In the 1970s oil crisis, governments (at least here in Sweden) responded by rationing the limited supply. 👍🏻
In the 2020s instead the governments instead are subsidizing the oil by lowering taxes (at least UK but here in Sweden the opposition is already arguing for it). Can I get off mad world, please? As oil and gas are burning and oil reserves are being opened and nothing is sequestered and the climate has a fever, this is not the response I want.
We’re stuck with oil for the foreseeable future unless we dismantle our entire way of life
That is urgently needed and the later we start the more brutal it’s gonna be and we’re already starting way too late.
@Sandra It’s an unholy marriage until a more viable option is available. And fortunately there are a lot of companies that are working in finding solutions but Until then, its unreasonable to tank the economy and everyday peoples ability to function by increasing prices for fuel specifically.
By breaking the economy domestically by making it more expensive for oil products without any viable alternative will only further delay the ability for industries to innovate solutions.
@Sandra that’s precisely why most people who propagate for clean energy and EVs like Musk etc never argue that fossile fuels should be severely taxed but rather the alternative needs to be more affordable and sustainable.
Besides, the chain of production for EVs and battery production produces immense carbon footprints that only even out vs ICE after 250k km of ownership. The current rate of consumption just creates more e-waste that is just as toxic.
its unreasonable to tank the economy and everyday peoples ability to function by increasing prices for fuel specifically.
There is a literal supply shortage driving up prices. Subsidizing the prices (by taking from public funds and cutting social programs) does not create more oil. Doing that is more risky for the economy. When oil is in short supply—the same oil that we should be leaving in the ground as soon as possible, and use as little an possible—it’s better to make sure it’s being put to the so-called good use you were talking about (like medicine and ambulances) than subsidizing for race cars and jetsetting.
Besides, the chain of production for EVs and battery production produces immense carbon footprints that only even out vs ICE after 250k km of ownership.
That is a false statement along with being a complete topic shift from my main point prefering rationing (which could make allowances for some personal transportation) over broad subsidies of an already undercosted good in low supply.
Markets have one job (set prices) and it already does it incredibly poorly and if we’re not even using them for their supposed benefit (adapting to literal supply shortages), we might as well throw them out entirely.
We’re already eating our own future, I’m not happy that they’re taking from things like education and healthcare to speed up that process further by subsidizing fuels. (Same gov’t that intervened against EVs just three years ago.🤦🏻‍♀️ Not that car culture is what we want over trains and working local.)
Just imagine coming at this from a systems perspective… “Hey, we’re running out from salt in the kitchen, we’ve used an entire weeks’ supply already!” “Okay, I can solve that! Just make the holes in the shaker bigger so it’s easier to pour.”
So wrong-headed. That household would only run out of salt even faster. And by “run out” I mean both further decrease the supply and increace the prices of petroleum products, and further “use up” the PPM emissions budget so we head over the tipping points faster (we should already be net negative).
This is either wishful thinking on the part of these policy-makers or deliberate deception kicking the can down the post-election road (except it’ll be a hundred times bigger and dangerouser can then) or a fossil-lobby–created infernal nightmare laughing all the way to the bank on the cinder.
@Sandra @Sandra I just don’t agree with that outlook. I don’t see us shutting down our entire way of life and have that somehow be a viable option.
What will we build houses from? How will we heat our houses? How will we grow crops to feed us? There is no answer to these questions because our entire civilization is heavily dependent on oil and by-products.
@Sandra Until there is a viable option that is more sustainable, and hopefully financially more practical than extraction and reliability on oil - then we simply can’t reasonable expect people to move out into the wilderness and live inside hollowed caves with no heating.
Anyway, we clearly have different approaches. I appreciate the civil discussion but I think we will just have to agree to disagree on this one.
Have a great weekend and happy Nowrouz! ❤️
Have a happy nowruz and a nice haft-sin!
