
Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/03/business/energy-environment/oil-supply.html
======
mxschumacher
Demand for oil&gas will continue to grow for a long time due to:

\- SUV/pick-up boom (America's best-selling car in 2018 is the F150 series!)
and more cars + trucks in countries like Brazil, India, China, Indonesia

\- crazy growth in air travel (look at order numbers of Airbus, see how many
airports are under construction, see miles traveled via plane)

\- simultaneous shift away from coal+ nuclear, giving a huge boost to natural
gas in the long term (LNG build-out is only now beginning)

\- the world getting richer (more and more humans are living like Westerners).
We're on a path towards $100tn/y world GDP and 10bn humans.

I provide more detail + resources on my blog:
[https://mxschumacher.xyz/post/long_oil_and_gas/](https://mxschumacher.xyz/post/long_oil_and_gas/)

~~~
irrational
Why are pick-ups so popular? I can understand if you are a construction
worker, farmer, etc. that actually needs a pickup truck; but why are they so
popular for other people? The vast majority of pickup trucks I see have beds
that are so clean that it is obvious that has never been used to haul even one
bag of cement or load of dirt.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I expect part of the reason is utility vs cost of ownership. You can commute
in a pickup but you can't move an apartment in a Prius (well not in one trip
:-).

If you look at the marginal cost of a second vehicle[1] it is quite high. Thus
you may be limited to owning exactly one vehicle, and that vehicle is going to
consume a chunk of your income (insurance/gas/maintenance). In that scenario
the most financially prudent choice can seem to be a truck over another
choice. Towing things is another aspect, if you vacation a lot by camping
rather than staying in hotels it costs less per day to camp/hike then to spend
it at a resort somewhere. Or boating/fishing, same calculus.

[1] Things like parking, insurance, inspection/license fees, maintenance all
add up. And the opportunity cost of that capital tied up in a car loan vs
doing something else.

~~~
irrational
But, it's like $50 or less a day to rent a huge uhaul truck. And an SUV can
easily haul a boat or other toys, plus keep gear covered and provide seating
for more people. If you really need to haul something that wont fit in the
back of the suv, you can always rent a uhaul trailer for about $20/day. Heck,
you can rent a large flat bed truck from home depot for about $20 for a few
hours that can probably haul more than an F-150.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
Perception is important. A lot of these decisions aren't made by people who
sat down and wrote down the numbers to arrive at the rational choice. But if I
_think_ I have utility for a pick up often because I like to _think_ I'm that
rugged, diy type of person, I'll _think_ it's rational to own a pickup and
assume the relative prices get massaged away.

/I drove a pick-up for a number of years for this reason until hybrid
crossovers became viable.

------
corodra
I have a hard time taking this article too seriously.

>not coming from the usual producers, but from Brazil, Canada, Norway and
Guyana — countries that are either not known for oil or whose production has
been lackluster in recent years.

Canada ranks 5 in oil exports, Norway 13, Brazil 21. Sure, Guyana belongs in
that sentence. But... uh, okay? Rank 5 is "not usual"?

Next part, wtf do you expect? Oil companies are going to bull rush to increase
their cash supply in the coming years due to gas car bans coming in the next
decades along with the push for renewable energy. Did people actually think
these multi billion dollar companies are going to just say, "Oh well, we had a
good run. We should take ourselves out to pasture now"?

>Years of moderate gasoline prices have already increased the popularity of
bigger cars and sports utility vehicles in the United States

I'm pretty sure that "demand" is a drop in the bucket to the past decade of
Chinese demand that's been increasing.

Fun point I really, really like: "The added production in Norway comes despite
the country’s embrace of the 2016 Paris climate agreement, which committed
nations to cut greenhouse-gas emissions."

Hmmm, so Norway taxes the shit out of oil(which they should, don't pretend I'm
for oil). What does that mean? Oh, let's see, 2018 oil tax rev was NOK 155
billion (17b USD), 2019 is estimated NOK 176 billion (19b USD). I have a truly
difficult time believing that the government will go, "No, we don't want that
money! Away with thee!" Especially in a country of 5.3million. That splits to
services among their citizens pretty well. Enough that if oil disappeared,
there are public services that are going to get cut back pretty badly.

Uh huh. At a 1.2 trillion NOK operating budget (131b USD), it'll hurt to lose,
what is that... oil taxes makes 12% of the gov's income? I'm trying to figure
out when the memo came out where we all started to believe political rhetoric.

