Most oil you buy indirectly. By buying groceries for example. Most non-local groceries could not be sold without oil-based transportation. In fact, if we stopped having oil-based transportation, we'd face starvation. Alternative fuel trucking and shipping is just not there yet in terms of scale.
> Alternative fuel trucking and shipping is just not there yet in terms of scale.
It would be there if we wanted to make the necessary infrastructure investment. Currently everyone's looking at amazing new battery technology to enable electric transportation, but that isn't the only way to get there. We could be electrifying the interstate highway system so that cars can get power directly from the roads, and only need batteries for short local trips.
If we had wanted to enable electric transportation, say, forty years ago that would have been the only option. It would have been expensive but we could have done it. Now, batteries are good enough that we have a choice, but I still think electrifying the highways ought to be something we're seriously thinking about doing.
I like the idea of a big spend on electric vehicles. The government essentially buys your petro clunker and gives you a $20k tax credit toward an electric vehicle. Maybe shoot for 5 million vehicles a year for only $100 billion per year. Some of the money could come from a gas/CO2 tax.
Electric roadways aren’t mutually exclusive to a credit either. I think putting solar roofs over roadways might be interesting for energy use and keeping the roadway safer. On sensitive areas you might keep the roads from getting snow and ice buildup in the winter.
Another way to get more EVs faster is for EV tax credits to apply to conversions as well as new vehicles. Let's say you have a Honda Civic. Ideally, you'd be able to buy a kit from Honda or a 3rd party that has all the parts including battery boxes and hire your local mechanic to install it.
Right now, hardly anyone does conversions except well-motivated hobbyists because many of the parts have to be made from scratch and you have to do a lot of custom engineering per vehicle. Also the parts that are available tend to be expensive and produced in low volume.
I suppose that's my point. I was being a bit sarcasitic, but if we're going to use oil, we should transport it in the safest and most environmentally friendly way possible. If we don't want to use oil, pass lass preventing or limiting its use. Making oil transport be worse helps nobody.
Well, that's the strategy right? We can't cut our addiction to oil in one go, it would kill us. So we make oil more and more expensive, and in parallel we take that money and help get alternative energies to where they need to be.
So I agree that it would have made more ecological sense to say "sure, build your pipeline, but we'll take a steadily increasing cut for every gallon that goes through it, and we're going to spend it on developing solar/hydro/nuclear"
If the pipeline is still profitable, great! The net environmental impact will be positive. If not... tant pis
Which is how it was going to work, since canada has a carbon tax (i mean, it wouldnt be as it flows down the pipeline, but at the point where its used, if in canada, but its kind of the same in the end)
Just a reminder that net environmental impact is not just "how efficient the transportation is" and how much CO2 is emitted, etc etc. It's also about tail risk and what the effects may be if leaks affect local watersheds. And due to the physics of oil pipelines, leaks are basically inevitable. These need to be taken into account when assessing what oil transport is "worse."
These have very tangible effects not only on wildlife but humans who say are getting their water from a contaminated water table.
