Aabidano wrote:Leonaerd wrote:Burgeoning technologies like fracking will ensure that oil will be around for a long enough time that we will be able to transition our infrastructure seamlessly to geothermal and solar. It will be easy.
Your logic breaks right there, the way things stand we won't make any transition until we've no choice left and our economy is crumbling.
I disagree that my logic breaks. Yeah, I shouldn't dare assume that we
will transition in a good, timely manner, but that isn't something that we should have to consider, given how much value and worldly power we get out of fracking in the present day. As I see it, the longer we have cheap food and profitable exports, the better off we will be. And who knows - when we're on the next plateau of superpower, maybe they'll be nice enough to save the climates and whatnot out of boredom.
It can't be overstated how fucked we would be if we weren't fracking. We are using technology to kill OPEC and save ourselves. Is that not exciting?
Any new source of oil/gas just means that Wall St. has no reason to stop humping the corpse it's been on for decades. No short term advantage to Wall St means no money to pursue alternatives unless Govt. funded. As long as the republicans (in their current incarnation) have any sort of power you can be assured it won't happen.
This isn't even a big deal to me. Let them keep humping oil, as long as I can get food on the cheap. If there is any reason to think we will work to save the planet before we absolutely have to (or more likely, after it's too late), I'm waiting to hear it. Until then, we might as well use what we have to get as much power as possible.
I don't want you to think that I -like- what Wall St does. Nor do i want you to think I disagree with what you are saying. It's just.. what the fuck are we supposed to do? Get Americans to give a shit and vote out their local incumbents?
Separate topic but fracking can be done cleanly in many locations, at a cost of a couple cents per dollar profit. Which means it doesn't happen, loops us back to Wall St. again.
Again, not that big of a deal to me. Keep big oil happy, they'll keep my food cheap. Oil good. Stomach full.