Don't think for a second I'm "for oil". But I'm a realist. A lot more needs to
happen to end oil's stranglehold. Not drum circles, UN circle jerks climate
summits with teenagers crying nor bullshit "plant trees" PR stunts(past tree
planting stunts have real piss poor success rates of the trees surviving after
a year. Single digit percentages. And no one tries to learn from the past
ones.)

~~~
eloff
Also contributing probably is the rising risk that if you don't pump that oil
as fast as possible and sell it now, you might never be able to sell it. This
is weighing on the Saudi Aramco IPO. Although probably not as much as the
general opaque and untrustworthy reports from the Saudis as to how much oil
they have left.

We used to worry about peak oil, where a supply crunch would cause the price
to skyrocket. Now it's clear it will end in a whimper with demand just
trailing off until only the very cheapest producers are still in the market.
Too bad Canada, Brazil.

It's a good thing to be clear, and can't happen fast enough.

~~~
nradov
The notion of crude oil becoming a stranded asset seems a little silly. It
will be many decades before the transportation infrastructure transitions off
fossil fuels. And even then there will be demand for oil as a feed stock for
chemical manufacturing (plastics, fertilizers, etc). (I'm not claiming that
this is a good thing, it's just the economic reality.)

~~~
corodra
I can't remember where I saw the numbers and I'm pretty sure I'm off a bit.
But I think only half of all crude oil gets distilled into "fuel". The rest
ends up as plastics and other chemicals, as you mention. I just remember it's
a very significant of non-fuel oil use is out there. A quick google search, I
can't find the chart I saw. Maybe someone can chime in better on that?

Edit: Listen to Retric's comment below, not me on my stats

~~~
Retric
Worldwide, only 1/4 of oil is used for industry.

46% of oil is turned into gas. However, include diesel, aviation, plus boat
fuels and transportation adds up to 69% of oil used.

Home heating is 3%, and electricity is 1%.

------
bluedevil2k
I think it's naive to think that humans will leave any oil in the ground
despite climate change and any changes we enact to counteract it. We should
work from an assumption that all the oil in the ground is going to be dug up
and burned. It's too much money for some of these countries to ignore - the
article mentions Guyana, a poor country that now has a way to print money. It
also mentiones Venezuela, the country with the most oil reserves and the
country's desperate need for cash.

~~~
neuronic
The only solution would be to drastically reduce the value of oil and
therefore make it uneconomic to dig it up. The easy-access oil is decreasing
and extraction becomes more expensive.

~~~
mr__y
There is an "easy" solution to this problem - introduce a new (preferably
renewable) energy source that is an order of magnitude cheaper than oil.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
It already exists in the form of Solar/Wind + batteries + EV.

Also, as price decrease for this combo, tax fossil fuels for all the damages
caused to the environment (taxes to be used to help people switch to renewable
energy, and for this transition only otherwise they won't support that tax).

~~~
cartoonworld
There another angle to this--USA provides vast sums of other monetary aid to
oil production.

Since it has been a (or perhaps _the_ ) strategic commodity, nationally, since
WWI our foreign policy is in part directed at those supplies. We expend much
military might in the effort to acquire and maintain the alliances and
security of the transportation and production of the stuff.

A lot of the geopolitical game in the middle east is about the oil. Not "We're
gonna take over your country and take it it!" exactly, but the Suez Canal, the
Straits of Hormuz, international shipping lanes, and current geopolitical need
for a gas pipeline to supply natural gas to Europe drives a lot of jockeying,
international conflict, and of course, US strategic military bases, of which
there are many.

Also I read in the news that some government official put boots are on the
ground to protect a Saudi oil field (?...!)

So my response to your comment is: "Yes!" however, there will be a long
political battle with an absurdly well funded opposition for it.

~~~
shantly
Hm. That actually raises a good point—how long until _militaries_ can operate
without gasoline and diesel? Or even significantly reduce their use? Hard to
imagine anything competing with petroleum there in the mid-term future, which
mean subsidized production will continue to be necessary to any state that
wants to be able to self-sufficiently field an army worth having at all.

