5 ms·

Good. The world was okay before there was an oil industry and it will be better off when it no longer has one.

Angostura 7y ago
For certain values of 'okay'. There is no doubt that oil and plastics have been hugely beneficial in many respects. The problem is that the cost is now apparent and we must stop gorging on them. Reduction in plastic and oil can only be a good thing but let's not pretend it doesn't require substantial changes in the way that we all live - its not just disposable straws here. Reading the article, the projection is that this could "cut petrochemical demand growth to one-third of its historical pace, to about 1.5% a year". That's good enough. I don't want to see reduced growth rate. I want to see shrinkage.
- kace91 7y ago
  I think OP's comment was a commentary about the oil industry, rather than oil and derivate products themselves. As in, there might be a lot of downsides to reducing or getting rid of plastic use, but the fall of oil giants is not one of them.
- cardamomo 7y ago
  > That's good enough. I don't want to see reduced growth rate. I want to see shrinkage. Perhaps you mean that's not good enough? I, too, want to see the oil industry shrink. To my mind, it's downright dangerous to devote such a large part of the global economy to an industry that is literally putting our planet in peril. The larger conversation we need to have, however, is what a post- growth economy should look like.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    I did mean not thank you :) I also agree about the conversation about post-growth
- lucideer 7y ago
  > let's not pretend it doesn't require substantial changes in the way that we all live Actually, I don't really believe this. I do use/consume a lot of plastic, but I find in practice that in the vast majority of cases, the decision to make those items from plastic is an arbitrary one. The market has made decidision on my behalf, and provided me with a range of plastic options, with very few non-plastic options, for an application that has no hard dependency on plastic. Electronics would be one of the big ones, and can largely be (and often are) made with aluminium* casings. Fittings have similar metallic alternatives. PCBs are something of an exception here: yes, there are aluminium/metallic substrates, but even those are epoxy-insulated. Most other plastic uses are similar stories: we're provided with a range of exclusively plastic choices by the market, but that doesn't make it necessary on the production end. Plastic is usually cheaper, yes, but this is a result of a long chain of subsidies, wars, and other market interference. This doesn't reflect true production cost. * Worth noting, the environmental impact story for aluminium/other metals isn't too great either, but that's a separate topic.
  - Scaevolus 7y ago
    You don't need subsidies for injection molded plastics to be massively cheaper to produce than any comparable material. Machining aluminum is very expensive, and die casting metal requires much more expensive tooling than plastics.
  - challenger22 7y ago
    The true cost of plastic is cheaper by far than aluminum or other alternatives. Injection molding and other plastic technologies are miraculously productive and energy efficient compared to many other forms of production. The U.S. produces 12,000,000 barrels of oil per day. 4,380,000 barrels per year. According to https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/14/u-s-tax-code-4-6-billion-u-s-oil-company-subsidies-per-year/ https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/14/u-s-tax-code-4-6-billio..., we also subsidise this production by $4B per year, or about a dollar a barrel. If you are saying that a $1 per barrel subsidy for oil causes the cost of plastic widgets to shrink appreciably, I think you are very wrong. If you are saying that the total cost of the Iraq war should be rolled into the cost of plastic widgets, I think you are very wrong.
growlist 7y ago
Extremely unlikely any of us alive now will be alive to see it. Oil is just far too useful for us to be able to replace easily, and choosing not to replace it would take our lifestyles back hundreds of years. Hardly anyone wants that.
- sureaboutthis 7y ago
  Oil may be the easiest solution to the original problem. If there were no oil, would there have been a different solution that might have been as easy?
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Up until the sixties or seventies asbestos was just far too useful to be replaced easily. It was used everywhere - as filler, as insulation, as fire retardant, and was so cheap it even got used as bulking agent, as fake snow for Xmas and in packaging. We got rid of it in new applications in just a few years once it was realised that the health cost was far in excess of its utility. It costs thousands to rip out some of the old insulation in buildings, especially where it's part of the fabric of the building. Lead in petrol was far to useful to be replaced, etc etc... I just think it's part of the new innovation debt coming due. It's only now coming due for plastics and oil and the extreme cost of profligate unconstrained use is starting to be realised.
  - JulianMorrison 7y ago
    It's basically a hubristic mistake to take "this substance is useful!" as sufficient justification to introduce it as a novelty in huge amounts without considering its whole lifetime flow through the world's cycles, physical and biological. It comes from thinking of the planet as infinite and able to absorb anything thrown into it, rather than a closed cycle life support system.
    - growlist 7y ago
      I'm not justifying anything and probably agree with you and NeedMoreTea in general. That said, asbestos and lead are barely comparable. Virtually every aspect of modern life is currently dependent on oil. You live in houses built with oil, wash yourself in water cleaned and transported in no small part with oil, drive on roads built with oil, wear clothes created with oil in one way or another, and eat food grown with oil. To think that we can unwind the phenomenally deep and complex interweaving of oil into the global economy in short order without massive disruption is not realistic. I'm no fan of oil either, but let's not get carried away.
MasterPI 7y ago
I doubt the world would have been able to enjoy such a technological progress in general without oil to even have computers and be able to post comments on here for example. Not denying that the oil industry hasn't got any sins.
cafebabbe 7y ago
Without fossil fuels, no Haber-Bosch process. No Haber-Bosch process, no fertilizers. No fertilizers, no food security.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  And that's just one of the many ways that hydrocarbons are woven into critical parts of the global economy. You can't just snap your fingers, make oil go away and expect modern civilization to keep existing as it currently does. It took ~150yr to get the oil industry where it is today and that is with a massive financial incentive. People need lubricants, tars, fuels, plastics, everything that oil makes cheaply and well. In the absence of strong organic (not artificial, i.e. regulatory compliance) incentives to stop using oil it will almost certainly take much longer than 150yr to reduce oil usage for energy/fuel to negligible levels. We will likely never stop using oil for plastics, fertilizers and other "critical to modern civilization" things until something that's cheaper and equivalent or better comes along for every last use case. Keep in mind that whatever we have next will have tradeoffs too.
  - dTal 7y ago
    Oil-the-chemical and oil-the-fuel can be considered seperate products. Demand-wise, all uses besides fuel are trivial. Even plastic is only 4%. The spritz of 10W-40 on my bike chain is of 0 consequence compared to the gallon of gas burned in a typical daily commute by car. We're never going to run out of oil for all those important non-fuel uses. Even if every oil well ran dry tomorrow, oil-the-chemical is quite easy to make from carbon waste feedstock. I don't think it's right to estimate such a long time for oil to become obsolete as a fuel, just because we use it for other things too.
  - growlist 7y ago
    Couldn't put it better.
- ibz 7y ago
  Ironically, it's actually chemical fertilizers that destroy our food security long term.
S_A_P 7y ago
This comment means that you don't completely understand the full scope of what the oil industry does. I say that as someone who wants to see less dependence on the oil industry.
- Dumblydorr 7y ago
  It's alright, we can have dozens of uses still and simultaneously tackle ICE engines first while other solutions scale up.

