High fossil fuel prices are good for the planet—here’s how to keep it that way
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I have more empathy for the hundreds of millions to billions that will be displaced or face food insecurity due to climate change than the low tens of million in the rich world that have incomes low enough that $2-$3 increase in the cost of petrol per gallon would greatly decrease their quality of life.
Of course, the issue is that the cost of fossil fuel affects the rich world more, while climate change will likely affect poorer countries more. The middle class in the rich world are still rich by global standards.
If, on the other hand, you think we can still deal with climate change without any impact to the quality of life in rich countries, you are completely delusional.
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"High fossil fuel prices are good for the planet—here’s how to keep it that way"
That's because you and everyone who agree with this don't care about impoverished people. Biden has said repeatedly That he was going to end fossil fuels and on day 1 enacted policies to do just that. I can afford to pay higher fuel prices but many Americans can't. It's this kind of out of touch governance that let's us see the Democrat party for who they really are and the fact that it would be impossible for them to care less about impoverished people. Inexpensive fossil fuels don't make a safe world more dangerous, they make an already dangerous world safer,
That's because you and everyone who agree with this don't care about impoverished people. Biden has said repeatedly That he was going to end fossil fuels and on day 1 enacted policies to do just that. I can afford to pay higher fuel prices but many Americans can't. It's this kind of out of touch governance that let's us see the Democrat party for who they really are and the fact that it would be impossible for them to care less about impoverished people. Inexpensive fossil fuels don't make a safe world more dangerous, they make an already dangerous world safer,
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Granted, I think that applies to lots of things people might buy in single servings like that. 1-2 glasses of wine in a restaurant is probably going to be pretty close to what it would cost to buy a whole bottle from a liquor store. If me and my wife get 2 slices of pizza each, we could have gotten a whole 8-cut pie.
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Prices rise and fall for non policy reasons.
So say they rise... then fall and you stabilize them with taxes.
Then they rise again ... now they're ultra high. Yay? So what you drop them? Back at step 1?
In the meantime poor people are going to take the biggest hit ... and then politicians will want to play games with those numbers too.
So say they rise... then fall and you stabilize them with taxes.
Then they rise again ... now they're ultra high. Yay? So what you drop them? Back at step 1?
In the meantime poor people are going to take the biggest hit ... and then politicians will want to play games with those numbers too.
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...if only. And the time for this was 40 years ago. Just like it was the time to build out a fleet of nuclear reactors for electricity. And now here we are. Buckle up, it'll be a wild ride over the next few decades.
Sometimes I think of humanity as fossil fuel consuming ants. There was an untapped energy source on the planet, and a life form evolved to use it, and will do so until it's exhausted and a new equilibrium is reached. So do your part and consume the energy gradient.
Sometimes I think of humanity as fossil fuel consuming ants. There was an untapped energy source on the planet, and a life form evolved to use it, and will do so until it's exhausted and a new equilibrium is reached. So do your part and consume the energy gradient.
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Bosses want people in office, that attitute will have to change...
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Well I'd point out that different things have different relative costs, so it is a little "unfair" to look at one particular thing.
Sure, maybe if the US had European gas prices, the average American would be spending an additional ~$1500-2500 on gas per year... but in the US healthcare is already like $5-7k/yr per person above the costs in Europe. And then tack on higher education, military and telecommunications costs* and I think you just end up with an incomplete picture by focusing on one aspect.
*looking at the costs whether they come directly from your pocket or indirectly (company provided perk, paid for via tax dollars)
[edit]
While there are some gaps, using [1] and [2], I suppose my best guess would be Greece? Any countries that get closer to 25% on income generally get further from 2x on fuel costs.
In Greece, the average car is driven about 15k KM per year, while the US is about +50%, so the impact of an increase in gas prices in the US is going to be more significant than a corresponding increase in Greece.
And at least according to [3], it is significantly more expensive to live in the US pretty much across the board aside from fuel costs.
