and hydro, but ahead of nuclear and solar. (I was surprised by the numbers on nuclear years ago when I first looked at this.) e.g. http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/argument-over-the-...
I am all in favor of continuing to produce and consume oil where it makes sense to do so. I am also all in favor of continuing to develop replacements for oil as expediently as practical.
> Fossil fuels give us such good control over our climates that climate-related deaths ... have dropped precipitously over the past century...
What? Are you sure this isn't due to better construction materials and practices? I haven't heard this before.
Construction materials and practices, made possible by what fuel? What powers the excavators, drives the furnaces to used to make steel that goes into everything from rebar to Catepillar tractors to the steel toe in the foreman's boot? What source of energy do people use to get a log from a mountainside to the mill, through it, and then to your backyard? What are the hardhats that everyone wears made of? (Plastic, which is made from oil.) Need I go on?
This same energy source is very cheap. That means that more people can afford new(er) homes. Homes which are equipped with better features that help them resist natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, extreme heat, cold, etc.
Suppose energy were 50% more expensive. It doesn't take an economist to predict that under those conditions, many homes wouldn't be as nice, new and safe. How many more people would have to do without air conditioning? Clean drinking water? How many more people wouldn't be able to afford fresh fruit and vegetables in the winter?
I think you're reaching quite a bit here. Oil is demonstrably more than 50% more expensive now than it was anytime before 1974, even adjusted for inflation. (I just double-checked.)
You seem to be saying that the price of energy not only underpins the entire world economy, but that it is the greatest factor in the world economy almost to the exclusion of everything else. I cannot believe that would actually be your argument, so I must be misreading you.
While the cost of energy is certainly a big factor (and I'd readily agree that cheap energy is largely responsible for the industrial age), the world civilization would have collapsed already if it were tied that closely to the barrel price of oil.
I am all in favor of continuing to produce and consume oil where it makes sense to do so. I am also all in favor of continuing to develop replacements for oil as expediently as practical.
Do you think that's an unreasonable position?
I am in favor of people developing any new technology they see fit, on their own accord, and at their own financial risk.
If something is truly better, it will win on an open market. A recent example: when people switched to smartphones, no one had to ban/levy huge taxes on feature phones, or give Apple huge sums of taxpayer money for decades to come up with the iPhone.
Edit: By the way, on the topic of subsidies: many environmentalists argue that fossil fuels get massive subsidies, and that they need subsidies to compete. First of all, this is not true, if you compare the amounts of money redirected per energy unit released by energy source.
On that topic, here's a revealing question: if the subsidy argument were genuine, why are there no calls by environmentalists for the abolishment of all energy subsidies?
I'm glad to hear you agree that we should stop subsidizing fossil fuels, to the tune of half a trillion dollars per year or so worldwide. That sounds like a fantastic idea.
...Or, were you only suggesting we stop subsidizing the things you don't like?
edit: you edited your comment while I was writing my reply. Had your comment had the phrase "the greens" in it to begin with, I wouldn't've bothered replying to either of your comments.
The most comprehensive report on this to date seems to be http://www.iisd.org/gsi/sites/default/files/relative_energy_... (pdf). It both supports your point and contradicts your conclusion, noting for example, "Readers should exercise caution when comparing one energy type's subsidy estimate with another...", and, "Whether to reform a given subsidy is not necessarily indicated by its total or per-unit magnitude alone."
That said, they estimate a 1.7c/kWh subsidy for nuclear, a 5c/kWh subsidy for renewables (excluding hydroelectricity), a 5.1c/kWh for biofuels, and a 0.8c/kWh subsidy for fossil fuels. They allow for a lot of room in their estimates, with cautions all over the place that hard numbers really aren't readily available, and so on, but let's say that's within an order of magnitude of correct.
So far, there's a solid argument that alternative energy developments are only being propped up by governments, which I assume is your position.
But! There's a catch. Their estimates are based on a single year of energy production -- 2007.
If we could do something simple like apply a 1/20 multiplier to the subsidy given per kWh for renewables -- and I really have no idea if that's honest or not, since their paper is not as comprehensive when it comes to their sources and calculations -- but if that were possible, then renewables are actually receiving a smaller subsidy per kWh than fossil fuels, produced over the lifetime of the energy product.
But, y'know, this is all really far afield from the original argument to begin with.
It is inarguable that fossil fuels are getting more expensive and should be expected to continue to get more expensive. You yourself rang the alarm over expensive energy in another comment. And we can probably at least agree that cheap energy fueled the industrial age. So, what if it were possible to eventually make energy even cheaper, if we invest in its development now?
Is that really such a terrible idea, investing in the future?
Actually, you don't have to answer that. I guess the label "green" fits me as well as any other label you'd like to use, so I'm de facto wrong about everything anyway.
> "While burning fossil fuels may have a negative effect on climate, is that effect so bad that we should abandon them?"
Not yet. But the benefits you list all took effect long before the downsides, as with most forms of pollution. That short-term reasoning has worked so far, but we're pretty sure that it's starting to fall apart. Pretty soon we're going to be burning increasing amounts of oil to mitigate the effects of burning too much oil, and there aren't a whole lot of ways that can play out. Those shrill predictions from the 60s and 70s were ultimately wrong about how the shape of the supply curve for oil would evolve, but they also completely failed to consider the possibility that using oil could reduce reserves of natural resources other than oil. That's something we now know to be worth worrying about.
It's as if you can't see any gray area between something being totally good and being totally bad.
No, all I'm saying is that on balance, something is either totally good for you, or not. (I suppose a third possibility is that it could be neither a net benefit or loss, but that's really splitting hairs, and totally not the case with fossil fuels.)
What about all the good it makes possible? Fossil fuels made it possible to build and run the hospitals that save our lives. Try running an ICU on wind and solar power alone, without a huge, expensive and very uneconomical battery. Think also of the food we eat - while you can quibble about the merits of particular diets, there's no way that the 7 billion people alive today could get the calories they need to stay alive without tractors, fertilizer, etc. These two examples are the the beginning - our lives are made possible by oil.
While burning fossil fuels may have a negative effect on climate, is that effect so bad that we should abandon them? Fossil fuels give us such good control over our climates that climate-related deaths (everything from storms to hurricanes, etc.) have dropped precipitously over the past century: in the past 80 years, there has been a 98% decrease in deaths due to climate. Couple those facts with the abominable track record that everyone has about predicting the severity of future conditions (remember the shrill predictions of the 60s and 70s?), and fossil fuels come out ahead of everything else out there, short of nuclear.