For certain values of 'okay'. There is no doubt that oil and plastics have been hugely beneficial in many respects. The problem is that the cost is now apparent and we must stop gorging on them. Reduction in plastic and oil can only be a good thing but let's not pretend it doesn't require substantial changes in the way that we all live - its not just disposable straws here. Reading the article, the projection is that this could "cut petrochemical demand growth to one-third of its historical pace, to about 1.5% a year". That's good enough. I don't want to see reduced growth rate. I want to see shrinkage.

kace91 7y ago
I think OP's comment was a commentary about the oil industry, rather than oil and derivate products themselves. As in, there might be a lot of downsides to reducing or getting rid of plastic use, but the fall of oil giants is not one of them.
cardamomo 7y ago
> That's good enough. I don't want to see reduced growth rate. I want to see shrinkage. Perhaps you mean that's not good enough? I, too, want to see the oil industry shrink. To my mind, it's downright dangerous to devote such a large part of the global economy to an industry that is literally putting our planet in peril. The larger conversation we need to have, however, is what a post- growth economy should look like.
- Angostura 7y ago
  I did mean not thank you :) I also agree about the conversation about post-growth
lucideer 7y ago
> let's not pretend it doesn't require substantial changes in the way that we all live Actually, I don't really believe this. I do use/consume a lot of plastic, but I find in practice that in the vast majority of cases, the decision to make those items from plastic is an arbitrary one. The market has made decidision on my behalf, and provided me with a range of plastic options, with very few non-plastic options, for an application that has no hard dependency on plastic. Electronics would be one of the big ones, and can largely be (and often are) made with aluminium* casings. Fittings have similar metallic alternatives. PCBs are something of an exception here: yes, there are aluminium/metallic substrates, but even those are epoxy-insulated. Most other plastic uses are similar stories: we're provided with a range of exclusively plastic choices by the market, but that doesn't make it necessary on the production end. Plastic is usually cheaper, yes, but this is a result of a long chain of subsidies, wars, and other market interference. This doesn't reflect true production cost. * Worth noting, the environmental impact story for aluminium/other metals isn't too great either, but that's a separate topic.
- Scaevolus 7y ago
  You don't need subsidies for injection molded plastics to be massively cheaper to produce than any comparable material. Machining aluminum is very expensive, and die casting metal requires much more expensive tooling than plastics.
- challenger22 7y ago
  The true cost of plastic is cheaper by far than aluminum or other alternatives. Injection molding and other plastic technologies are miraculously productive and energy efficient compared to many other forms of production. The U.S. produces 12,000,000 barrels of oil per day. 4,380,000 barrels per year. According to https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/14/u-s-tax-code-4-6-billion-u-s-oil-company-subsidies-per-year/ https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/14/u-s-tax-code-4-6-billio..., we also subsidise this production by $4B per year, or about a dollar a barrel. If you are saying that a $1 per barrel subsidy for oil causes the cost of plastic widgets to shrink appreciably, I think you are very wrong. If you are saying that the total cost of the Iraq war should be rolled into the cost of plastic widgets, I think you are very wrong.

