[tordrt]

The fossil fuel part doesn't seem like a rational decision to me.

Why are we pretending that fossil fuels dont provide an immense amount of value for humanity, and that its horrible to invest or support building out any fossil fuel production whatsoever.

Lets not do produce it ourselves, lets just instead outsource it to the gulfs and Russia…

[i_cannot_hack]

Nobody is pretending fossil fuels are not producing value, if they did not nobody would bother using them in the first place. The argument is about the fact that they produce relatively short term value for the person using them, at the externalized expense of polluting the atmosphere and causing long-term environmental instability and destruction for every subsequent generation for the foreseeable future. Coastal regions (and whole islands like the Maldives) disapppearing under the ocean is immense and ongoing value loss for humanity. Ocean acidification destroying marine ecosystems is an immense and ongoing value loss for humanity. More frequent and more extreme hurricanes is an an immense and ongoing value loss for humanity. And on and on...

[tordrt]

I think a lot of people actually dont realize the value it gives humanity. Lots of people think we would have been better of in an alternate universe where we never discovered oil & gas.

How is this short therm value for people using them? They are drivers of the most fundamental stuff in our day to day lives. Either enabling billions of people cheap efficient transport, efficient agriculture producing cheap food, cheap and efficient global shipping of goods, a great portable and ajustable source of electricity.

I think as of now its a question on how much you are willing to sacrifice human welfare over preserving current nature/environment. Extreme weather has largely been solved for humans, the trend is still less death and starvation caused by extreme weather, we are immensely adaptable and resilient.

Im not sure our current pace of reducing emissions is that horrible. There are reasons to why it takes time. I might be too optimistic, but I think we will largely solve human issues. Nature as you point out, im worried about, although I know less about. And its hard to quantify what the value is for us.

[fpoling]

If oil and gas would not exist, then liquid fuel would be produced from coal. With the latest processes the cost of production is like 80 dollars per barrel, but with processes that Germans developed during WWII it was probably like twice of that in modern money.

In alternative universe that would be cheaper due to massive scale, but the era of very cheap liquid fuel would never happen. So electrical cars on big scale will happen much earlier. And given that coal is much more evenly distributed on Earth, one can speculate that there would be much less reasons for conflicts.

[tordrt]

I dont think this makes sense, given how insanely much more polluting coal is. You have to burn massive amounts of coal to power the liquid refinery, 50% of the energy lost essentially in the conversion process. In addition to that liquid coal has double the emissions of regular oil. Air quality would have been a disaster.

EVs in scale would have maybe happened sooner, but they would have give us much less value, and I think in the end reaching current EV tech would most likely have taken longer than it did with oil and gas, just due to industrialization and technological innovation would progress much slower without oil and gas...

I think advanced green tech in general would have taken much longer time to develop also on an industrial scale when limited by coal only. Not to speak of human welfare would also have improved much slower.

[ninalanyon]

> Air quality would have been a disaster.

What do you mean would have been? It was a disaster. Perhaps you are too young or insufficiently well travelled to have experienced the effects of burning coal in, say the UK in the 1950s and 1960s or in China even in the last few decades.

Without oil the push to solar and wind would also have been accelerated, probably.

What is it about oil and as that you think made it accelerate semiconductor R&D?

[tordrt]

Yeah, my point was that it would have been even worse without oil and gas.

solar, wind and semiconductors all require a very advanced petrochemical supply chain. You simply couldn't produce any of this without products derived from oil and gas.

[fpoling]

In 1920 in Berlin there were more electrical taxes than gasoline one. But cheap gasoline killed electrical car industry.

Without that electrical cars would proceed to develop and batteries with high capacity would happen much sooner.

As for pollution it would not be that bad. Fuel would be expensive and cars with combustion engines would not happen on massive scale. There would be much more freight by trains and nuclear energy would be developed on much bigger scale.

[tordrt]

You are talking as if oil and gas delayed the future, which I dont think makes sense at all.

I think we are underestimating all the derivatives we use from oil and gas here.

I think this is all very optimistic. I think not having oil and gas would have been a major setback to global progress I dont think it would have made us more advanced within batteries or electrical cars than we are today. And especially not even close to overall general global progress we have reached today.

[i_cannot_hack]

> I think a lot of people actually dont realize the value it gives humanity. Lots of people think we would have been better of in an alternate universe where we never discovered oil & gas. How is this short therm value for people using them? They are drivers of the most fundamental stuff in our day to day lives. Either enabling billions of people cheap efficient transport, efficient agriculture producing cheap food, cheap and efficient global shipping of goods, a great portable and ajustable source of electricity.

