Regressives are playing a losing hand for one simple and obvious reason --- economics.
EVs and renewable energy are unstoppable and will win simply because they are a less expensive alternative.
Until americans and american industry embrace this simple fact, we will be operating with an economic handicap and competitive disadvantage against the rest of the world and particularly the Chinese.
Government support and mandates for fossil fuel is a regressive step away from free trade and toward technical inferiority and decline --- not "greatness".
Ecology and economy are the same thing. The only way it is misaligned is because quite often the environmental impact is an externality.
E.g. A big oil corporation gets the profits of selling oil but the environmental price is paid by everybody else. Accounting the increase in climate disasters, oil becomes way more expensive that it is currently reflected in its price.
So, when someone argues that "taking into account the environment is too expensive" they are really arguing that "I should not pay for the environment damage but society at large should be paying while I collect profits".
My godfather was a safety engineer in an absolutely massive refining plant in the middle of the mediterranean. The amount of handwashing, grants, political appeasement and local populace straight-up subjugation required to keep the pretense that thing is an economic net positive rather than a polluting, cancer-causing, money wasting black hole is immense.
I know I can't prove it, but I strongly believe that much of the "Big Oil" dominance is due to political pressure to bend the market forces rather than any kind of real economic advantages compared to renewable energy sources.
Remember what you replied to: "Can change just be advocated for something out of our own interest instead of using the "Chinese" boogeyman? Is that a possibility?"
If you hadn't disingenuously replied to that comment by asking us to reread your comment, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I think this may cause a lot of other petroleum products to become more expensive, perhaps even uneconomical.
Take bitumen. It hos already gotten progressively more expensive over the last few decades. It makes sense: car fuel economy has gotten better. So for every mile we drive we need to refine less fuel, which means we get less bitumen as a byproduct. So the amount of bitumen available per vehicle-mile is progressively less over time.
This effect will become exponentially worse as EVs cause fuel consumption to fall off a cliff.
It’s not just gonna be bitumen. The effect may be less pronounced for the lighter fractions, but in general we will have to do more processing, and the oil industry will lose a lot of its “economies of scale”. Fuels are a huge share of the output of oil distillation.
Yes, I too wonder how declining car fuel consumption will affect petroleum by products. A lot of our things are made from petroleum including nearly all plastic.
Not a chemist, but iirc plastic isnt made from gasoline but via LPG > olefins > plastic.
But even if it was, isn't that just the magic of fractional distillation? You can stop cracking anywhere on the spectrum between asphalt sludge and gasoline so if the demand for gasoline dropped off, you would still be able to produce other products.
I'm not sure I buy this analysis, because world crude production just seems to climb. I would hazard a guess that a huge amount of roads have been built over the last few decades (in China)
i wonder what the impact of the e-bike is on car traffic/sales. i guess in the us it is probably not noticable but here in the eu or in germany were i live i can definitely feel that there is more bike traffic and most are e-bikes now. with them coming down in price significantly this could be the second wave that kills ice cars (and hopefully reduces car traffic in general)
I recently had an interview with a 'big oil' company and they told me that their biggest profit making centre in the business was in oil trading, not in oil itself.
Regressives are playing a losing hand for one simple and obvious reason --- economics.
EVs and renewable energy are unstoppable and will win simply because they are a less expensive alternative.
Until americans and american industry embrace this simple fact, we will be operating with an economic handicap and competitive disadvantage against the rest of the world and particularly the Chinese.
Government support and mandates for fossil fuel is a regressive step away from free trade and toward technical inferiority and decline --- not "greatness".
Ecology and economy are the same thing. The only way it is misaligned is because quite often the environmental impact is an externality.
E.g. A big oil corporation gets the profits of selling oil but the environmental price is paid by everybody else. Accounting the increase in climate disasters, oil becomes way more expensive that it is currently reflected in its price.
So, when someone argues that "taking into account the environment is too expensive" they are really arguing that "I should not pay for the environment damage but society at large should be paying while I collect profits".
My godfather was a safety engineer in an absolutely massive refining plant in the middle of the mediterranean. The amount of handwashing, grants, political appeasement and local populace straight-up subjugation required to keep the pretense that thing is an economic net positive rather than a polluting, cancer-causing, money wasting black hole is immense.
I know I can't prove it, but I strongly believe that much of the "Big Oil" dominance is due to political pressure to bend the market forces rather than any kind of real economic advantages compared to renewable energy sources.
Can change just be advocated for something out of our own interest instead of using the "Chinese" boogeyman? Is that a possibility?
Read my post again --- economics is definitely in our own best interests.
Paying more for energy negatively impacts everyone and every industry.
> Read my post again --- economics is definitely in our own best interests.
And yet you still snuck in "the chinese" in the your comment.
China is a fairly large player in the global economy and renewable energy is it not?
Remember what you replied to: "Can change just be advocated for something out of our own interest instead of using the "Chinese" boogeyman? Is that a possibility?"
If you hadn't disingenuously replied to that comment by asking us to reread your comment, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
It doesn't look less expensive over here in Europe, and less so without government discounts.
Hence why most people keep buying ICE, gas, or eventually hybrids.
I doubt it’s less expensive in America either. You read a lot of propaganda about this here which you shouldn’t trust.
You're wrong and the proof is Texas --- a state that is literally overflowing with fossil fuel.
https://businessintexas.com/blog/texas-leads-us-renewable-en...
And here is the leading proponent of propaganda.
https://checkyourfact.com/2019/04/09/fact-check-trump-wind-t...
Zillions of Swazicars/trucks and Ioniq's here in hill country. They're simply cheaper and cleaner than ICE vehicles.
I think this may cause a lot of other petroleum products to become more expensive, perhaps even uneconomical.
Take bitumen. It hos already gotten progressively more expensive over the last few decades. It makes sense: car fuel economy has gotten better. So for every mile we drive we need to refine less fuel, which means we get less bitumen as a byproduct. So the amount of bitumen available per vehicle-mile is progressively less over time.
This effect will become exponentially worse as EVs cause fuel consumption to fall off a cliff.
It’s not just gonna be bitumen. The effect may be less pronounced for the lighter fractions, but in general we will have to do more processing, and the oil industry will lose a lot of its “economies of scale”. Fuels are a huge share of the output of oil distillation.
Yes, I too wonder how declining car fuel consumption will affect petroleum by products. A lot of our things are made from petroleum including nearly all plastic.
Not a chemist, but iirc plastic isnt made from gasoline but via LPG > olefins > plastic.
But even if it was, isn't that just the magic of fractional distillation? You can stop cracking anywhere on the spectrum between asphalt sludge and gasoline so if the demand for gasoline dropped off, you would still be able to produce other products.
I'm not sure I buy this analysis, because world crude production just seems to climb. I would hazard a guess that a huge amount of roads have been built over the last few decades (in China)
i wonder what the impact of the e-bike is on car traffic/sales. i guess in the us it is probably not noticable but here in the eu or in germany were i live i can definitely feel that there is more bike traffic and most are e-bikes now. with them coming down in price significantly this could be the second wave that kills ice cars (and hopefully reduces car traffic in general)
I recently had an interview with a 'big oil' company and they told me that their biggest profit making centre in the business was in oil trading, not in oil itself.
BP ?
Shell
Yeah decimating them isn't enough (decimating really means eliminating 10% of something)
I hate when people use it when they mean "annihilation" because that's a completely different meaning.
Not anymore. The meaning expanded https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate