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Comment by Claudus | Hacker News Reader

For people who oppose pipelines, what is the safer alternative for transporting oil?

For one: not transport oil. Use oil (and other fossil fuels) if and only if there is no way to use something else.

Or: change the system that builds these pipelines so the incentives of the entity/entities building and maintaining it have "safety of environment" as a clear and unambiguous incentive.

> have "safety of environment" as a clear and unambiguous incentive

That's non-trivial to do in practice.

It's already incentivized, via inspections and fines. What you're presumably talking about is prioritizing it above other incentives.

Which gets into how much risk is acceptable and how much risk mitigation is reasonable to pay for. Hint: never enough that risk approaches zero.

I absolutely think fines (and especially inspections, or likelihood of catching violations) should be increased, but the world economy is still transitioning off oil.

It's easy to forget that we can absolutely put such a premium on risk that energy prices spike, that suppresses downstream consumers and economic activity, that causes worse outcomes.

IMHO, accelerating the shift to clean renewables, while simultaneously continuing to raise fines and regulation on oil pipelines as the actual energy mix shifts is the optimal choice.

> That's non-trivial to do in practice.

$1M fine for every gallon spilled. Any attempts to falsify data will lead to imprisonment and 5x fines per gallon. Boom, properly incentivized.

And what effect does that have on energy prices?

Who cares? The market will adapt.

Billions of people care. The market is you and your family as you deal with increased costs of living or lack of power and other goods.

Slightly more expensive to the energy companies, cheaper for the countries the pipeline travels through and the people who live there.

I'm not seeing a downside.

> It's easy to forget that we can absolutely put such a premium on risk that energy prices spike, that suppresses downstream consumers and economic activity, that causes worse outcomes.

This kind of undermines the validity of your point, as it carries an assumption of wanting to churn through as many natural resources as possible.

If you care about environmental sustainability, every time you hear "reduced economic activity" you should think "sounds great!". We've figured out how to produce so much stuff that our homes are full and we throw things away every several years to get new ones.

Economic priests want to keep the machine running full tilt under a misguided idea that sustainability can somehow be priced in. But compare the general time to fix (or simply maintain!) something at your general hourly rate to the cost of buying a shiny new one. Thinking that this harsh dynamic can be abstracted and then recouped somewhere else is simply more unsustainable bubble thinking.

It's a straw man to cast all concerns about economy sustainability as "exploit natural resources as quickly as we can."

There are serious, life-threatening concerns about reorienting the world to a lower-growth, lower-carbon model.

And to substitute fervor for fact is just as much of a fallacy as the global free trade crowd committed, before recently admitting that maybe they should have thought harder about the dislocating side effects and funding strategic workforce reskilling programs.

We don't get to a brighter future by ignoring the hard questions and consequences of proposed paths.

Sure, any sort of abrupt change has serious (possibly life threatening) concerns. But there is a difference in arguing for caution, and perpetuating the same assumptions that have lead to the current state of affairs. Drawing attention to one of those assumptions rather than letting it continue in the background does not make for a straw man.

"Economic activity" directly translates into "use natural resources". The overwhelming fallacy seems to be this idea that sustainability will somehow eventually, not today, but some day soon, be priced into the economy such that we can have large sums sloshing back and forth but the externalities will be fully captured. This seems like an economically convenient myth, analogous to the free trade crowd's handwaving about comparative advantage.

Sorry I did not see how to succinctly express the overall arc of what I said with less "fervor". If two people are having a casual conversation about say baseball, but you think it is harmful and destructive, it's impossible to express without sounding like a looney. (I used baseball because I think it's innocuous. Whereas any real example would inherently be polarizing).

It seemed like you were characterizing alternative approaches in a way in which you could more easily refute their concerns.

I'd be pleased as punch if we moved to a post-resource economy, but I also think it's going to be the hardest thing we've ever attempted (in an international sense).

The Paris climate agreements are a minor skirmish on the scale of what needs to be done.

Because, ultimately, we're talking about some wealthy countries having less (compared to business as usual) in order to strike agreement with poorer countries not to run their growth at full tilt.

So when we say things like "stricter environmental regulations," we're really saying "stricter environmental regulations worldwide." Otherwise we're just offloading pollution to the current poorest country with a labor force.

And it's going to take some serious financial and developmental persuasion (and ugly enforcement) to get someone to not do something that would make them better off.

... It is heartening to see the debate being reframed in justice terms. Because that seems to have a better chance of winning hearts and minds to the extent necessary.

> It's already incentivized, via inspections and fines.

Well, the inspections aren't happening - since major leaks are happening. And the fines are very small, otherwise a bunch of these companies would have gone under.

More importantly - no criminal charges against the management of these companies and the engineers who signed off on the thing.

