[vec]

That's exactly backwards. Cheaper oil will lower the operating costs of power plants that use oil as a fuel, which raises the bar that newer technologies will have to clear to be comparatively more efficient, which will in turn slows the rate of adoption for renewables.

CO2 emissions are cumulative, and there's far more CO2 still sequestered in as-yet-unburned fossil fuels than even the rosiest estimates say our atmosphere could safely absorb. That implies that we're going to have to leave some sizable fraction of our planet's remaining oil in the ground, permanently.

From a long term betterment of the species standpoint, what we really want to be seeing is the global supply of oil starting to taper off and costs per barrel drifting slowly but steadily upward.

[war1025]

From what I understand, running a power plant off oil is done by roughly no one because it is super cost-ineffective compared to existing alternatives. Coal and natural gas are the main fossil fuels for electric plants.

The space where oil is competitive is transportation. We are seeing massive gains in efficiency in that space.

[vec]

Power plant doesn't just mean fixed electrical generation plant. There's probably a gas-fired power plant in your car, for example. And you're correct that the main place fuel oil is price-competitive is in transportation, but that's less a story about cars and more one about the massive amounts of extremely dirty bunker fuel consumed by marine shipping vessels.

Even with electrical generation it's a mixed bag. The recent US fracking boom has also dramatically lowered the prices for natural gas. Natural gas burns cleaner than coal, so to the extent it's pushing us away from coal consumption it's serving to buy us some time. But it's still desequestering carbon, which means we're still going to need to stop well before we run out of available natural gas to burn.

[war1025]

I think we're just talking past each other without actually disagreeing on anything.

My whole point is that I believe clean energy can stand on its own feet, and that when it does, fossil fuel use will plummet dramatically to almost nothing.

In the meantime, having a plentiful supply of fossil fuels is good for the economy and for national security. The whole point is to have a ton available but never need to use it.