[1]https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-income-by-country
[2]https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/
[3]https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/united-states/greece#:~:text=Greece%20is%2026.6%25%20cheaper%20than%20United%20States.
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This whole article was a really naive take...
1) Getting rid of fossil fuels won't solve anything. It just shifts the pollution to mining and dangerous chemicals. And since the bulk of our EV battery supply comes from China, don't expect them to adhere to safer mining protocols or environmental standards.
2) The electrical grid isn't robust enough to support our current needs (just look at the forecasted brownouts), much less a nation of electric car drivers.
3) Lithium for batteries is already in short supply. Just read what it's doing to Ford. Now, imagine that on a national, every-automaker scale.
4) Consider, for a moment, that not everyone has the privilege (white or otherwise) of being able to afford higher gas prices, and that these affect populations in disproportionate ways. If you're wealthy, higher gas means almost nothing. If you're on the other end, it could mean the difference in being able to afford your rent or not. And...
5) Higher gas prices affect EVERYTHING, but everything moves via gas-powered vehicles. And that means higher food prices, higher clothing prices, higher prices for building materials, etc. And we're not getting electric cargo fleets anytime soon.
Honestly, this article should never have been published. It's the wrong viewpoint at the wrong time.
1) Getting rid of fossil fuels won't solve anything. It just shifts the pollution to mining and dangerous chemicals. And since the bulk of our EV battery supply comes from China, don't expect them to adhere to safer mining protocols or environmental standards.
2) The electrical grid isn't robust enough to support our current needs (just look at the forecasted brownouts), much less a nation of electric car drivers.
3) Lithium for batteries is already in short supply. Just read what it's doing to Ford. Now, imagine that on a national, every-automaker scale.
4) Consider, for a moment, that not everyone has the privilege (white or otherwise) of being able to afford higher gas prices, and that these affect populations in disproportionate ways. If you're wealthy, higher gas means almost nothing. If you're on the other end, it could mean the difference in being able to afford your rent or not. And...
5) Higher gas prices affect EVERYTHING, but everything moves via gas-powered vehicles. And that means higher food prices, higher clothing prices, higher prices for building materials, etc. And we're not getting electric cargo fleets anytime soon.
Honestly, this article should never have been published. It's the wrong viewpoint at the wrong time.
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Two points: first, "Mensa membership" doesn't hold the significance you attach to it, in terms of people knowing how the real world really works, and how to function in it. I know a lot of very smart people. The majority of them have no interest in a self-congratulatory circle-jerk, so aren't "Mensa members" -- but could be, if they thought it held any real benefits.
Second, "Vote them *all* out," implies that you won't vote for Democrats. We have a FPTP system. If you introduce a qualified candidate who siphons votes from the left, you end up voting in Republicans. That's just the reality of first past the post -- so if you've got Johnny Mensa Leftist, who gets 30% of the vote, Susie Corporate Democrat, also with 30%, and Steve Republican gets 40%, Steve wins, in a *lot* of jurisdictions. Steve wins even though 60% of the voters don't want him in charge. The numbers usually aren't 30/30/40, though -- usually Johnny 3rd Party siphons 3-5%, but in close races, that can be enough for Steve R to win anyway.
The two parties *aren't* the same. One party is full of everyone from Bernie Sanders style Democratic Socialists to milquetoast DINOs like Manchin -- who's the only Democrat you can get, in West Virginia -- while the other party is full of actual fascists, seeking to impose their brand of White Christian Nationalism.
Your "do everything you can for 3rd party candidates" message will end up with more Republicans. That's bad and we should avoid that. Even though I'm a white Christian man, i don't want to live in a white Christian ethnostate. I like diversity too much to think that's a good idea, and I value my interfaith friendships.
Tldr: your solution sounds pretty typical for a Mensa member. In my experience, the kind of people who join Mensa are often Elon Musk like, or engineer like -- "I'm smart. Therefore, the solution I offer is a good one. Therefore, we should do that." While ignoring the realities around them.