For everyone who finds this thread down the line:
It’s just facts: burning fossil fuels destroys the climate planet Earth and we have got to stop doing that. That’s not just an opinion. The worst extinction event in Earth’s history has started because of our oil use and this planet has been through some doozies in that regard.
And we could’ve stopped so much more gently if we had started in like the nineteen sixties or even during the seventies oil crisis. It’s inevitably going to be very difficult doing it now. But it’s to stave off it being even more difficult later.
I don’t see us shutting down our entire way of life and have that somehow be a viable option.
That is going to have to be the beacon: a complete life-revolving shift that does entail a QoL drop for most people. (But the good news there is that most of the damage is being done by just a handful of people. That’s how incredible the wealth gaps have been growing between the ultra-rich and normal folks. I’m not saying there isn’t gonna have to be changes for almost everyone because there is.)
But that’s the beacon to move towards, not step one. You kept up the straw dolls even though I already asked you not to; by that I mean that it’s a huge leap to go from “we can’t go subsidizing a scarce and dangerous good in lieu of promoting alternatives to it and rationing it” to “go out, leave your cities, and live in caves”. That is such a straw doll.
(Setting aside that it’s not likely that anarchoprimitivist hunter/gatherer life could sustain billions of people on Earth given that only four percent of mammal biomass is wildlife and that’s not what I have ever promoted. I’m looking forwards, not back. Degrowth can’t be about going out in the woods and just taking and cutting and burning.)
In this moment, this sliver of history called the present day when oil, which we know is dangerous and we want people to gradually use less off, suddenly became way more expensive because it became more scarce, I’m saying “the solution to that scarcity can’t be to subsidize it so that people keep buying too much”. You originally brought up great examples of exactly why I’m right on this, when you mentioned things like medicine or vitally important things that haven’t been replaced yet. That’s exactly why rationing makes so much more sense than broad-based, disproportionately-helping-the-richest, funded-by-public-coffers, stealing-from-baby-hospitals subsidies. Those subsidies really are likely to tank the economy for real and for ever.
Even doing literally nothing and just letting the oil be expensive would be better than those subsidies, but, one way more humane, more socially minded, less economy-tankingly method than doing nothing is doing what we did in living memory of many folks: rationing.
During covid-19, our government here in Sweden disproportionately subsidized fossil fuel industries and felt bad about it in hindsight but this time they’re already back in the oil industry’s pocket and doing it it again.
(Unfortunately it didn’t become scarce in some real, peak oil, “we managed to actually get sequester some of it safely and/or it finally ran out and could stop harming us” kind old way. Unfortunately all of that oil is probably still gonna burn. Instead the supply became limited through embarrassing and shameful wars.)
What will we build houses from? How will we heat our houses? How will we grow crops to feed us? There is no answer to these questions
This is not science fiction or theoretical. I live in Stockholm, a city where more than 800000 people (myself included) get our house heating from fossil-free exergy. Even off grid, oilpan heating isn’t the best way and hasn’t been for a long time.
And I eat plants, which does use resources, but a tenth of what meat uses.
because our entire civilization is heavily dependent on oil and by-products.
And that is a dependence we shouldn’t be strengthening and encouraging and deepening. Instead we should untangle ourselves from it in as many ways through as many vectors as possible and take every opportunity to do so.
I mean, either:
oil is not necessary and we can leave it in the ground already thanks to all our wonderful electric powers and bean tacos and we should not subsidize it, or,
oil is incredibly necessary and foundational to prevent immense human suffering, in which case we should not subsidize excessive wasteful consumtion during a severe and unprecedented supply cricis and instead make sure we only use it for the most vital things.
Most likely it’s a mix or somewhere in between those two (yes, I’m way more in the “leave it in the ground” camp sooner than yesterday but that doesn’t mean caves and arrows); subsidizing the oil is still bad. We’ll only run out faster. (I mean we already have run out of space in the sky to safely put CO₂E without altering the climate, we did a long time ago and we need to net negative now, but subsidizing will worsen rather than alleviate the supply crisis too.)
Sandra
taymaz 
Jack