Good. The world was okay before there was an oil industry and it will be better off when it no longer has one.
Reading the article, the projection is that this could "cut petrochemical demand growth to one-third of its historical pace, to about 1.5% a year".
That's good enough. I don't want to see reduced growth rate. I want to see shrinkage.
As in, there might be a lot of downsides to reducing or getting rid of plastic use, but the fall of oil giants is not one of them.
Perhaps you mean that's not good enough?
I, too, want to see the oil industry shrink. To my mind, it's downright dangerous to devote such a large part of the global economy to an industry that is literally putting our planet in peril.
The larger conversation we need to have, however, is what a post- growth economy should look like.
Actually, I don't really believe this. I do use/consume a lot of plastic, but I find in practice that in the vast majority of cases, the decision to make those items from plastic is an arbitrary one. The market has made decidision on my behalf, and provided me with a range of plastic options, with very few non-plastic options, for an application that has no hard dependency on plastic.
Electronics would be one of the big ones, and can largely be (and often are) made with aluminium* casings. Fittings have similar metallic alternatives. PCBs are something of an exception here: yes, there are aluminium/metallic substrates, but even those are epoxy-insulated.
Most other plastic uses are similar stories: we're provided with a range of exclusively plastic choices by the market, but that doesn't make it necessary on the production end.
Plastic is usually cheaper, yes, but this is a result of a long chain of subsidies, wars, and other market interference. This doesn't reflect true production cost.
* Worth noting, the environmental impact story for aluminium/other metals isn't too great either, but that's a separate topic.
Can it be fully replaced? Yes, but it will really take quite a bit of effort, or even going back to already phased out tools and materials.
It would take an almost impossible effort (I'm not optimistic) on the part of industry. The only point I was rebutting is that our day-to-day consumer needs could not be met without plastic without significant lifestyle change by private individuals. I don't believe that this is true.
But yes, the change required on an holistic level is pretty much insurmountable.
The U.S. produces 12,000,000 barrels of oil per day. 4,380,000 barrels per year. According to https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/14/u-s-tax-code-4-6-billio..., we also subsidise this production by $4B per year, or about a dollar a barrel.
If you are saying that a $1 per barrel subsidy for oil causes the cost of plastic widgets to shrink appreciably, I think you are very wrong.
If you are saying that the total cost of the Iraq war should be rolled into the cost of plastic widgets, I think you are very wrong.
I am saying that. I'm also saying the cost of the lifecycle of plastic production and recycling/disposal, including environmental cost (which we have plenty of proxies for these days in terms of representing using economic metrics) should be rolled in.
(and yes, the same goes for aluminium: it too has ancillary costs to consider)
Not denying that the oil industry hasn't got any sins.
It was used everywhere - as filler, as insulation, as fire retardant, and was so cheap it even got used as bulking agent, as fake snow for Xmas and in packaging. We got rid of it in new applications in just a few years once it was realised that the health cost was far in excess of its utility. It costs thousands to rip out some of the old insulation in buildings, especially where it's part of the fabric of the building.
Lead in petrol was far to useful to be replaced, etc etc...
I just think it's part of the new innovation debt coming due. It's only now coming due for plastics and oil and the extreme cost of profligate unconstrained use is starting to be realised.
It comes from thinking of the planet as infinite and able to absorb anything thrown into it, rather than a closed cycle life support system.
I'm no fan of oil either, but let's not get carried away.
A house need not depend on oil - bricks can still be fired and glass made from carbon neutral electricity, pipes can be copper, and drainage use ceramic like was used until the 80s. Similar for transport, water treatment etc. Perhaps a few specialised uses of PVC and other plastics will remain and the rest go - regulated or priced from existence. Now 95% of coal and horses aren't around we still keep stables for fun, some still enjoy horse racing, steam trains run at weekends and museums run a few steam engines.
Thing is the assumption that the planet could take everything thrown at it used to work - now population has grown so much that no longer applies. JulianMorrison has a point that "it's useful" can no longer be enough - stuff isn't only used by a few wealthy types any more, on a planet with under 1bn, whilst most of those engage in agriculture. We have to learn to consider damage control and restriction far sooner than was necessary even in the 1930s.
My worry is the modern dogma to not want to impact business at all costs. Governments avoid strong regulation, requiring consideration of the land a business occupy, the pollution and waste they cause or the people whose needs they should serve. Essentially they became subservient to multinationals. It will make changing that much harder and fought against much more - not least by those oil interests.
Not easy, but not impossible either. There is precedent after all. :)
The final thing I would say is that if those in control are sincere about tackling climate change, an open borders immigration policy is a very strange thing for them to be promoting. Instead of supporting people to live good lives where they are - in low carbon countries - we are encouraging them to move to high carbon countries, and effectively creating a reason to generate massive amounts of carbon through house building, infrastructure etc. This is one of the main reasons I am sceptical about the messages that come down from on high, and even more so given that the stock response to this issue is accusations of racism etc.
Get rid of plastic forks, spoons, knives, and straws... again no big deal.
Get rid of plastic used in food. Milk jugs, processed food, tv dinners, plastic bags of lemons/potatoes/etc. Kill off water bottles (which are a waste anyways), soda packages in plastic, cheap boxed wine, etc.
Sure there's some harder things, like say fertilizer, car interiors, toys, keyboards, mice, watches, network cables, etc. But still we could hugely reduce are use of oil.
Sadly the world was just starting to move away from oil a bit, then USA went from a large oil importer, to a huge exporter and the prices dropped.
You can't just snap your fingers, make oil go away and expect modern civilization to keep existing as it currently does.
It took ~150yr to get the oil industry where it is today and that is with a massive financial incentive. People need lubricants, tars, fuels, plastics, everything that oil makes cheaply and well. In the absence of strong organic (not artificial, i.e. regulatory compliance) incentives to stop using oil it will almost certainly take much longer than 150yr to reduce oil usage for energy/fuel to negligible levels. We will likely never stop using oil for plastics, fertilizers and other "critical to modern civilization" things until something that's cheaper and equivalent or better comes along for every last use case.
Keep in mind that whatever we have next will have tradeoffs too.
I don't think it's right to estimate such a long time for oil to become obsolete as a fuel, just because we use it for other things too.
With advances in biotech and possible harnessing of biological nitrogen fixation we might overcome even this...