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The thing is...I literally don't have the option to stop buying gas. I can't stop driving to work, and I can't afford an EV- especially when I'm bleeding money on gas. I understand that economic pressure can push people to action when its needed, but it feels like the people this applies the most pressure to are the people who can do the least to actually fix the problem. Because people like me, at the bottom of the economic totem pole, can't really change our behaviors in any meaningful response to this, let alone in a way that will help the problem.
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This makes no sense. Why should the poor be bearing the brunt of the elite's mistakes? They're just going to elect more anti-climate conservatives so they can drive to work and survive.
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Can you car-pool, can you ride a motorcycle or an e-bike, can. you ride a bike to a station and use public transport, can you Uber it ?
The problem with a car-centric society is that the blinkers to other possibilities are fucking massive.......
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Nobody takes mensa seriously except for Mensa members. It's a self congratulatory circle jerk for people who want to feel smart but don't have any other particular accomplishments to their name.
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The problem is, if you just let it go to its natural, expensive price, you kind of screw over the poorer classes that have lives built around systems built around the artificially low prices. And those people can't really do anything about that.
Squeezing customers at the pump can't possibly be the best way to do this.
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Do you have no ability to carpool, to cut down on longer distance trips or switch to busses and trains, or to reduce your gas bill by going to groceries that are closer? Is there public transportation in your town? Even if it's not good enough for your daily commute it could be good for other things.
I agree that many Americans don't have the option to stop driving or to switch to a EV right away. It seems doubtful that there is absolutely nothing you can do.
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The last time there was a somewhat viable 3rd party candidate, Ross Perot, he siphoned votes away from Republicans and allowed Bill Clinton to defeat Bush #1.
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I think people should do all those things, but it's worth recognizing that the US has had about 50 years of completely terrible, car-centric urban planning. So if those are even possibilities for some people, they can result in hours of the day wasted or risking your life riding a bike in an area without safe cycling facilities. So it's understandable how many people get locked into using a car even though it sucks in many cases and is extremely expensive right now. I think people should choose to live in areas with good or at least better transit/cycling infrastructure, but these areas are generally more expensive so a lot of people get priced out.
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The obvious problem with our current high fuel prices is that they've gone up about 75% very quickly, which doesn't let people make informed decisions about the future well. Letting prices go back down after the peak in the mid 00's was a huge mistake.
However, the high price of fuel needs to come from a carbon tax that is collected and then refunded on a per capita basis. That way the poorest get some subsidies that can hopefully help them to be able to make better decisions. The rich get fucked on it, since they have huge carbon footprints, but they can afford it.
Ideally you'd pay out those carbon taxes to people on at least a monthly basis.
However, the high price of fuel needs to come from a carbon tax that is collected and then refunded on a per capita basis. That way the poorest get some subsidies that can hopefully help them to be able to make better decisions. The rich get fucked on it, since they have huge carbon footprints, but they can afford it.
Ideally you'd pay out those carbon taxes to people on at least a monthly basis.
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There are better ways to do things, and actually many countries have structured their infrastructure in ways that the price of petrol is less obvious to the consumer. The US has consistently voted against policies that decrease vehicle usage outside of a small number of cities, so there isn't anything left anymore. Slow change was an option 30 years ago, not today.
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Requiring lower income people to pay a larger share of their income to live a modern life is not helpful. The EU is talking about raising fuel taxes on jet fuel for regular consumer flights that carry hundreds of people at a time, but the same proposed tax hike would not apply to business and personal jet service. This gives the ultrawealthy a tax break over very low income people. Electric vehicles need so much in government subsidies to develop, yet they are unattainable by the masses. There is no infrastructure to support them and the maintenance on the cars is sky high. Discontinuing gas and oil for heating and transportation without the large scale electric grid changes and strengthening is not only a waste of time, its a fools dream. The left's rejection of nuclear energy makes it perfectly clear that cleam, safe and affordable energy is not on the agenda for the left. Control over the population is. Denying oil and gas drilling and asset development to a f when w countries, relegates these countries to a 2nd class status where our hard work, innovation and c economic prosperity are used for the betterment of others while retracting the same quality of life for us.