People who oppose the fossil fuel industry do not suggest we return to the 17th century tomorrow. They suggest being less wasteful with the resources we have (nobody would die from eating lentils instead of beef, even though this would cause 98% reduced CO2 emissions) and investing in alternative solutions that achieve similar outcomes but cause less harm to the environment. Some things being more expensive or less convenient would not be a global humanitarian catastrophe, and since you strongly believe humans are immensely adaptable and resilient I think you would agree we could adapt to this as well if working together.

> I think as of now its a question on how much you are willing to sacrifice human welfare over preserving current nature/environment.

No, it's about how much you are willing to sacrifice the quality of life of the current generation to preserve the quality of live of subsequent generations. The worry about causing instability in the environment is not an aesthetic concern about the purity of nature being lost, the worry is that such instability will cause real and tangible death and suffering for real humans and have long term negative consequences for future generations.

> Extreme weather has largely been solved for humans, the trend is still less death and starvation caused by extreme weather, we are immensely adaptable and resilient.

You will have to provide some better source than your gut feeling and a cheerful attitude for me to believe you on this over the countless of people who have done actual analysis and vehemently disagree with you. Just a single example to get you started:

"This report’s projections of morbidity and mortality from climate-intensified natural disasters, cumulatively close to 15 million deaths, more than two billion healthy life years lost, and $12.5 trillion in economic losses by 2050 bring into focus the dimensions of the crisis. The risk from global warming threatens to destabilize both the healthcare ecosystems and the planet. [1]"

You claim to be against irrational decisions, but seem to base your "rational" view on very simplistic analysis about economic value always being good and the 17th century being bad, combined with a scoopful of wishful thinking.

[1] https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Quantifying_the_Impact_of_...

[moogly]

> Lots of people think we would have been better of in an alternate universe where we never discovered oil & gas.

Who? Other than strawmen, I mean.

[tordrt]

Man, come on.. There are even at least two comments from people in this thread arguing this exact point. Ill promise you its frequency is even higher in the real world than on HN.

You must not be very much exposed to the environmental movement, or be much online, if you havent seen this.

[moogly]

Yeah maybe I'm out of touch.

[pietervdvn]

The fossil fuel industry is both the most subsidized industry worldwide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_subsidies) and the second most expensive source of energy (at least for electricity production). The only energy source that is more expensive is nuclear (!).

[tordrt]

The second most expensive source of energy is misleading in terms of whole picture. They are using a theoretical cost per kwh generated. You have to account for the much higher infrastructure and systemic cost of electricity generation you can not control (wind/solar). You cant simply use wind or solar without pairing it with an controllable source like hydro, gas, coal or batteries. Which is why the world is still very much using gas and coal (and still building more). Renewables are a cheap and good supplement to these sources, you just cant replace them cheaply (yet).

Regarding "the most subsidized industry worldwide", this wikipedia article does not mention any tax revenue and taxation of these companies. Which are stil very often government cash cows and often pays much more taxes than other corporations. The subsidies are straight to citizen's gas tanks and heating bills.

"Subsidies are mainly on consumption,[3] such as a lower sales tax on natural gas for residential heating; or subsidies on production, such as tax breaks on exploration for oil."

In my country Norway for example, we have tax breaks on exploration to incentivize investment in exploration, but you have to take into account that these companies have an 80 corporate tax rate! In many petro states they are straight up nationalized companies.

[90d]

It is a tricky situation isn't it? We wouldn't have gotten where we are without fossil fuels, but now we realize they are not sustainable to be dependent on and we cannot continue this level of growth. I don't think it is actually possible using current means to power what we have come to know as a "first-world lifestyle" for the majority of the planet.

[Gomotono]

Thats not true. We don't know if we would be able to be were we at.

There is also no value in this. If we owuldn't known about progress through oil and gas, who would say that we would be unable to get to the same point just a 100 years later?

No own would be hurt if we would have achieved this 100 years later but healthier.

It was also ignored on purpose. Oil companies knew very well, researchers knew. Apparently there were big demonstrations here in germany in the 70ties so our parents knew too.

Life came inbetween apparently.

And from a pure calculation point of view: Its actually very easy to switch over to renewable. As of today, we do have everything we need.

The only thing missing is people doing it.

And just to be clear: it would repay itself.

[tordrt]

How would we do the whole industrial revolution thing on whale oil and lumber? Whales would most certainly be extinct by now, thats for sure.

100 years later is an immense amount of extra human suffering, not to say that reaching current level would most certainly take much much longer than 100 extra years.

Im sorry but this whole tirade is just delusional. Its cheaper and better to replace all use of fossil fuels with renewables? Why are we not doing it? Waiting to here your grand conspiracy as of why people are not "doing it".

Why did china build over 50(78GW) new large scale coal plants last year when they could get so much cheaper renewable?

[AngryData]

Would you say the same thing about human suffering if the bronze age was 100 years later? And what about all the suffering and deaths from the pollution? Or the massive global wars fossil fuels enabled? Because without massive oil and gas reserves both WWI and WWII would have been far harder to sustain or commit to in the first place.