To your latter point, industries with this sort of externalized risk should be required to issue real stock to stakeholders (Such as the neighbors of the pipeline, the downstream water users, upstream water users as well, groundwater users, etc)

They are already unwillling investors in the pipeline. They invest with the cost of their health and safety at a cut-rate of $0 to the operator of these critical systems.

"I got mine!" is a terrible foundation on which to build a society.

Forcing companies to internalize the environmental costs of spills and leaks would go a loooong way toward achieving the second goal.

The problem is the people who write the rules benefit from political support of the very companies that need to be regulated.

Make clean energy, transport electricity, use electricity to distill ethanol.

Or just use EVs.

If you insist on transporting oil, do the same as countries did with oil tankers: force them to have an insurance policy that would cover all the environmental damage costs. Very quickly, insurers forced the shipping companies to reinforce their safeties.

You can buy insurance for this today.

https://www.travelers.com/business-insurance/oil-gas/midstre...

But is there a law mandating an insurance that would cover all the costs caused by spills and clean up of spills?

In the industry we call this front-falling-off-insurance. While highly unlikely, you want to avoid the front falling off your tanker. Or at least make sure you're outside the environment when it happens!

That's begging the question. You assume it's a given that the oil must be transported from Alberta to Texas.

False, you are making a straw man argument, I made no such assumption or claim.

As another commenter, we shouldn’t need to run pipes. Oil is too precious for precarious forms of transportation. It shouldn’t be burned. I’m thinking it’s better uses don’t need it to be pumped like this.

Charge a bond that covers the accepted clean up of the estimated oil that's out of ground until it's processed.

At the moment, some governments charge a bond that barely covers the clean up costs.

As someone said, the costs are externalized and companies will go bankrupt if they are forced to clean it all up.

Companies that work in oil and gas tend to be massive. Seems like the costs of clean up are generally born by the company.

A safer pipeline. It will cost more to build, so the oil will have to be sold at a higher price. This higher price will probably result in reduced consumption of oil.

None safer. Unfortunately, these are the most optimized solutions for problems with multiple parameters to tweak (safety, scalability, viability,...). If there were a better way, why wouldn't it be implemented?

profit

I know that's a very emotive, convincing bogeyman. But like Obama used to say, "truth has a funny way of catching up"

All I'm saying is, the day a Tesla et. al become significantly more affordable than a Honda Civic, with the ability for seamless cross country travel, is the day one can accurately claim no dependency on oil

I’ve seen this argument made before and don’t understand why seamless cross country travel should be the requirement for people traveling in personal cars (like Tesla, Honda, etc). How many people need to seamlessly travel more than a few hundred miles regularly? It might be better to optimize for the majority of use cases, which, I suspect, do not require this.

you're 1) arguing with yourself and 2) pretending like there's no tradeoff between profit and safety.

Didn't the Obama's just purchase beach front in the Hamptons? https://www.bostonmagazine.com/property/2018/08/20/obama-mar...

And they did it without oil money. So what’s your point?

Instead of building more transnational pipelines, perhaps a spoke pipeline to existing freight networks.

If those aren't us to snuff (I suspect) we should probably remediate the deferred maintenance and implement all planned upgrades.

Not sure rail is a safer way to transport oil.

It's not. We currently do it in Canada for much of our oil and we spill it with so much frequency that it makes much more sense from an environmental perspective to use a pipeline. I'm still anti-oil, but if the oil has to come out of the ground then pipelines are better. Ideally though more investment in batteries, green tech, and nuclear would be favoured by policymakers than our current situation.

Thank you.

I have never compared the safety records, so my assumption was pretty baseless in retrospect.

I don't know but I do think the existing pipes need better maintenance. It's crazy that people fault nuclear when there are pipes bursting, underwater spills, etc. so often with the infrastructure we have.

How about the industry fix or properly decommission the ones they have, before they build new ones?

There are so many pipelines and well heads and so forth, scattered every where, which are poorly maintained, literally bursting at the seems, and at eminent risk of catastrophic failure.

The ones running under the Great Lakes comes to mind. The day when (not if) one of those fails is going to be really, really bad.

Discontinue the use of single use plastic and internal combustion engines.

...and every element of your personal consumption that relies on either.

Honestly, it's really tiresome dealing with fanatics who think we can meaningfully eliminate oil usage in the near future. It's nothing more than the delusional fantasy of extreme hypocrites.

In a century I could imagine a 50-80% decrease in usage in the US, but by that time Africa and Asia will have doubled in population. Any efficiency gains are totally lost with an increase in population. Every added person will guarantee a life of consumption which requires the use of oil, especially in a nation which isn't anywhere close enough to replacing their infrastructure with "green" technologies.

This is no less frivolous than the person getting down voted for the Flintstones theme.

If we're to make progress on climate change, more practical solutions than those a grade schooler can trivially dream of, need to be discussed.

