[mcswell]

Donald Trump: "Drill, baby, drill!"

American oil companies: "It doesn't pay, oil prices are too low to make drilling worth while."

Donald Trump: "War, baby, war!" (Oil prices go up)

The rest of the world: "Renewables!"

Five or ten years from now, when renewables have largely replaced oil, gas and coal in most of the world, the US will be the only major country still using fossil fuels. And the rest of the world will be better off; the US, not so much.

[adrianN]

I wish I shared your optimism, but for fossil fuels to become irrelevant in ten years we’d need to ban the sale of ICE cars and fossil heating today. Not to mention industrial uses of fossil fuels.

[OutOfHere]

Did horses need to be banned for them to become irrelevant? The next car I buy voluntarily won't be ICE.

Heating is slower to change, but new homes and buildings could come with solar walls and ceilings.

[adrianN]

No (I think?), but every ICE sold today will still be on the road in ten years. The average car in Germany is about nine years old for example. And the vast majority of new cars sold are still not electric. If you want the majority of the cars on the road be electric in ten years you really need to stop selling ICEs today.

[ZeroGravitas]

Cars on the road is less relevant than electric miles driven.

Newer cars are driven further than older cars. There's a site with data on the Norweigen transition. That shows the average EV is now driving more miles per year than the average gas/petrol, phev or diesel car.

Replacing cars that don't get driven much is less important than replacing taxis and delivery vehuckes and super-commuters. Luckily the economics seems to already be there for that.

[iknowSFR]

It’s no coincidence that everything from energy sources to civil rights to military strategy to trade policy struggle to evolve from the same era the US became a super power, 1945-1955. Its downfall is its nostalgia for that period.

[JumpCrisscross]

> evolve from the same era the US became a super power, 1945-1955. Its downfall is its nostalgia for that period

Four out of our last five Presidents were born within 4 years of each other [1]. Three (Bush Jr., Clinton and Trump) were born in 1946.

Good news: 2024 was probably the last election where Boomers’ vote share was above 25%. In 2028, a significant number of states, including California and Texas, will have fewer than 20% of votes cast by Boomers. (194 EVs in 2028 and, using 2020 Census numbers, a further 243 EVs in ‘32.)

[1] https://www.loriferber.com/amp/research/presidential-facts-s...

[ninkendo]

I’m not convinced the changing demographics are going to change much in the way of electoral outcomes. It could just as easily be that conservatism is just a function of age, and GenX-ers will be voting more or less the same as the boomers did.

I’d love to be proven wrong on this.

[Dumblydorr]

That’s still important. GenX is smaller than the boomers or millennials.

If millennials and young men continue supporting maga and Trump’s party as they did last election, it won’t help much if Boomers expire.

Boomers also surprisingly voted slightly less for Trump than previous elections, his coalition in 24 expanded a bit to Hispanics and young men etc. he won due to inflation and covid imo, and probably due to sexism and only 107 days for Kamala to campaign (thanks Biden).

[amanaplanacanal]

It's hard to see how he can hold onto the anti inflation vote, given what he's done since them. Maybe the Republicans can gin up another covid.

[firebot]

Fossil fuels hopefully aren't going anywhere.

We should absolutely stop burning them, though.

For instance, modern medicine requires petroleum and there's no real alternatives at this time.

[mcswell]

OP here: I was referring to fossil fuels as things we burn to drive automobiles, airplanes and ships, or to power electric generators. So yes, petroleum will continue to have its uses, just not power. (Although my ten year timeline was hopelessly optimistic, I admit.)

[dgellow]

Doesn’t the term “fuel” imply they are burnt? Genuine question, I’m not native speaker

[chii]

Fuel is simply a noun for a source of energy, it doesn't need burning for something to be fuel. Look at nuclear fuel - it doesn't burn.

[firebot]

Yea. That last part is a bit incongruent. My bad.

Modern medicine relies heavily on petrochemical feedstocks (derived from fossil fuels.) These are used to make plastics, solvents, reagents, packaging, and some pharmaceuticals Many of these materials currently have no scalable, cost-effective substitutes.

[tim333]

Sadly fossil fuel use still seems on an up trend https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-fossil-fuel-consum...

[bluGill]

The US is investing in renewables. The president doesn't have nearly as much power as he thinks to stop it. He can slow things down

[throw3433]

That could make plastics even more cheaper. We need to encourage bio degradables before that happens

[gcanyon]

This is exactly what I came to post. It's like Trump was designed in a lab to destroy the US :-(

[Dumblydorr]

He was a hand grenade of identity and economic grievance thrown into the glassware shop of the federal government. He slashed, burned, grifted, and shot a missile into an elementary school. The worst president in history?

[Ylpertnodi]

Vince may be.

[xeonmc]

I like to cope optimistically that Trump is actually the God Emperor Leto II from Dune, the omniscient and visually hideous tyrant-messiah who is engineering the circumstances to “teach humanity a lesson they will remember in their bones”, and this is all his Golden Path to force humanity to grow wiser after his demise.

[ModernMech]

This is actually happening in a sense; because of Donald Trump, the entire world knows what it's like to live with an abusive narcissistic parent / partner now. Whether we get wise is yet to be seen.

[dgellow]

So far that has emboldened other abusive narcissistic “parents”, unfortunately