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The gist of the article is correct. Higher gas prices will incentivize clean energy alternatives.
Many of the commenters are also correct. The poor will suffer the most in the transition.
What makes this article, and comments such as yours, tone-deaf is ignoring the rate at which this change occurs. Having gas prices double in the course of 1 year is too much of a shock. Doing so over the course of 1-2 decades would allow people and infrastructure to adapt at a manageable rate.
Should be people car pool, or bike, or use public transportation more? Yes. Does the infrastructure exist for everyone to do that today? No.
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Oh boy, wait until you find out how much rent has gone up in the last 20 years. But gas goes up a couple bucks and suddenly the government has to do something about it right this instant.
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Yes, I agree WFH policies would do more for reducing consumption than simply taxing the hell out of fuel. Simply keeping prices high to force a change to expensive, young alternates read like something a left wing Trump would say.
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It is only "Good for the planet" when we have a foundation to support alternative energy sources.
You have to keep in mind a good 80% of the human population can't afford to switch to electric vehicles.
Vehicles are the primary motive of transportation to work and for shopping.
If prices become too high people can no longer support them selves.
Essentially we need a lot of measures that many politicians won't take ( especially in U.S )
Such as measures to stop price gauging ( implementing MSRP )
Creating better public transportation lines that support things like shopping ( electric pod transports )
Reducing 2ndary products like plastics with alternatives ( Wax \ Fungal Walls )
Creating better battery storage technologies not reliant on silica ( massive sand farming destroying environments and causing shortages )
and many more steps.
Unfortunately, we don't have politicians who are capable of seeing the bigger picture.
You have to keep in mind a good 80% of the human population can't afford to switch to electric vehicles.
Vehicles are the primary motive of transportation to work and for shopping.
If prices become too high people can no longer support them selves.
Essentially we need a lot of measures that many politicians won't take ( especially in U.S )
Such as measures to stop price gauging ( implementing MSRP )
Creating better public transportation lines that support things like shopping ( electric pod transports )
Reducing 2ndary products like plastics with alternatives ( Wax \ Fungal Walls )
Creating better battery storage technologies not reliant on silica ( massive sand farming destroying environments and causing shortages )
and many more steps.
Unfortunately, we don't have politicians who are capable of seeing the bigger picture.
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Oh sure, I'll just uber to work every day. That makes sense when I'm having difficulty with buying gas right now. Don't have a motorcycle license, and hardly see using a deathtrap as a better answer.
Let's look at public transit. My 10 minute drive becomes an hour. So doable, I guess, if I want to give another hour of my life to work. Each way.
Car pool? No one at work lives near where I am, nor is remotely close enough personally for that.
And sure, I'll ride a bike in the 90-100 degree whether that is a daily occurrence where I live. Not to mention how I'd bring my stuff back and forth with me, or where I'd put my bike when I arrive.
I'd love to switch to an EV, and do something better for the environment. But raising gas prices can't do that, because I don't have a practical alternative. Maybe you're right, and I'm just being too picky. But it feels ridiculous to squeeze the average person as a 'solution' when there are so many bigger players at work who are literally being subsidized.
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Lol.
oil and gas is never, ever coming down in price. You and everyone else who does not comprehend that financial institutes are already moving away from funding oil and gas just do not get that new drilling is going to cease.
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I'm in a similar boat as that poster, and the answer is a resounding no. My co-workers are too spread out to make carpooling work (plus our schedules are staggered), there are no busses near my workplace, Uber would cost me about as much as my car's KBB per month, and I've had multiple friends either die or get grievously injured in motorcycle accidents caused by other drivers. On top of that, the housing near my job is all single-family houses that cost more than I can afford, since odds are good my job won't last more than a couple years. And to top it off, my job responsibilities can't be handled remotely, so WFH generally doesn't work outside of the occasional day or two when my car's in the shop getting repaired.