I mean I guess there's ethanol from plants. Maybe all that corn subsidy stuff
actually makes sense in a long-term strategic sense, then. Though you can ramp
that up inside a year if you need to and probably much faster by rationing
food & feed use of existing corn to repurpose most of it for fuel, so that's
probably not what they had in mind and it _is_ just a form of corruption.
Crazy, though, if arable land becomes directly correlated to ability to
support armored divisions.

~~~
pm90
Military consumption _pales_ in comparison to civilian consumption though. I
can see most large armed forces being OK with using whatever Oil and Gas is
produced domestically. Smaller nations without access to oil have a problem,
but they probably have smaller armed forces too.

------
rossdavidh
So, interesting and all, but not even mentioning what is happening to coal the
last few years seems like an odd omission. Coal is essentially disappearing
from the world's energy mix. As big as coal was, it takes a while to go away
completely, but the trend does not seem to be slowing down. By some estimates,
there are a lot of cases now where it is more expensive to keep running an
existing coal-fired power plant, than to replace it with solar or wind.

So, at least a substantial fraction of this oil is replacing coal, which
doesn't mean it's all ok for the climate change issue, but it seems like an
important point to be just leaving out of the story entirely.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Coal is down-trending in the USA, but it still makes up 30% of the electricity
in the USA. In other countries, especially China and India, coal is expected
to be burned in massive quantities for the next couple of decades. Granted,
they use much more efficient coal than the US does, but let's not act like
coal is disappearing overnight. It's been over 30% of the mix for decades and
it will continue to be so, in a global scale, for at least a decade.

~~~
rossdavidh
Well, what I'm reading is that coal is still increasing in China in absolute
terms, but declining as a percentage of the mix. If oil drops in price in the
way the article is suggesting, I would have to think that it would displace a
good chunk of that? At the very least, if there's some reason we think it
would not, the article should have explained why that is.

------
nabla9
This is incredibly good news for the developing world in the short- and medium
term, but really bad news for the long term. Cheap energy boosts economic
growth and well-being. Oil finds its comparative advantage relative to cheap
solar.

Globally liquid fuel production and consumption just goes up year after year
[https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/images/Fig6.png](https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/images/Fig6.png)

Reduced use of hydrocarbons in the west is nice but it's not going to offset
the demand in the developed world. The growth will slow down and stop in
decade or two.

~~~
jdjdjjsjs
The idea that the developing world will benefit from cheap oil is ridiculous.

The developing world is the one suffering from the impacts of global warming.
Several countries in Africa are suffering from wars worsened by climate change
driven migrations. Countries like India have a mix of cities running out of
water, cities flooded by water and cities drowning in pollution which is
almost certainly gonna erase years of people's lives eliminating any
improvements caused by better medicine.

Cheap oil, or expensive oil, are both bad for developing countries. It's
literally not possible to give the hundreds of millions of people in
developing countries a better future with fossil fuel driven growth.

All our thinking and planning has to start from that basic fact.

~~~
leftyted
The idea that people in the developing world won't benefit from fossil fuels
is a horrible lie. All of the claims you made (regarding flooding, wars, etc)
are unfalsifiable, two-points-make-a-line gibberish.

Carbon emissions may very well be a valid concern, but that concern is not
_obviously more valid_ than people dying of privation, a condition that _we
know for sure_ is solved by economic development (which, to date, requires
fossil fuels).

The idea of someone typing on some website about how people in the developing
world shouldn't burn fossil fuels to lift themselves out of poverty is
appalling. "How dare you" \-- or something.

~~~
guelo
Maybe it's appalling but it is true. The developing world cannot become as
rich as the developed world or everything collapses. The developed world needs
to become poorer.

~~~
leftyted
Time will tell. Either way, I'm fairly tired of interacting with people who
seeem to think they have exclusive access to a mainline from the future.

------
Ancalagon
I feel like there is literally no way for the average person to win this
fight. I can't even avoid plastic and oil use in my day-to-day life because I
live too far from the only farmers market in town, because its too expensive
to live any closer. The only way I can see that I could "win" is by buying a
large plot of land and essentially returning to living an 1800s style
agricultural lifestyle, but even that would probably be too difficult because
of the startup costs to buy the land, house, and equipment. I also don't feel
that many politicians understand and are popular enough to combat these
issues, what else are we supposed to do?

~~~
robocat
The amount of CO₂ we produce is correlated with our spending (embedded
energy), and our spending is usually related to our income.

If you have a good income, you likely produce a lot of CO₂, but you can also
afford to spend some time and money on offsetting activities.

For example, buy a plot of uneconomical farmland and plant good CO₂ absorbers,
maybe good nursery trees so you can return land to a more native state.
There's heaps of ways to do it, but check you are not being greenwashed.

You do need to do some research: building an energy efficient home, or buying
a Tesla feels good but might not actually be effective (and could easily be
net producer of CO₂ depending on other factors).

When I spend money, I figure 25% is embedded energy (e.g. employees in chain
go on overseas holiday). E.g. I guess $8 spent uses a litre of petrochemicals.

Edit: if anyone has good pointers to information about embedded energy per
dollar, I am interested. The above comment is mostly from my own thought
experiments.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Do you have a source for tesla being a net producer of CO2? Your assertion
goes against my understanding that even when powered by coal plants, it is
less CO2 per mile and over lifetime of vehicle as well.