If we could cold turkey cut off single use plastic and IC engines without disrupting the economy and civilisation, we already would

Just like recycling bins, that's only the virtue-signaling parts of the story. It is vital to discontinue nearly all petrochem uses of fossil fuels and leave much of the rest of it in the ground. This implies:

- massive expansions of renewables (doable since costs have dropped precipitously)

- possibly temporary use of fission (replaced hopefully by fusion)

- elimination of diesel-powered ships, replaced by electrical (battery) and/or nuclear fission (again hopefully replaced by fusion)

- elimination of FF-powered air transport with electric-powered

- derivation of reasonable amounts of polymers from recycled materials and plant sources

- improved, efficient post-consumer recycling diverting a considerable fraction of the waste stream back into raw materials

Furthermore, it is necessary and possible to spend on the order of what was spent on the wars in Afganistan and Iraq on CCS to return GHGs to pre-industrial levels... if we don't do this, nothing else matters because we (and our progeny) will all be dead. We ought to examine:

- ferrous ocean seeding of phytoplankton blooms

- blooming the kelp over-proliferation between Mexico and Africa for harvest and subterranean/hadopelagic CCS

And to be consistent, the top two other major sources of GHGs should be minimized:

- meat agriculture

- clinker production (Portland cement / concrete)

The math to replace fossil fuels is staggering. Look at this analysis of what it would take to replace existing fossil fuel with net zero carbon alternatives by 2050 (11000 days from now). Here's the conclusions:

So the math here is simple: to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, the world would need to deploy 3 [brand new] nuclear plants worth of carbon-free energy every two days, starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050. At the same time, a nuclear plant’s worth of fossil fuels would need to be decommissioned every day, starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050.

I’ve found that some people don’t like the use of a nuclear power plant as a measuring stick. So we can substitute wind energy as a measuring stick. Net-zero carbon dioxide by 2050 would require the deployment of ~1500 wind turbines (2.5 MW) over ~300 square miles, every day starting tomorrow and continuing to 2050.

Just consider the steel (coking coal) and cement needed to accomplish this.

source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/09/30/net-zero...

Its a simple method and easy to validate on your own.

This analysis assumes that we can continue on the current consumption spree and growth in energy usage as before.

It has to be a combination and there will have to be painful adjustments to the current western lifestyle.

We need to find better ways of moving around, buy less stuff and produce food in better ways.

> It has to be a combination and there will have to be painful adjustments to the current western lifestyle.

I feel quite confident in saying “that will never happen.”

If you want to avoid a mass revolution from the people, you can’t take away quality of life.

The taking of quality of life is a given anyway, there simply is not enough stuff to satisfy everyone. There are already large parts of the population in the US living in poverty and the middle class is being decimated.

And that's basically why any plan that doesn't start with better (drastically less GHG) cement and steel manufacturing is not very insightful.

Furthermore the fact that we aren't building 10 test fusion reactors all around the planet shows how less people are aware of the problem, and how little effort and resources are we willing to allocate toward really averting it.

Skewed analysis. It assumes:

1. No energy savings.

2. No carbon sequestration.

Now, I'm no expert on either of these, but both are of extreme importance to achieving emission reduction goals, and there is huge potential for such reductions.

Sue but even if those two factors cut the problem in half (they won't) we still can't build at this lower rate. Oil consumption and electrical needs are projected to rise during the next thirty years.

At least for energy use it turns out that the problem is cut in half!

https://medium.com/otherlab-news/decarbonization-and-gnd-b8d...

“The mere act of electrification has a powerful effect on efficiency: electrifying the US economy from carbon free sources will reduce the amount of energy needed by more than half.”

They will cut the problem by much more than a half.

You first. You can (sort of) accomplish this for yourself, and you get to benefit from the utility internal combustion provides the economy you're in, so it'll be easier than if the state imposed it.

As for single use plastics, you're going to have to narrow that down. What about medical plastics? Food service gloves? Hazmat suits?

No pipelines. Let the cost of oil skyrocket and push us to greener alternatives.

Oil is central to our entire economy, impacting not only cars, but electrical generation, materials, transportation.

I’m sure that single mother working two jobs would love to have her grocery bill go up by 50% so that we can accelerate the adoption of green energy.

As if that’s the only possible outcome. Defending oil companies by claiming their success is in alignment with what’s best for the poor is a rather bizarre point to make.

Nobody made that point. You're underestimating how important oil is to the entire economy. Understanding all the potential issues that will affect people is necessary if you intend to actually make any changes.

It will just go onto trains and trucks which burn oil to move oil, and are much less safe. I'd much rather see the externalities priced into fossil fuels through carbon taxes, ramped up incrementally over ten years. Let the market work its magic once the real price is apparent.

Pipelines that don't spill boatloads of oil?

I remember many complaints that the pipeline was shoddily built and was using sub-standard materials.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/08/25/what-is-w...

lower flow rate

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