There are other possibilities, but the arguable biggest issue is that our car-centric society has ultimately shaped employment and income around having private transportation available at all times, and simply saying that cars are the problem ignores that other big problems are attached and need addressing in order to excise the car problem. Chiefly, changes to zoning for more affordable housing near job centers so that people aren't so reliant on commuting long distances.
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It does in large swathes of the rich world. Americans outside of a few cities have consistently voted against it, and now there is no more time for slow change. Boo fucking hoo. If half a century isn't enough for anything to happen, neither is another decade. The US has to be dragged into climate action because way too many Americans either don't care, or are champagne environmentalists who care but not enough to allow for the smallest shift in quality of life.
Also, Canada and several Nordic countries have far lower population densities, so fuck your population density excuse. It is a choice made in planning the urban landscape, refusing to let smaller towns die, etc.
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Oh, I would agree on making sure it is fair. A carbon tax that taxes all forms of carbon emissions and then divided up equally between all residents of a country is how I think we should deal with it.
There are affordable EV's out there that you will break even on in a couple years in the US. It isn't like you got to buy an expensive luxury car these days to get an EV. They also have less maintenance costs than a regular car. At least in the US the infrastructure is there most places, and getting better.
I personally wish we had built a lot of nuclear in the 90's and 00's. But we didn't. Right now nuclear power on paper costs more, takes longer to build, and that is before we get into the real problems: the delays and major cost over runs. At this point in time it is impossible to take nuclear seriously when I can install wind, solar, and storage now and have it installed faster and cheaper.
We should be denying new drilling permits across the board world wide. These assets will just be like the coal power plants built in the late 00's and early 10's. They are going to be costly boondoggles that never pay for themselves.
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You realize there are bags that attach to bikes, right? Or that you can use a backpack? That you could either bring your bike into the office or use these new fangled things called bike racks and lock your bike up?
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You're taking your life into your own hands if you commute by bike in most parts of the country. Safe, separated bike lanes are almost completely nonexistent, drivers aren't used to seeing cyclists, and chuds like to intimidate cyclists.
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I've seen effects locally - people who used to drive for commutes of literally less than 4-5 miles are now biking. People who live farther out are carpooling. High gas prices reduce consumption and that is GOOD.
Maybe you could realize that your current lifestyle is not affordable for you and make adjustments, rather than throwing a tantrum of "but you need to let me pollute as much as I used to for cheap because I got used to living that way!!!"
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I don't go on long distance trips. I shop at literally the two closest grocery stores to me and walk to do so on the weekends. I'm in Dallas, so DART exists, but it also turns most (10-15 minute) trips into over an hour ones. I'd walk places more often, except that everything is so spread out, that I'd probably halve my reasonable options from the time loss alone, not to mention the weather.
I'm doing what I can. But options are limited when I already keep these things cut down. I'm saving towards an EV, but even used ones are pretty pricey right now. That's going to take time and saving. Which is hard while I'm being squeezed at the pump.
I would change my habits in response to this, but they're already cut down to what makes sense for my daily life. So since I can't do anything to relieve the economic pressure, I'm just going to have to tighten my belt in other ways.
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Public transport doesn't exist in the United States outside of metropolitan areas. Most suburban towns weren't designed to be walkable, bike lanes are fairly rare and cycling with traffic the way it is can be pretty hazardous. This seems to be a sticking point that Europeans and even Americans who live in cities don't seem to be able to get their arms around. There aren't options beyond driving for most Americans outside of cities.
There's a reason why there are plenty of people here saying that high gas prices disproportionally fucks the lower income people, because it does. It will cause the price of everything to jump in addition to the gas they need to go and make the money to buy the increasingly expensive everything else.
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My job is 45 minutes away by car on a highway. Even if I were to get an electric bike, it would turn those 45 minutes into a 3.5+ hour ride, assuming good weather conditions and no road closures. I do own a bike for riding around locally, but trying to switch from car to bike for commuting would be incredibly stupid. I've also attempted to seek employment closer to my home, but after several interviews nothing has caught on, so I need to commute if I want to keep having an income.
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