growlist 7y ago

Extremely unlikely any of us alive now will be alive to see it. Oil is just far too useful for us to be able to replace easily, and choosing not to replace it would take our lifestyles back hundreds of years. Hardly anyone wants that.

sureaboutthis 7y ago
Oil may be the easiest solution to the original problem. If there were no oil, would there have been a different solution that might have been as easy?
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Up until the sixties or seventies asbestos was just far too useful to be replaced easily. It was used everywhere - as filler, as insulation, as fire retardant, and was so cheap it even got used as bulking agent, as fake snow for Xmas and in packaging. We got rid of it in new applications in just a few years once it was realised that the health cost was far in excess of its utility. It costs thousands to rip out some of the old insulation in buildings, especially where it's part of the fabric of the building. Lead in petrol was far to useful to be replaced, etc etc... I just think it's part of the new innovation debt coming due. It's only now coming due for plastics and oil and the extreme cost of profligate unconstrained use is starting to be realised.
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  It's basically a hubristic mistake to take "this substance is useful!" as sufficient justification to introduce it as a novelty in huge amounts without considering its whole lifetime flow through the world's cycles, physical and biological. It comes from thinking of the planet as infinite and able to absorb anything thrown into it, rather than a closed cycle life support system.
  - growlist 7y ago
    I'm not justifying anything and probably agree with you and NeedMoreTea in general. That said, asbestos and lead are barely comparable. Virtually every aspect of modern life is currently dependent on oil. You live in houses built with oil, wash yourself in water cleaned and transported in no small part with oil, drive on roads built with oil, wear clothes created with oil in one way or another, and eat food grown with oil. To think that we can unwind the phenomenally deep and complex interweaving of oil into the global economy in short order without massive disruption is not realistic. I'm no fan of oil either, but let's not get carried away.

MasterPI 7y ago

I doubt the world would have been able to enjoy such a technological progress in general without oil to even have computers and be able to post comments on here for example. Not denying that the oil industry hasn't got any sins.

cafebabbe 7y ago

Without fossil fuels, no Haber-Bosch process. No Haber-Bosch process, no fertilizers. No fertilizers, no food security.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
And that's just one of the many ways that hydrocarbons are woven into critical parts of the global economy. You can't just snap your fingers, make oil go away and expect modern civilization to keep existing as it currently does. It took ~150yr to get the oil industry where it is today and that is with a massive financial incentive. People need lubricants, tars, fuels, plastics, everything that oil makes cheaply and well. In the absence of strong organic (not artificial, i.e. regulatory compliance) incentives to stop using oil it will almost certainly take much longer than 150yr to reduce oil usage for energy/fuel to negligible levels. We will likely never stop using oil for plastics, fertilizers and other "critical to modern civilization" things until something that's cheaper and equivalent or better comes along for every last use case. Keep in mind that whatever we have next will have tradeoffs too.
- dTal 7y ago
  Oil-the-chemical and oil-the-fuel can be considered seperate products. Demand-wise, all uses besides fuel are trivial. Even plastic is only 4%. The spritz of 10W-40 on my bike chain is of 0 consequence compared to the gallon of gas burned in a typical daily commute by car. We're never going to run out of oil for all those important non-fuel uses. Even if every oil well ran dry tomorrow, oil-the-chemical is quite easy to make from carbon waste feedstock. I don't think it's right to estimate such a long time for oil to become obsolete as a fuel, just because we use it for other things too.
- growlist 7y ago
  Couldn't put it better.
ibz 7y ago
Ironically, it's actually chemical fertilizers that destroy our food security long term.

S_A_P 7y ago

This comment means that you don't completely understand the full scope of what the oil industry does. I say that as someone who wants to see less dependence on the oil industry.

Dumblydorr 7y ago
It's alright, we can have dozens of uses still and simultaneously tackle ICE engines first while other solutions scale up.