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So it's hard to change? You don't say... Do we have any choice about it? No.

• ben_w 4y ago
  Strictly speaking, something can be simultaneously necessary for survival and yet still impossible. While I am optimistic about getting us off fossil fuels, if it turns out they are actually necessary for even one thing, then that thing, whatever it is, logically cannot be in the long-term future of humanity.
  • dredmorbius 4y ago
    Agreed very nearly in full. Though on something being obligately dependent on some input or process: if that is one of a very small number of uses and both supply and consequence effects can be managed (e.g., we won't run out of supply in any conceivably meaningful timeframe and we can manage consequences), that usage might persist. Limiting petroleum usage to material feedstocks could be tolerable if: - That occurs at rates such that exhaustion isn't a meaningful risk. - Any environmental impacts, including but not limited to CO2 emissions, are compensated for. Those are themselves both steep requirements, but not utterly inconceivable. The pre-industrial utilisation of natural oil and tar seeps for uses such as lamp oil, sealing ships hulls, and the like, seem to me to have been at least reasonable. It wasn't until we started shipping the material in bulk within and between countries that major problems started emerging. That said: ice-core studies have detected atmospheric CO2 shifts and heavy metal contamination (mostly mercury and lead) dating to paeleolithic times (presumably from deforestation) and Roman mining activities during the Republic and Empire periods. Activities we think of as de minimus may in fact not be.