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Comment by ta1234567890 | Hacker News Reader

This is so sad. Any ideas on how stuff like this could realistically be fixed? Are there any incentives that could be put in place? What would be the incentive for the people that have that power to make those changes?

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Removing lobbyists, removing buyable politicians, electing politicians that believe in science

Remove the mandatory bribe quota first and the politicians will follow.

Mandatory bribe quota?

You need X amount of money to run a campaign and you get money primarily by accepting campaign contributions from completely charitable wealthy donors and interest groups whose objectives just happen to align with your political ideology.

If you chop out the euphemisms and rationalization, it's a mandatory bribe quota.

What is the order of magnitude of X?

A few million for a senate or house seat. The total cost of the election is several billion. Peanuts in comparison to what lobbyists get in return. It would be extremely economical for us taxpayers to fund it ourselves.

https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/index.php?cycle=2018&di...

Founded rigup.com to try address this issue. Improving the quality of the cement casing is a huge factor, along with hiring competent workers and scheduling inspections.

It all comes down to creating financial incentives. IIRC, Obama's proposed fracking regulation (that most presumed Hilary would run with) called for regular visits of sites. Sadly it never passed.

Once Trump undid the only thing Obama got through, federal land methane restrictions, companies had no incentive to worry anymore. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/climate/trump-methane-rul...

> companies had no incentive to worry anymore

I know what you are saying, but I want to add that it's insane: The owners of the companies have to live in this world, as do their decedents. Also, they are not all sociopaths who don't care if people die and suffer.

I think it's a mistake to think they cannot be persuaded otherwise. Perhaps it's the powerful propaganda machine that runs through the WSJ and other business publications, but whatever the cause, it's a problem that I think can be overcome.

Don't be so naive, my friend. There is ample evidence to show that either a) those people believe in their ability to avoid consequences (see the difference between responses to rising sea levels between poor and wealthy florida neighbourhoods) or b) are heavily incentivised to believe there are no consequences (the old saw of a man being able to believe or disbelieve anything if his paycheck depends on it).

I work with Oil and gas execs. They are almost uniformly very conservative and do not believe in any aspect or climate change, or taking activity to mitigate the effects.

They are not the receivers of propaganda, they are the creators of propaganda.

It's mostly political. The conservatives argue no regulation of any kind is needed because the industry will self-regulate and capture all the leaking methane because it's lost money.

(Mysteriously, the methane continues to leak, and oil & gas continues to lobby against requirements to fix the leak)

As a secondary improvement, cheaper monitoring equipment might make the political fight easier to win.

Another improvement, the gas is owned by the public, and I don't believe royalties are paid at the pad but rather further down the line- after the leaks. O&G has little incentive to avoid wasting resources that "belong" to someone else that they have not paid a dime for. Just pump more.

>> I don't believe royalties are paid at the pad but rather further down the line

That's not true in any regime I'm aware of. Ownership and royalties are accounted for at the zone, which is well before the wellhead, let-alone downstream. Any loss between where the gas is produced and the final sale is known as "shrinkage" which can be allocated to different buckets, most commonly fuel and flaring. I'm not sure where leakage would be accounted for, probably "Transmission" or "Distribution".

What's criminal is that unaccounted for gas (known as UAF) is widely measured on the end-user distribution network, so I'd be very surprised if Oil Co. didn't have all the information they need to figure out loss from the wellhead. They either can't be bothered to amalgamate the data or just don't want to know the answer (or do and keep it secret).

more aggressive surveillance - there is a ton of gas leak detection technology out there, but its use is optional in most places...

Carbon tax

Methane tax.

Methane contains just as much carbon as carbon dioxide does. (By volume; by weight it would be a lot more.)

...but is 84x more potent as a greenhouse gas as if we burn it.

If we not burn it, actually

Fracking ban.

Fracking and horizontal drilling are the only things that have kept us out of a global energy crisis.

Without their application to tight oil and gas fields, the world would be firmly on the downslope of the global Hubbert peak right now.

Ban it at your peril.

If we had invested the Iraq war money into solar infrastructure including batteries in the grid, we would be ahead of the game and peak oil would be moot.

"Take all that money we spent on weapons and defense each year and instead spend it feeding, clothing, and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and WE CAN EXPLORE SPACE, TOGETHER, BOTH INNER AND OUTER, forever … in peace"

Really depressing that this is considered an extremist view.

Who said it is?

The millions of politicians around the world act like this is an extremist view.

That's a Bill Hicks quote.

And the EU would not be dealing with a migration crisis.

While the US refuses to take Sirian migrants.

I really feel really bad you are getting down voted. There is lack of understanding of how shale revolution reshaped America and its energy independence here in this forum.

What has energy independence actually done for America? We are still fighting wars in the Middle East.

For decades people were saying we need to end reliance on foreign oil. Well, we've ended it. What has that gotten us besides underpriced gasoline?

Cheap energy inputs make everything else cheaper.

Financially cheap (in the short term), but environmentally very, very expensive.

Don't worry, the rest of the world carries the cost - more so now that the US is out of Paris.

Then the US likes to point out how "unfairly" they are being treated on trade ...

Not really. Nobody is buying American LNG. It is not a competitive product hence the Russia-hate and tariffs on imported solar panels. Plus renewables are cheaper. British shipyards are raking it in making giant wind turbines instead of Titanic sized ships. Because of the shale 'revolution' America has missed the boat, the only bright light being the much-shorted TSLA.

The global "energy" crisis is only an oil crisis.

I don't see much crisis going on with solar, efficiency improvements, or even coal and gas...

An oil crisis is an energy crisis. Half the energy used in the US comes from either Petroleum or Natural Gas. Look up how much of it is solar.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/

Q1 electricity production in US:

Natural gas 409,806GWh

Wind 104,801GWh

Wind is significant.

https://renewablesnow.com/news/wind-solar-farms-produce-10-o...

Maybe those fractions would be very different if oil and gas were more expensive.

Oil and Natural Gas are very difficult to replace. Look at the German Energiewende program.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiewende_in_Germany

Exactly. When a large chunk of a low level of the economy gets upset all the higher levels get screwed up.

There is already incentive for the private operators to not lose these gases during production or transmission as it cuts into their margins. This is like leaving money on the table.

That's not necessarily true, though, if capturing it costs more than just letting it leak.

I am not saying there are really no bad or incompetent actors.. but it costs the industry $2 billion per year because of these loses.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/climate/methane-leaks.htm...

And if they could fix that for $1B/year, they'd do so.

Instead, you can find industry groups quoted in that article complaining about the study.

The problem is that, given the greenhouse forcing, those leaks will arguably cost society much more than a few $billion per year. It's just that the gas industry isn't legally responsible for that. And that's why they don't want to stop the leaks.

Many companies don't do shit as long as they operate with a profit.

What happens often is that s small player seizes the opportunity and then gets bought.

Maybe there are regulations that keep smaller and / or separate entities from acting in this regard.

Then why are they letting it continue to escape? Proof is in the pudding.

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