Strategic Oil Reserves Emptying Fast
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
That is, high market prices for petroleum will fuel the clean energy transition without the government having to take any action.
Biden seems reluctant to ask people to make any sacrifice at all, he's always looking for the easy way out. Perhaps he thinks asking for sacrifices is borrowing against legitimacy he doesn't have, but asking for sacrifices might work the other way: "Don't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
I don't know how this can be said any clearer. People who are facing real poverty and worried about being in breadlines for perhaps the first time (assuming that there's any bread available given that the entire system for making, processing, and transporting food depends on fuel and people are already talking about potential global famine) aren't going to wax poetic about the vague climate change predictions and the sacrifice needed when their families are scared and desperate.
The US is particularly oil hungry but there should be no illusion that humanity or any nation will use less energy today than it used yesterday. The only salvation would be alternative forms of energy, not elevating energy to a luxury good. If that happens wealth in developed countries will quickly melt.
Poor, hungry or cold people don't care about the environment. We already saw heavy deterioration of ecological goals due to prices and certain conflicts.
You'd better be praying that some billionaire invests in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...
because that's the only answer that people who think they are poor will tolerate.
A really bad economy will kill millions, perhaps even billions, and ruin the health of the planet far easier than anything else as society breaks down and people resort to depleting available resources far more rapidly and even stealing and ruining infrastructure to try and survive. We know what happens when people starve: there's no debate there.
But there's decades and decades of climate change predictions that have proven to be laughably false. Depending on how old you are, you'd have been subject to predictions about everything from a new ice age caused by pollution, to rapid global warming that would cause the ice caps to be long-gone by now or superstorms that would render much of the world uninhabitable, to acid rain making cities unlivable.
I've somehow survived all of that horror, and I'm fine taking my chances.
> You'd better be praying that some billionaire invests in....
If your solution is along these lines, then I'd say that prioritizing a healthy economy that can sustain life and have the resources to come up with these solutions is vital.
Not sure where this theory of inaction against Covid-19 comes from.
Actually, the world took quite a lot of action against Covid-19: forced masks, economic shutdowns, vaccines to keep your job, quarantines and isolation, preventing travel, preventing hospital visits and even funerals, mandating testing, and even blocking treatments for many actual health problems, and many more uncountable illogical and monstrous things.
I just had an acquaintance who had a desperately needed cancer surgery delayed for 2 weeks due to a false Covid-19 test. We're still dealing with lives ruined by this utter nonsense.
> I know there are pensioners who find meaning in life from looking for any evidence that the government made some mistake or may make some mistake about handling COVID-19.
When it comes to the massive loss in freedom, economic devastation, deaths directly caused by government actions, careers and job losses and other ruin caused by government policies, and possibly leading up to the destruction of the economy and resulting in many millions (if not billions of) deaths, our precious government officials should feel lucky that the least that happens to them is the mildest little criticism from an upset pensioner.
> The outcome of that situation, quite depressingly, is that the next crisis is going to be harder to handle.
On this, we agree with each other, albeit probably for different reasons. For me, it's the boy-who-cried-wolf effect to keep in mind. A large segment of the population will not trust what the government/media tell them on health matters ever again. All social capital and trust was wasted on a cold with a very high survival rate for most people. Not the smartest move. If there's ever a real dangerous pandemic, many people will not believe it.