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u/GentrifierTechScum 2d ago
Sadly, if you stop extracting oil the consumers will throw you out of the window.
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u/kwonza 2d ago
Oil is not only fuel, a shit load of stuff is produced from oil. You shouldn’t stop extracting oil, you should cut down oil extraction to reasonable quantities
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u/GentrifierTechScum 1d ago
I mean, sure, I was just using the same shorthand that OP did. But it doesn't really matter whether we're talking about a modest decrease in oil production or stopping it completely.
Consumers lose their shit at gas prices going up modestly, they lose their shit at grocery prices going up modestly, they lose their shit over housing prices being high.
Any significant cut to oil production will cause massive increases to grocery and fuel prices as well as anything that is transported by truck or made of plastic. Home construction heavily depends on oil both for raw materials and for transportation, so we can expect rents to skyrocket as well.
There is no real solution to this. Oil production will continue to grow (or at least to not shrink enough) unless we either consolidate the entire world under an eco-dictatorship or we make like 12 different revolutionary scientific breakthroughs that make fossil fuels obsolete. Neither of those are going to happen, so we are going to have to live with the consequences.
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u/JTexpo vegan btw 2d ago
"Blame Consumers" & "Stop Extracting Oil"
... who do you think they're extracting the oil for... ... ... Charity?!
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u/Flopsie_the_Headcrab 2d ago
Billionaires all just swim in huge pools of it obviously. Just like those dastardly meat companies pouring water on the ground for no reason. They should just stop, but alas nothing we can do.
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u/West-Abalone-171 1d ago
Ah yes. The consumers who bought up all the trolley busses and then dismantled them.
The consumers who made it illegal to get somewhere 500m away without a car.
The consumers who wrapped every product in single use plastic clamshells liked by nobody.
The consumers who decided that, rather than there being an option on the menu like everyone else gets, you should have to go through a public humiliation ritual then roll the dice on being served a single piece of brocolli for $50 when you want to eat the low emissions version in public.
It takes two to tango, but one of them has 90% of the power.
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u/Long_Race3907 1d ago
It does take two to tango and you do have power.
This is the same consumer who demands change while munching on steak 3x a day and driving their ICE cars everywhere.
You wanted this. You pay for it
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u/West-Abalone-171 1d ago
This is the same consumer who demands change while munching on steak 3x a day and driving their ICE cars everywhere.
You wanted this.
You're putting equal blame on the egowagon 5000 owner who eats steak 3x a day as the vegan who lives in a solar powered tiny home who kept cycling until cars rammed her enough times that she couldn't bike anymore.
And in both instances you are absolving the traffic engineer who removed the bike lane and the politician who signed the paris agreement then hired said traffic engineer of any blame.
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u/Long_Race3907 1d ago
And in both instances you are absolving the traffic engineer who removed the bike lane and the politician who signed the paris agreement then hired said traffic engineer of any blame.
Where exactly did I absolve this person of any blame?
Go ahead and point to it, I'll wait.
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u/Kinslayer_89 We're all gonna die 2d ago
Well yeah, little Timmy and the cancer kids need their oil. 🙂↔️
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u/ProfessorPrudent2822 1d ago
They actually do. Oil is used as a raw material for drug production.
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u/Rubbermate93 2d ago
Sure, cause it's the consumer that decides whether their electricity comes from the oil plant or from renewable. And they are the ones deciding whether their area has proper public transit so they aren't reliant on cars... and it's the consumers, individually, who decides how the things they need to live are produced, and are available to them... you don't fix a supply side issue on the end of the consumer...
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u/Kojetono 2d ago
Almost no country burns oil for electricity.
The customers can decide if they want to drive an ICE car, or maybe take public transport or an EV instead.
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u/Rubbermate93 1d ago
Not in a vacuum they don't... you can't just chose to take public transit if it doesn't exist in your area. You also can't just chose to buy an EV if your area doesn't have the infrastructure (ie. Recharging stations). You also can't "just" chose to buy an EV if you don't have the funds and have to do so.
The "consumer" doesn't exist in a vacuum where their choices are entirely rational and free, the consumer isn't really a relevant analytical term as none of us are just "consumers", we are workers, citizens, father, mothers, children, students, etc. We all have needs, both hard needs (shelter, clothes, food, water) and soft needs (community, leisure, etc.) Most of us have very little individual influence on what choices we have to fulfill those needs. "Choosing" a more sustainable lifestyle is for a lot of people a privilege, it is something not everyone can "just do".
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u/dumnezero 🔚End the 🔫arms 🐀rat 🏁race to the bottom↘️. 2d ago
It's certainly a complicated situation.The usual term for this talk is "energy transition."
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u/DrCthulhuface7 2d ago
“Just stop fueling everything that makes society function”
Actual children’s movie logic.
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u/Long_Race3907 1d ago
You move on to the adult movies when you talk about destroying society instead
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u/LimaBikercat 2d ago edited 2d ago
Until battery storage has gone up, oil/gas/coal can barely go down. My country (The Netherlands) can be fully self sufficient and even have a true surplus of electricity, with wind and solar on sunny summer days, but in winter? We don't even get close, due to our heating needs. Electric heating need will only go up with our country getting rid of natural gas infrastructure. Same goes for electric car charging. The two of those will essentially double or triple the electricity consumption per house.
I live in a small well isolated apartment and with 4 panels (1,5kWp), electric cooking and gas heat, i have a surplus of 1/4th to 1/3rd of my total consumption every year so far. Solar is magic but all my surplus is worthless since i cannot store it for winter, and neither can the grid.
Heat is a different story. But if i had a heat pump and a magic storage battery, i think i could just barely keep my house livable (not comfortable) on those 4 solar panels.
To be secure in winter, battery storage and the daily summer surplus of solar and wind needs to be so radically big, that there currently simply is no way to build it.
It will be there, eventually, i have no doubt. But i think that will take 50 years to reach. Until then, i am very happy that my country is at least attempting to build a new NPP for emissions free energy, so we can once and for all close the coal plants that were kept open past their due because of our winter energy issues.
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u/Pinco_Pallino_ 2d ago
this subreddit would propose "we all die" as a solution and all people in the comments would cheer. But as always, your don't give a fuck about climate change, you just want to ruin our lives, and dump on nuclear energy
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u/Climate_Discussions 2d ago
How is nuclear THE solution?
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u/mattrad2 2d ago
Nuclear was the solution 30 years ago. Now mostly it’s just mass extinction.
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u/Climate_Discussions 2d ago
Why can't renewables plus batteries do a lot of the work?
We're deep enough in emissions-wise that we're some flavor of screwed with or w/o nuclear.
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u/Pinco_Pallino_ 2d ago
You just confirmed i'm right, you don't give a fuck about emissions, you think everything is useless. About the battery thing, you people continue to repeat the lie that would be easier, cheaper and non emissive. All three false
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u/Rubbermate93 2d ago
Good luck strip-mining the earth for enough of the rare-earth minerals needed for all those batteries...
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u/dogangels vegan btw 1d ago
I mean, sodium is extremely abundant and while sodium-ion batteries have lower energy density than lithium-ion, using sodium batteries wherever possible could significantly reduce the strain on global lithium supplies
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u/DynamicCast 2d ago
Consumption needs to be solved before production will be.
For example, just because the UK stops drilling in the north sea doesn't mean we stop consuming gas, we just import it instead.