With such a massive shift in politics and technology with a lack of fossil fuels I think it is near impossible to compare the modern world to a world without those.

[Gomotono]

Because people didn't care that oil and gas is breaking our planet 100 years ago. Or didn't knew and capitalism made the people in power very very rich very fast.

At that time we still lived and heated normally. For sure the brits destroyed a lot of their trees but you know? They could.

What do you think would have happened if we had a small population collaps at that time and HAD to consume sustainable? We would be less people for sure, but we wouldn't have killed the missing people, they would have not been created in the first place.

We created the first solar panel 1883. The first EV in 1884.

China is still using coal because they are in the same dilemma as we all are: we ignored the impact and keep the status quo. But China build a lot of coal plants for renewing aging ones and they are massivle building out solar.

So why are my neighbours not doing it? Man i talked to sooooo many people about this, are you ready? Because people don't care. Or they don't like new things. Or they don't understand why it would be better.

Yes thats the conspiricy. People can't do the math, don't care about climate change or just don't want something to change.

Everyone i know who has solar panels on the roof, a small battery and heat pump literlay saving money and would never switch back. Every single one of them.

[tordrt]

The Industrial Revolution started in 1760-1800 and was driven by coal, completely replacing wood as the primary industrial fuel. We almost exterminated whales and deforested the entirety of Europe before discovering fossil fuels, which both bounced back after.

The first EV an the first solar panel are second order effects and only possible because of the industrial revolution driving massive human innovation and growth. Good luck reaching the levels of industrialization and tech required to mass produce solar panels by using wood. Producing 1 ton of charcoal from wood, requires 4-7 tons of wood. To smelt a single ton of iron you then again need multiple tons of coal. Good luck industrializing without turning the whole planet into woodchopping and wood planting farm. It was all made possible by fossil coal, oil and gas.

Everything is essentially downstream of industrialization enabled by coal and subsequently the superior oil and gas.

And saying that oil and gas was breaking our planet doesn't make sense, if anything these are great replacements of coal.

You are also diminishing the brutal life of pre-industrialization times. Staggering high child-mortality rates, low life expectancy, and an high amounts of deaths caused by starvation and extreme weather events, like droughts and floods.

Solar plus battery takes many years to be paid back. If this setup is actually cheaper, industrial scale solar+battery would be huge. Solar on its own is a great cheap pairing with stable energy sources like hydro, gas and coal, which is partly why china is doing this.

People do actually adopt green tech when it makes financially sense, just look at the huge boom of adoption of AC and heatpumps around the world. Because it massively reduces electricity cost of heating and cooling.

Its not because people cant do math.

[Gomotono]

The revolution could still have happened differently and slower.

I didn't say it would have been possible without ANY coal but you do understand that the amount of co2 we put into our atmosphere is not from 1760? All of that big huge co2 output happend in the last 100 year...

Solar plus batterie is currently winning. In germany the problem again is NOT the economy, its literaly the energy provider companies being slow as hell. This critisim is circling the media now for the last few years.

China is doing hydro, gas and coal because China is gigantic and they don't mind that coal still exists and we do not know yet at all how their end energy mix will look like but they are pushing very hard for renewable.

No as i told you, a lot of people around me literlaly don't want to do reneable for the reasons i told you. A L'ot of people DO NOT CARE about climate change.

Germany is trying to push for heatpumps in the old government, the new/current one is paddling back, AGAIN. This is happening under our noses. The discussion of the new heating law (from the prev government) created A LOT of controversy.

The main reason why the renewable energy transformation is happening at the current speed and not in the possible speed, is people not math. not economy.

We have protests against wind mills because they 'look ugly'. My neighbours hate my solar panel on the balcony but can't say something against it because the old government created a law for this.

Work collegues of mine hate EVs and don't want to switch over but my company only allows EVs since this year. Multily of them complained that an EV is not usable as a daily car while i own an EV for 4.5 years now and it is usable as a daily driver.

The transition in China is significanlty faster than in Europe.

[stingraycharles]

It’s more about trying to help the cleaner energy sources get off the ground, rather than a purely financial incentive.

[tordrt]

How much extra investment to you think green tech companies get for pension funds excluding investment in this sector? They also only invest in publicly listed companies, not green startups. To me it seems like the exclusion is based on them viewing it immoral to invest in these companies..

I think the right way to go about this is to tax consumption of fossil fuels in countries where we can afford it and use the money to subsidize green tech/industry.

[stingraycharles]

> I think the right way to go about this is to tax consumption of fossil fuels in countries where we can afford it

With the power that these companies have over the politicians through lobbying, that’s unlikely to happen.

[eigenspace]

The slavery part doesn't seem like a rational decision to me.

