6 ms·
'Tax breaks' are offered to all sorts of industries. Almost all entertainment in Canada for example, is done nearly tax free. Pharma, energy, small business et
by edblarney 10y ago
'Tax breaks' are offered to all sorts of industries.
Almost all entertainment in Canada for example, is done nearly tax free. Pharma, energy, small business etc. etc..
- graeme 10y agoIt's particularly perverse, however, to give tax breaks for an industry that has immense negative externalities.
- edblarney 10y agoOil companies don't emit a whole lot of CO2. You emit the CO2 when you use your car (almost 50% of CO2 emissions are from autos). And a bunch of other industries are responsible for most of the rest of CO2 emissions.
- monknomo 10y agoI think you're missing the negative externalities inherent in oil extraction, like groundwater pollution, earthquakes, above ground pipelines, etc. Not to mention it's a little like saying Pablo Escobar doesn't OD on drugs or steal your TV very often, it's the crackheads that do that...
- edblarney 10y ago" like groundwater pollution, earthquakes, above ground pipelines, etc" Groundwater pollution and earthquakes are rare, and the latter are minor and have negligible impact. It's no more problematic than most other extraction industries. 'Above ground pipelines' are completely benign entities with almost zero environmental impact. Leaks are rare enough, and most of them are very minor and easy to clean up. Oil is an organic product, found commonly in nature, and small amounts of Oil spilled have no real impact. Unlike the big tanker spills, which can be devastating. The highway you drive your car on has considerably more environmental footprint than any 'above ground pipeline'.
- nostrademons 10y agoWould you want one in your back yard?
- pixl97 10y agoMy friend lived in house with an oil well in the back yard. Really wasn't noticeable after you got used to the noise it made. After a week I forgot it was there.
- Symbiote 10y agoDoesn't it stink? I remember very clearly the first time I visited western Texas (from Europe) as a child. The smell was sickening.
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoGenerally it is refineries that stink.
- edblarney 10y agoI wouldn't want a coffee shop 'in my backyard' and I have nothing against coffee shops. But if I had to chose between an Oil Pipeline and a 'highway' - I (and I think most people) would chose the Oil Pipeline any day of the week. You do realize they are quite common? And that natural gas pipelines - which carry the same carbon-based materials run everywhere in urban areas - and that there's a good chance there is a gas pipeline, literally, in your backyard right now? If you are living in an urban area, my guess is there is an 80% chance there's a carbon-based pipeline within 500m from where you are.
- maxerickson 10y agoThe Energy Information Agency has a nice map of them: http://www.eia.gov/state/maps.cfm http://www.eia.gov/state/maps.cfm (turn off some layers to make it easier to look at) I guess that's transportation pipelines and not distribution pipelines though.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago>>I think you're missing the negative externalities inherent in oil extraction The same can be said for the production of lithium-ion batteries. The mining and production of these batteries is just as bad for the environment. This is mainly due to the high concentration of Copper and Aluminum needed to make them work properly - which both need to be mined. Fuel cells are a much better alternative to both combustion engines or lithium-ion electric vehicles: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-08/phones-with-seven-day-battery-life-promised-by-fuel-cell-maker https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-08/phones-wi...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- thatcat 10y agoEven if they don't use much, they tend to spill a lot which is worse than burning it.
- edblarney 10y ago"they tend to spill a lot which is worse than burning it." Both parts are not correct. First, they spill very little in the grand scheme of things. Second, an 'oil spill' unless it's quite large, is not a hugely damaging thing for the environment. Oil is a plentiful, organic material, found everywhere in nature. It's just not concentrated enough in most places to be extracted. The soil in northern Alberta (an area the size of Florida) is literally oozing with hydrocarbons - same for Venezuela and many other places. Nobody considers those parts of the world 'toxic' - they are otherwise normal places.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- codecamper 10y agoWhat sort of technologist thinks like you? Are you sys admin?
- thatcat 10y agoI guess it's arguable whether it's worse or not, but CO2 doesn't typically kill any wildlife whereas oil spills do. There is a certain percentage that is leaked from every pipeline in addition to the large leaks that occur during tanker and drilling accidents. Even a small percentage of the large volume they extract is a large volume to pour on the ground. I'm not sure why you think the concentrations of oil in the soil occurring naturally approach even the smallest pipeline leak; would love to see some sources though if you have them.
