3 ms·

Because no one is incentivized to prevent and clean up spills

• jimmygrapes 5y ago
  What incentives are needed? I'll grant that spills and such are inevitable somewhere, so how could prevention of those also be incentivized? Who exactly needs to be incentivized? For clarification I'm a rare breed of (educated) environmentalist that believes we need to continue domestic oil production, albeit with significant consideration for the immediate and long term consequences of the operation. I agree that we need better ways to capture and distribute energy, and that we needed it a long time ago, and that every second we don't have it, shit gets worse for the future. I understand, and fight for it daily in a variety of ways. But I'm also aware that we need affordable energy to sustain the cultural aspects we all adore. We need energy NOW in order to develop the methods we needed years ago and do our best to catch up and minimize the worst. "Teaching gas guzzlers a lesson" and other far more nuanced ideas in the same vein are the rhetoric du jour, but that's short sighted enough to be dangerous imo. In short, I think we need to invest in the now to accelerate solutions for the future. Cold turkey won't work here.