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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

A small price to pay knowing that you won't have to sit next to anyone on the way to work.

As horrifying as this disaster is, I think painting oil as some minor convenience that spoiled fat Americans narcissistically demand is disingenuous.

People forget that the alternative to oil was either whale blubber or armies of horses that left cities knee deep in shit (literally.) The fact is that oil was a technology that substantially decreased pollution. The proof of that is that water and air quality has been improving steadily over the years since the 1800's (partly because of legislation, but largely because of technology. You can't legislate away horse manure - but you can legislate cars with cleaner engines.)

So yeah, I look forward to the day when oil is obsoleted in favor of some magic green energy source that produces no pollution (although rest assured, people will find something else to bitch and moan about.) Until then, I'll breathe a silent "thank you" to the grimiest oil refinery out there for making my life that much easier.

It's not either-or. We can use oil, while still asking the question, do we need to use so much, and do we need to push so hard to get more? You don't have to stop using oil entirely tomorrow to be concerned that the returns we get from what we're doing now are not worth the damage.

Things like conservation are about optimizing the last 5%, which in the long run (unfortunately) doesn't matter too much. Technological development is more of a punctuated equilibrium than a gradual upward slope.

So really the best thing to do is leave things alone until oil becomes scarce (i.e. expensive) and an alternative will be developed. Any attempt to legislate conservation will just result in us burning more oil for longer.

The other alternative is to increase grants and incentives to push the breakthrough faster.

I've heard people say that there is still much to invent in terms of making a better power source, which made it seem as though it was simply a problem of money and manpower.

So really the best thing to do is leave things alone until oil becomes scarce (i.e. expensive) and an alternative will be developed.

Best thing to do for whom? You're saying that if we continue to find oil for 300 more years, we just keep burning it? That seems pretty awful. The technology has already been developed (Denmark, for instance, is getting a quarter of it's electricity from wind power)--why wait?

I'd argue that the best thing to do would be to rapidly transition to the cleaner, more renewable sources of energy that already exist (wind, water, sun, even natural gas) while drastically altering lifestyles to reduce the need for such massive amounts of energy. Maybe the economy (stock market) get's screwed up for a little while, but hell, it's already screwed up, right?

Any attempt to legislate conservation will just result in us burning more oil for longer.

How so?

if we continue to find oil for 300 more years, we just keep burning it?

Someone will, absolutely. First world nations will have the wealth and access to innovations to convert to cleaner energy but the poor majority of the world will increasingly create the demand. Oil is too easy and efficient to just ignore. As I see it the only options to stop this would be to build clean energy sources for the entire world which seems nearly impossible, destroy or prevent access to the remaining oil sources, or occupy and repress these poor countries to actively prevent them from burning oil. The later two options would almost certainly start World War 3. The first option is ideal but not very realistic. We are OK letting these same people die due to lack of basic medical care and clean water. What are the chances we help them convert to clean energy? Without some massive global catastrophe to change the game letting the oil run out is the most peaceful and realistic approach in my opinion.

> for making my life that much easier.

Yea it really sucks having to sit next to somebody else on the way to work. Especially if they are really fat. Of course you need a 2 tonne truck to get to work as well, cause smaller cars or motorbikes just aren't safe enough with all those 2 tonne trucks on the road.

It's all cost/benefit but in the 21st century I think we can afford to change the balance.

And to sit in a chair that shipped across oceans, made of materials that were shipped across oceans so that you can type on a device that shipped across oceans, made of materials that were shipped across oceans. While eating food that shipped across continents if not oceans, inside a house made of materials that were shipped across continents, if not oceans.

Just sayin'.

Freight shipping is vastly more efficient than driving your SUV in from the suburbs everyday.

Just sayin'.

More like "a small price to pay for having the jet age". We will be able to eliminate the need for gasoline in cars long before in airlines.

And frankly your alternatives for oil in power generation are coal and nuclear. Take your pick.

In terms of aggregate usage, cars are by far the biggest transportation users, though, so are the main place to look if you wanted to reduce usage. In the U.S., for example, aviation used about 15 billion gallons of fuel in 2005, while road vehicles used about 175 billion, and rail used about 5 billion: http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_stat...

And what percentage of those gallons are used by people who have an option for mass transit and choose a car instead? A tiny fraction. The OP basically is saying that people drive their car instead of using mass transportation. There are a tiny group of people who choose to drive instead of use mass transit in the scheme of things.

I'm not a mass transit hater, my girlfriend and I use mass transit more than any other people we know. We drive to the bus stop together in the morning (5 miles), get on a bus, transfer to our respective subways once in the city, and make it to our sailboats on the weekend by train. There often weeks where we'll go 5 or 8 days without getting in the car other than to and from the bus station because we're either using buses, trains, or subways. We're not environmentalists per say, but it is far cheaper, faster, and convenient (especially when you are out at bars drinking and the other option is a taxi) than driving.

But I still need a car to get to the grocery store during the week. I still need a car when I want to go skiing. I still need a car to get to the movies. I still need a car to get to the library. I still need a car to visit my parents. I still need a car to go to a concert, or hang out with my friends.

But - almost all of my driving would work just fine with a plug-in electric car. The bulk of it is <20 miles each way. Some occasional longer trips will have to be dealt with. I see gasoline usage in cars as something that is basically a technically solved problem. Look at Better Place - they have figured out the system, or even some plug-in hybrids (although I think they are overly complex). It is just an inexorable transition that will be based on economics.

On the other hand, I just can't imagine a technology we have on the drawing boards today that is going to replace the jet engine in airplanes simply due to power density. We've had oil fueled airplanes from the start with 3 minor exceptions - solar power (prop only, basically no payload), rockets (not feasible on a large scale, and probably worse enviromentally), and molten salt cooled nuclear reactors (and even then I'm pretty sure it wasn't driving the plane, just testing in it). You can't use fuel cells or batteries for jets (you could for props, but that sucks), you can use biofuels but honestly is that any different? Personally I prefer my oil out of the ground instead of from ex-rainforest land or competing with the food supply.

So I see airplanes as the big technological problem.

For doing away with oil entirely I agree that airplanes are a big problem. But I don't think in practice they're a big one, because they don't use all that much oil. If all gasoline-powered cars disappeared, but planes were still on oil, our use of oil would plummet by >80%, so much so that our domestic oil production would actually be much more than we need.

As for people choosing to drive when there's public transit available, I think a lot of people do; certain much more than a "tiny" number. The main problem is that where public transit is available, it's often slower, so people prefer not to use it. For example, my brother lives within 2 blocks of a VTA light rail station in Santa Clara, and never takes it anywhere, even to places where the light rail actually goes. And when I lived within the Atlanta city limits, where there's fairly good public transit, almost nobody at Georgia Tech I knew took public transit. Even the people who lived within walking distance of a subway station didn't take it.

(Not saying those are irrational choices, just that a large number of people who don't take transit could, in the sense that it exists, but is often slower than driving.)

Easy, nuclear.

We put more radiation into the air with coal ash then we have ever released with nuclear power.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is... (first article I found - there are plenty)

I can't tell if you're serious or not.

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