- cr1895 10y agoCrudely (haha) crunching some numbers, if we consider the oil spilled in the US in 2011 (incl. Deepwater Horizon) of 4.95e6 bbl compared to the total oil consumption in 2015 of 7.09e9 bbl, the oil spilled is less than 0.07% of the oil consumed. This, mind you, is considering a massive outlier year for spilled oil. In a more typical year it's an order of magnitude less. Not to minimize the damage from spilled oil or suggest that it's no problem, but let's keep "spill a lot" in perspective.
- sandworm101 10y ago>> Oil companies don't emit a whole lot of CO2. The Saudis certainly don't. That oil is easy to tap and, under some circumstances, be used with little refinement (shipping). But Canadian oil, shale oil, requires massive energy to extract.
- wiredfool 10y agoNot to mention flaring of natural gas in the Bakken fields. It's a significant percentage of the US's total greenhouse emissions.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoFracking requires an immense amount of water.
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoIt requires "barrels-per-minute for hours" amounts of water. 100 BPM is unusually high for fracking. One acre-foot is about 7753 barrels. The problem is that water is increasingly scarce in many parts where fracking is done for reasons outlined in the book "Cadillac Desert".
- Ma8ee 10y agoWhen you subsidise extraction the price goes down and other industries burn more of it.
- Reason077 10y agoOil companies don't emit a whole lot of CO2. Not true. Refining crude oil into gasoline or diesel is itself very energy-intensive. It takes around 4.5kWh to refine each gallon of gasoline from crude. In many cases that energy is supplied by fossil-fuel burning power plants. Volts for oil: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BQpX-9OyEr4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BQpX-9OyEr4
- edblarney 10y agoYou proved my point. 4.5 kWh is not a lot of energy. It's the amount of energy needed to light a 1K lightbulb for 4 hours. It's a pittance compared to what you burn in you car. 4.5Kw/h won't get you around the block :)
- zrail 10y agoA 1kW lightbulb is rather bright and not used in homes, more so in studios. A better comparison might be 10 100W bulbs or maybe an average chandelier.
- Reason077 10y agoEven 100W bulbs are pretty rare now days (illegal in the EU), replaced with LED versions that consume far less energy. 4.5 kWh is really a tremendous amount of energy just to refine a single gallon of gasoline. And it's energy that's completely lost, just converting hydrocarbons from one form into another. By putting that energy directly into electric vehicles instead, you'd be able to power around half of all the vehicles on the road!
- phlo 10y agoI think you may be mistaken about amounts of energy. Typical modern domestic-use light bulb (ccfl) are rated around 20 watts. 100 W was the typical maximum in incandescent light bulbs for domestic use, excluding some very bright halogen bulbs at around 200 W. 1000 W bulbs are mainly used in studio applications (as someone else mentioned) and for stage lighting. On the subject of getting around the block: A kilogram of gasoline contains some 46 MJ of energy. Gasoline is a bit lighter than water, so one kilo is around 1.3 liters. 46 MJ is equal to, roughly, 13 KWh, so 4.5 KWh are around 300 grams, or around 400 ml. A Manhattan city block is around 80x280 Meters, for a circumference of roughly 720 Meters. An inefficient modern car might use 8 Liters per 100 Kilometers, so 400 ml (or roughly 4.5 KWh) will move an inefficient modern car by around 5 Kilometers. In other words, it'll get you around the block. Not once, not twice, but slightly less than 7 times.
- enraged_camel 10y agoAt the expense of cleaner, safer ones no less.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoAnd many of those are bad. Ask people in the visual effects industry how they feel about Canada's tax breaks for film production. These tax breaks incentivize wasting money on travel and uprooting families to trot around the globe chasing favorable tax laws. It's one thing to set a low tax rate, it's another thing to create the tax equivalent of a "loss leader" as marketing for a broader economy. I'm not saying it's immoral, but it causes chaos in the pricing signals and should be done carefully.
- ramy_d 10y ago> Almost all entertainment in Canada for example, is done nearly tax free. Categorically untrue.
- josho 10y agoThe entertainment industry in Canada receives tax incentives to encourage sustaining and sharing Canadian heritage & values, which would otherwise be lost due to the media juggernaut to the south. It is not always successful, but that is the intent. What is the motivation to give a highly profitable industry tax incentives?