~~~
robocat
Sorry, I probably shouldn't have mentioned Tesla since it tends to provoke
needless reaction.

However:

1\. A geeky acquantance bought a Tesla X in New Zealand. I think it cost
$200000. To me, that price implies a large amount of embedded energy. He felt
he was helping the world, but by my calculations it wasn't.

2\. In New Zealand a large amount of our power comes from hydroelectricity, so
electric car owners are often smug. But every marginal _extra_ kWh consumed
comes from gas, so electric cars here indirectly use hydrocarbons (that's
because virtually 100% of our hydro is already allocated). There are arguments
about efficiency, but those arguments are hollow for expensive cars, or for
low kilometres.

3\. The electric car industry would have happened even without Tesla. They
rightly claim some speedup of the market, which implies some gains (if we are
careful to ensure electric cars don't cause more CO₂ than other transport
options through other side effects). I don't see buyers being careful about
finding real facts, and sellers don't really care to give them, so it is hard
to know where the truth lies.

4\. We import a lot of used cars from Japan, something like a second-hand
Prius will usually be far better for the environment for most people than a
Tesla IMHO. Obviously non-car choices, or to offset the CO₂ might be better
still.

~~~
Ancalagon
I also want to point out a lot of CO2 comes from the manufacturing process as
well, and buying a lightly used vehicle that is a hybrid or runs on gas might
actually be better than buying a new car.

------
AtlasBarfed
Carbon tax Carbon tax Carbon tax

It sucks that as BEVs chase ICEs and become more prevalent that will drop
demand of oil and therefore oil will get cheaper.

I only hope that the higher extraction costs of current reserves make a floor
for gasoline that supply/demand curves can't go under fundamentally, and that
BEVs can beat that.

But a goddamn rational, common sense carbon tax would fix a whole lot of
things that are wrong with the world.

~~~
cr0sh
> It sucks that as BEVs chase ICEs and become more prevalent that will drop
> demand of oil and therefore oil will get cheaper.

Well - that's kinda good news (if it works that way) for me and my Jeep...

I'd love for there to be a real practical BEV Jeep (or similar off-road
vehicle) - but the truth is, the battery tech just isn't there yet.

There is no way to fit a battery pack into a vehicle the size of my 2004 TJ
(which is a classic 2-door style Jeep - smaller than the 4-door JK and JL
models most people have bought since), while still allowing for a 100+ mile
off-road trip.

One relatively recent attempt (which was a 3rd party conversion of a JK - and
far, far outside my budget) only got 70 miles or so on a charge - and had to
be trailered out to the trail at that.

I certainly hope that the technology gets there, though - the upsides of
electric motors for off-roading would be phenomenal. But until it can take me
to the trail, do the trail, then get back to pavement on a single "fill-up" \-
it will continue to be a non-starter for me and others. Ideally, current top-
of-line BEV vehicles would need to double (or maybe triple) their range to be
able to apply that to off-roading and gain something close to ICE.

Either that, or some way to carry a small and fast way to recharge the battery
while on the trail. With currently off-road vehicles, you can carry cans of
gasoline with you easily for such needs. That's just not possible (currently)
with a BEV type of system.

~~~
AtlasBarfed
100 miles is very doable with current BEV tech. A skateboard design will drop
the center of gravity, can be armored better than most other designs.

Battery tech will get there. Electric motors will deliver more torque and
independent torque vectoring will open up even more terrain to ruin.

Range can probably be done with a range extending generator, and PVs on the
roof can charge while you camp.

But I'm not going to shed tears that BEVs don't fit the 200 mile offroad romp
use case. BEVs won't come to Jeep segments until some other commercial
application does it. Jeep buyers generally don't care about the environment
when it comes down to it, they've been buying horribly inefficient dinosaur
burners for decades and really aren't any different than Hummer buyers.

------
WhompingWindows
The US had the single largest increases in crude oil and LNG production in
history in previous years. These other smaller producers are a drop in the
bucket compared to the massive increases seen in the USA. These two stark
facts may help explain why US politicians are reticent to back climate science
or carbon taxation...why would they back something to curtail resource
extraction that's making a KILLING in their red states? Especially when they
get a tidy % of that killing in campaign donations and PAC-support.

If we think of climate denial and obstructionism through this lens, it makes
the GOP a lot easier to comprehend.

