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No one is quitting oil this decade. All this navel gazing over how hard or easy it would be to do and whether we should use bikes or hydrogen or the power of dr

No one is quitting oil this decade. All this navel gazing over how hard or easy it would be to do and whether we should use bikes or hydrogen or the power of dreams is just a weird pretense. It honestly makes me think more and more about Don't Look Up

vman81 3y ago
Anecdotally, I did. At least, I am no longer buying 400L of oil for my furnace every month, and our cars are cheap(ish) EVs. So at least for direct oil usage I went to zero.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  And all the plastics you use?
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  My friend. For everyone like you, there are 2 people in China and another in India who JUST got rich enough to buy their first (low mpg / kpl) vehicle :(
  - ericd 3y ago
    From what I can tell, it seems like the Chinese are doing a pretty good job making EVs affordable for their populace. And you’d be stunned at the huge numbers of e-bikes/scooters they’ve been using for the last decade+. Swarms of those things, almost silent. It’s pretty cool to witness.
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      In Mao's time everyone got a bike, and that was a huge advance. Today everyone get's a car. Some might be EVs (fueled by coal power) but others are not. And every year world CO2e emissions go up. And every day we pretend it's ok because it went up by less that it would have if we had put it up even more. But we need them to come down, not just go up less quickly. And we needed that in 2000. Not "we might manage it in 2030".
  - acdha 3y ago
    I get the temptation of doom porn but progress is progress: there’s no world in which people who could be polluting instead going electric is worse. I would also look at both the rise of cheap EVs and the size of the ICEs people outside of rich western countries are buying. American SUVs are an outlier caused by heavy subsidies but the cost of buying and operating them is prohibitive in many places, not to mention narrow roads and storage cutting into the appeal. There’s a reason why you see so many cool cars only available outside of the U.S. market and most of them get whole number multiples better mileage than the median American vehicle.
    - LatteLazy 3y ago
      Every year emissions go up when we need them to stop. Then we congratulate ourselves. And I am a doom munger when all I see is hopium.
jmclnx 3y ago
Yes, and what screwed us all over were the anti-nuke people. If the US could have built nuclear reactors over the past 40+ years, we would only need to worry about the transition to EVs. Granted the corruption surrounding the building of these plants would also have needed to be eliminated, probably the hardest part :( BTW, I support the environment, but I always have and still believe nuclear would have been the best choice. Then we would have time to transition to other sources keeping nuclear as a backup. So now, we are in a hurry up we will all soon die mode. For this, I blame the anti-nuke crowd, I would not be surprised if the coal and oil industries funded these people.
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  Respectfully I actually think your comment highlights THE core problem with emissions. Climate change is a huge complex problem with 1001 causes and each cause has 1001 possible solutions. But people all pick a single solution. And then insist on it. Renewable people won't support nuclear, nuclear people won't support biomass, biomass people won't support renewables. Ditto reductioneers and public transport enthusiasts and anti-car people. And that is just electricity for car transport, that offers nothing to air travel or construction or agriculture. So everyone sits on their arse saying "it's not MY fault, I recycled a tin can once!". Everyone is saying the same thing: I will only support things others don't and unless I get my own way we should do nothing. So we have, as a species, all agreed to do nothing. But everyone wants to pretend THEY and THEIR solution would have worked, and THEY are the good guy.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Very well put. The root of the problem is far from simple and neither is the solution. I think people are also looking too much for a magic solution that allows them to keep going as is. Like CO2 capture. If we actually build this in quantities that actually make a dent in emissions, we'll be mining half the world for materials to make the installations and power them and ruin the other half to place them and store the captured carbon. It's just never going to be viable especially until we solve the emissions problem first. But it's the promise of a magic solution that keeps it on the map.

vman81 3y ago

Anecdotally, I did. At least, I am no longer buying 400L of oil for my furnace every month, and our cars are cheap(ish) EVs. So at least for direct oil usage I went to zero.

wkat4242 3y ago
And all the plastics you use?
LatteLazy 3y ago
My friend. For everyone like you, there are 2 people in China and another in India who JUST got rich enough to buy their first (low mpg / kpl) vehicle :(
- ericd 3y ago
  From what I can tell, it seems like the Chinese are doing a pretty good job making EVs affordable for their populace. And you’d be stunned at the huge numbers of e-bikes/scooters they’ve been using for the last decade+. Swarms of those things, almost silent. It’s pretty cool to witness.
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    In Mao's time everyone got a bike, and that was a huge advance. Today everyone get's a car. Some might be EVs (fueled by coal power) but others are not. And every year world CO2e emissions go up. And every day we pretend it's ok because it went up by less that it would have if we had put it up even more. But we need them to come down, not just go up less quickly. And we needed that in 2000. Not "we might manage it in 2030".
- acdha 3y ago
  I get the temptation of doom porn but progress is progress: there’s no world in which people who could be polluting instead going electric is worse. I would also look at both the rise of cheap EVs and the size of the ICEs people outside of rich western countries are buying. American SUVs are an outlier caused by heavy subsidies but the cost of buying and operating them is prohibitive in many places, not to mention narrow roads and storage cutting into the appeal. There’s a reason why you see so many cool cars only available outside of the U.S. market and most of them get whole number multiples better mileage than the median American vehicle.
  - LatteLazy 3y ago
    Every year emissions go up when we need them to stop. Then we congratulate ourselves. And I am a doom munger when all I see is hopium.

jmclnx 3y ago

Yes, and what screwed us all over were the anti-nuke people. If the US could have built nuclear reactors over the past 40+ years, we would only need to worry about the transition to EVs. Granted the corruption surrounding the building of these plants would also have needed to be eliminated, probably the hardest part :( BTW, I support the environment, but I always have and still believe nuclear would have been the best choice. Then we would have time to transition to other sources keeping nuclear as a backup. So now, we are in a hurry up we will all soon die mode. For this, I blame the anti-nuke crowd, I would not be surprised if the coal and oil industries funded these people.

LatteLazy 3y ago
Respectfully I actually think your comment highlights THE core problem with emissions. Climate change is a huge complex problem with 1001 causes and each cause has 1001 possible solutions. But people all pick a single solution. And then insist on it. Renewable people won't support nuclear, nuclear people won't support biomass, biomass people won't support renewables. Ditto reductioneers and public transport enthusiasts and anti-car people. And that is just electricity for car transport, that offers nothing to air travel or construction or agriculture. So everyone sits on their arse saying "it's not MY fault, I recycled a tin can once!". Everyone is saying the same thing: I will only support things others don't and unless I get my own way we should do nothing. So we have, as a species, all agreed to do nothing. But everyone wants to pretend THEY and THEIR solution would have worked, and THEY are the good guy.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Very well put. The root of the problem is far from simple and neither is the solution. I think people are also looking too much for a magic solution that allows them to keep going as is. Like CO2 capture. If we actually build this in quantities that actually make a dent in emissions, we'll be mining half the world for materials to make the installations and power them and ruin the other half to place them and store the captured carbon. It's just never going to be viable especially until we solve the emissions problem first. But it's the promise of a magic solution that keeps it on the map.