Edward64 is correct on how I meant it. Thanks for putting it so well.
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Originally Posted by Solecismic
full stop" stuff, plugging your ears, covering your eyes, refusing to discuss anything... it's a religion, not science. It's sad, because this is what's going to lead to enormous suffering, the "let's sacrifice everything, let China produce everything, pretend all this is having even the tiniest impact on the climate, but above all, do not question me" approach
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On the contrary, I'm arguing for opening our eyes to the reality in front of us. I'm on the opposite side of refusing to discuss, but that discussion has to be based on the facts as we know them, not on wishful thinking.
The free market has absolutely not always solved these problems in time. That's just plain not true, and 'in time' has already passed. I'm open to being rebutted with facts. So far in this thread, one outdated study that mostly agreed with position I articulated had been cited. Feel free to tell me where I'm wrong on oil, on the basic
facts of the situation. A few guiding questions:
- How is the fact that China is trying to monopolize rare earths different than them trying to monopolize aluminum (which we already need), OPEC (who controls 80% of the world's oil reserves) /others trying to control the supply of crude, or any other key resource? If you think it's a viable course of action to be resource-independent in the modern world, explain why & how as it relates to these resources.
- Global consumption of crude oil is over 35 billion barrels per year (as of 2016, it's higher now), and rising. The last time we discovered that much was roughly 1980. 2015 was the best recent year, at just over 20 bn. And it's actually worse than that sounds, because most of what is being discovered is expensive to extract. What logical reason do we have to say this is sustainable?
- Most estimates say we have 45-50 years of oil left. Of course we don't have anywhere near that long before economic disaster; that happens when we can't produce the amount we need at an affordable price. Estimates on when that point arrives vary, but the pessimistic end is less than a decade, the optimistic end 15-20 years from now barring another shale-oil level breakthrough; that would buy us another 5-10 years, but given the number of products we depend on affordable oil for my argument is simple; we need to be phasing absolutely as many of them as we can out now and replacing them with alternatives. That both buys more time and makes the eventual shortfall that much easier to absorb. Anything that 'might be possible a decade from now' is simply too late to matter. My question here is what basis do we have to say this isn't a crisis, that we have any responsible path other than transitioning as much as possible as soon as possible off of oil dependency? What basis do we have to say we have plenty of time to wait for inventions to show up and time to refine them, implement them, and so on before the crunch hits?
I will say I do find the 'free market will solve it' argument tempting. I'd like to believe that. I think a fairly cursory view of human history belies that though. We have had a brief period of about 150 years, depending on how you measure it, of cheap and widely available energy based on consuming resources which are not renewable. This is something that just from a logical point of view has never been sustainable. I don't want to bury my head in the sand and say 'let the millennials figure it out'. IMO the facts as I understand them admit only one conclusion; the time for correcting course isn't just here, it's long past. Mitigating the damage, or not, are the only remaining possibilities.