~~~
frogpelt
I think you are off here. California, Colorado and New Mexico are all in the
top ten of oil production.

Yes, some states are "red" and they tend to like their fossil fuels. But they
may be "red" in part because of their oil production, not the other way
around.

Also, many traditional "red" states like Texas, Arizona, Georgia, North
Carolina, Iowa, Indiana, Oklahoma, Florida, North and South Dakota have shown
to be very interested in increasing wind[1] and solar[2] energy capacities.

Sources:

[1]: [https://www.power-technology.com/features/us-wind-energy-
by-...](https://www.power-technology.com/features/us-wind-energy-by-state/)

[2]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/19/the-us-states-leading-the-
wa...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/19/the-us-states-leading-the-way-in-
solar.html)

------
rmrfrmrf
I mean, hopefully it's common knowledge now that it's impossible to combat
climate change by working within markets.

~~~
joshypants
It hasn't worked for the past 30 years. But any minute now it'll kick in, just
hold your breath and wait.

------
AnthonyMouse
It's not surprising that oil producers see the writing on the wall. If they
don't sell their reserves now, they'll either get a lower prices for them
later (because of lower demand as people switch to electric vehicles etc.), or
won't be able to sell them as a result of future legislation.

But making the price low now enables something they might not like -- it makes
it cheaper to enact a carbon tax, because consumers won't feel it as much.
Especially if you use it to fund a dividend, you can then make the tax (and
corresponding dividend) quite large, and not get many complaints because
people are getting back more than increase in fuel cost over what they're
accustomed to paying.

If gas drops to $2/gallon when people are used to $3, raising it to $4 with a
tax but then giving everyone the $2 back makes people happy, because now they
have an extra $1 at the expense of the oil companies. And an extra $2 if they
buy an electric car.

------
buboard
Hmm .. maybe don't buy into that SaudiAramco IPO

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
Expect a lot of news articles to be published explaining that oil remains the
future despite the urgent need to get rid of it

1) The world's biggest banks will do their best to find gullible buyers of
SaudiAramco' fees (taking nice fees in the process)

2) the commercial media in every industry (financial or not) knows that a lot
of money will be distributed to anyone who promote such stories (through ads,
exclusive content, or else)

3) that's enough to have thousands of writers pumping articles depicting oil
as a necessity / necessary evil, while owners of that oil are just trying to
dump it as it becomes a thing of the past.

------
torpfactory
"I hope that humanity will be able to free itself from its addiction of fossil
fuels (arguably it is the primary reason for violent conflict in the last 30
years and the driving force behind climate change), but my bet is that things
will get worse for a lot longer before we even reach the inflection point of
“peak oil”.

Change must happen. Change will happen. I don’t think the oil and gas industry
is anywhere near to disappearing. Given the current valuation of many
integrated oil majors, the favorable growth and interest rate environment, I
believe that it is a good time to invest in oil companies."

I love the cynicism of this perspective: We are well aware the world will burn
because of this technology, but hey, you can make a buck now, so keep
perpetuating the status quo. These kind of opinions are so frustrating.

~~~
bilbo0s
What was eye opening to me is that, if the GP is to be believed, is that
people keep buying F150s?

Clearly, not everyone believes in the idea of climate change. (In fact, if
that factoid is correct, a plurality of automobile consumers don't? That's a
"wow" moment for me.)

~~~
cr0sh
Something to keep in mind also is that today's F150 is not the same as
"yesterday's" F150.

Today's F150 is made out of mostly aluminum - not steel.

Today's F150 only comes in 4 and 6 cylinder models. 8 cylinder was dropped,
and I think the smaller engines are turbocharged to make up for the difference
(what if anything this does for emissions or fuel usage, I am not certain).

There are probably more than a few other differences as well that might make
the vehicles objectively better than their forebears.

That isn't to say they are better than other options, just that they are
possibly and likely better than what they used to be - but are still
frequently used as "scare fodder" for a public who doesn't generally follow or
understand how the vehicle has changed.

~~~
rootusrootus
> 8 cylinder was dropped

That's incorrect, you can definitely still spec it with a 5.0L V8. The twin
turbo V6 is the range topping engine, however. And it isn't especially fuel
efficient unless you never ask it to do anything hard. We have an F150 with
the ecoboost 3.5L and it's fantastic when towing our RV, but it gets 10 mpg
while doing so.