Why are we pretending that slavery doesn't provide an immense amount of value for humanity, and that it's horrible to invest or support building out any slavery production whatsoever?

Lets not do produce it ourselves, lets just instead outsource it to Africa...

___________________________________

Snide comparisons aside, I'd just say that we can accept that fossil fuels played a gigantic and important role in getting us to where we are, and also acknowledge that we'll continue to need fossil fuels in the near future, but that does *not* mean that we need to accept that investment in even more expansion of the fossil fuel industry is a good idea.

[tordrt]

Slavery is evil. Fossil fuels is actually still a net good for humanity. E.g. the consequences of removing access to these energy sources, would be overwhelmingly more negative for humanity right now, than the consequence of global warming.

The transition is moving ahead, it just takes time, and we need more technological breakthroughs and innovation. Trying to attack production instead of solving demand, can cause serious consequences, in which the poorest countries in the world would suffer the most.

[eigenspace]

Oh sorry, I forgot to look at my D&D alignment charts before making my comment, I didnt realize that slavery was evil and thus impermissible. I guess there's no possible comparison to be made with other economic practices that cause massive harm to some people, but benefit others in the short term.

For the sake of argument though, what if we lived in a situation where a very large portion of our agriculture, and other vital forms of economic activity were reliant on slavery? What if there were alternatives, but they weren't quite as economically entrenched, and an overnight banning of slavery would cause an economic collapse that'd cause large scale suffering.

In this hypothetical scenario, would we say that slavery is a net good for humanity? Wouldn't it be okay for our pension funds to invest in more slave production?

[eigenspace]

I just find it so funny how this person is willing to use completely different ethical frameworks in the same sentence when talking about slavery, versus when talking about fossil fuels.

With fossil fuels, we go and start talking about 'net benefits', and we're willing to accept some catastrophically bad effects in order to reap some benefits, but then when the conversation is about slavery suddenly we switch to toddler ethics of "that's evil." without any consideration for weighing the positives and negatives.

[Gomotono]

Fossil fules is not a net good for humanity.

We have everything to switch over and while we do nothing more and more people are affacted by it daily and in longterm.

co2 is in the athmosphere for a long time.

In the only world were this is true, is a purely capitalistic society which values poorer people less.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Doesn’t one major fund reducing investment in fossil fuels and increasing investment in renewable energy precisely migrate towards the notion of helping solve demand and encourage technological breakthroughs and innovation?

[tordrt]

I think the right way to go about this is to tax consumption. The most efficient one would just be a co2 tax, to not favoritize some emission over others. This is mostly fine in western rich countries, and we already do this to some extent by putting extra taxes and fees on petrol, carbon emissions and stuff.

Becoming reliant on countries you dont want to be reliant on, and pretending we dont desperately need this to get the wheels turning is a strategic blunder.

Higher global fossil fuels costs have strong negative effects on peoples welfare, especially in poorer countries. Whenever we get high oil/gas prices, we get price jumps on artificial fertilizer, food, transport and energy. Everything gets more expensive. Its straight up national emergency when something threatens supply of oil and gas in many of these countries when we get events like closing of the hormuz strait.

[raddan]

> I think the right way to go about this is to tax consumption. The most efficient one would just be a co2 tax, to not favoritize some emission over others.

I too thought this for a long time. But after watching taxes on consumption basically be a non-starter in the US for a long time, I’m not so sure anymore. Gas taxes are also regressive, which means the people who feel it the most are the ones least able to pay it. Raising the gas tax while retaining one’s elected position is challenging in the US to say the least. In most places in the US, driving is not a luxury.

To be clear, I think we need to move off of fossil fuels to the greatest extent possible as soon as possible. For those with means, it is a great moral failing to continue to drive a gas guzzler and heat one’s home with fossil fuels when there are better affordable alternatives. I’ve been driving an EV for nearly four years; it is now not just more affordable than a gas powered vehicle, it is more convenient. For me, the cherry on the top is that I also do not pay for electricity, because I took advantage of the pre-Trump II era solar tax subsidy and built a massive one.

The tax break was good for me, and it’s a shame that is gone (I paid off that panel in 5 MONTHS with the help of the subsidy), but tax breaks really only help the relatively wealthy. We need an investment in infrastructure for the masses to break their dependence on fossil fuels. I’m not really sure what that is.

[ZeroGravitas]

If it's so valuable why don't you want to buy it from the Russians and the Gulf?

[tordrt]

I think Europe happily buys from the Gulf currently, and reluctantly buys from Russia if they have to.

Its more about being self sufficient. This is something that can easily be weaponized against us. E.g. Russia using Europes own money to finance their invasion of Ukraine.

[stingraycharles]

We do want to buy it from the Gulf. It’s just that a certain country started a certain war and this is now off the table.