In the end you can't really get around physics. Heavy pickup, takes a lot of
fuel to make it move, even if you try to reduce pumping losses with smaller
engines.

------
algaeontoast
I still genuinely don't understand the elitist and patronizing view that
developing and/or developed countries should just stop traveling by air or
travel significantly less by air?

In reality, even if all the rich people stopped flying on planes, plenty of
other people would just keep doing it. I don't think poor people really care
too much about being guilted by rich people, led alone being told someone else
knows better than them how they should spend their hard earned money / live
their lives.

------
olivermarks
It's hard to know what to believe anymore. There were endless articles about
'peak oil' a few years ago.

~~~
hinkley
We had articles about this in the 80's too.

What happened then? Better mapping tools to identify oil-bearing structures,
and better catalysts to crack oil. Those catalysts have been worked on since
then and they're many times bigger now (I can't recall why this matters).

At some point we developed horizontal drilling. All these things were too
expensive when oil was cheaper. What other processes are waiting in the wings?

~~~
aidenn0
Another thing that happened is that growth of oil usage declined. From 1950 to
1968, worldwide oil usage quadrupled; that's an annual growth rate of about
3.9%. In the past 50 years it's doubled, that's an annual growth rate of about
1.4%. If usage had continued growing at the 4% rate, we would have already
exhausted today's P1 reserves.

By the 80s it was clear that oil prices were back on the decline, so many
thought demand might return to the earlier growth rate (making the 70s crisis
a "hiccup" rather than having a permanent affect).

------
pfortuny
Funny how at the same time the Norwegian Government Fund is divesting from oil
and gas exploration[1].

[1][https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/08/norways-1tn-
we...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/08/norways-1tn-wealth-fund-
to-divest-from-oil-and-gas-exploration)

~~~
hodder
Diversification.

------
gadders
Remember when everyone was talking about peak oil?

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2018/06/29/what-
ev...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2018/06/29/what-ever-
happened-to-peak-oil/#76f1e839731a)

~~~
swebs
Yes, and as the article says, we've past that point in the mid 2000's, which
is why companies have resorted to fracking.

~~~
gadders
If more oil is being found and extracted than before, then we haven't reached
peak oil. Peak oil never referred to one extraction method.

------
exabrial
[https://archive.ph/MIKOH](https://archive.ph/MIKOH)

------
ThomPete
Its important to realise that oil is not just for energy but for the 95% of
products, machinery and materials that make modern life possible. Roughly 50%
is for other things than energy and without oil most of us would either not
live today And live much poorer lives.

------
mikelyons
Whenever we grow, the universe will test us. This is an example of temptation,
will we resist? Will we find another way? Or will we double down on our
biggest existential threat.

Am I looking at this the wrong way? Help me to understand a more reasonable
way to look at it.

------
mlinksva
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Innovation_and_Carbon_D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Innovation_and_Carbon_Dividend_Act_of_2019)

------
jeffdavis
Can someone comment on:

[http://projectvesta.org](http://projectvesta.org)

And it's viability? It seems to offer a way to scale carbon sequestration in
step with fossil fuel extraction.

------
ilaksh
Oh no! Demand for oil is going down and cutting into profits! Better start a
major war!

------
ZeroGravitas
One neat solution is to have a variable gas tax which rises and falls in near
opposite to the price swings, but also slowly grows over time to account for
carbon and pollution costs. This gives businesses and consumers an easy way to
plan future costs.

~~~
fyfy18
Isn't that pretty much what is happening with fuel taxes in Europe? Even
though the price of oil is around half what it was a decade ago, fuel prices
are still pretty much the same.

[https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/fuel-
pric...](https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/fuel-prices-and-
taxes/assessment-2)

(I wonder if diesel taxes are going to be brought inline with petrol taxes
after dieselgate has shown diesel is worse for the environment)

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LatteLazy
Opec is a price fixing association of the most of the world's worst countries.
From funding terror to obscene inequality to political and religious
oppression. But if it weren't for them, we'd be in a much worse position on
climate change...

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selectodude
OPEC hasn’t had the power to fix prices in probably a decade now. Saudi Arabia
barely complies and there’s way too much oil coming out of North America for
them to do a whole lot.

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indue
I wouldn't call a 2.5% increase over 2 years a flood.

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The_rationalist
Meanwhile, mad men fight nuclear because of their own brain bugs.

