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Comment by google234123 | Hacker News Reader

And our government has literally made it its mission to limit domestic oil production (canceling keystone, blocking permits, ceasing to lease federal land. I’m guessing all the net zero regressives were quite happy about the high prices too

I remember at the time Biden was asking (failingly) Saudi & even China to pump more oil lol

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If the prices mean that we move off of oil... we'll it's painful medicine.

The planet's capacity to absorb CO2 is limited and too many people are too happy to be deficit spending on that account because it's not as visible. When that bill comes due, it won't be as easy to pay it off with green rectangles.

Even if this were true, China, Russia and India aren’t going to reduce their emissions. So they will thrive with the cheap energy and overtake the west.

This is old and incorrect. China is leading the way in terms of electrification and EV-adoption, ahead of even the darling child Norway.

China is building more new coal power plants than rest of the world combined.

And more renewables.

That’s a bit of a red herring. Their rate of growth in coal has fallen dramatically over the last 15 years and other sources are growing rapidly. As a share of the total coal is declining as is oil and renewables is increasing. Assuming this trend continues over the next 20 years coal will become a distinct minority share. But their overall demand for energy is so immense that they’re still adding more coal power plants - and every other source of energy as well. The metric you quoted is pretty devoid of broader context and tells a story that’s pretty skewed when the reality is fairly nuanced.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

Reality is G7 is getting rid of coal and have carbon taxes, China and India are still building new coal. China is already first world polluter and will be much more with new coal. There are no nuances in this.

China does not produce enough oil to run its current fleet of cars and trucks. They get most of their oil from the Persian Gulf and they correctly worry that that supply line will be pinched (or cut off entirely) if the US gets angry at them (similar to how the US is angry with Russia now) or if some actor like Iran stops the flow of oil out of the Gulf. Most of the oil and oil products China gets from Russia leave Russia on ships from Russia's European ports -- another long supply line.

So for sensible national-security reasons that do not apply to the US (namely, making sure it can continue to transport things like food to all its citizens if its national-security competitor gets angry at it or if the Persian Gulf becomes unstable) China is interested in electrifying its vehicle fleet since China has plenty of coal with which to generate electricity.

Because coal is the fossil fuel that produces the most carbon dioxide per unit of heat produced, it might be the an electric car in China will more greenhouse gas than a gas-powered car in the US.

As long as you (and the Democratic Party) are honest about it during elections. I’d love for you to say this publically, see how the American people want to suffer and go back to a lower standard of living so that you can feel better about yourself.

I'm ambivalent towards American politics, but that's an argument to be made that voting people (and media) don't think in timescales longer than 5 years, and it will be the humanity downfall if we don't focus on the Earth's long term problems. There are no easy solutions, and I don't pretend to have an answer, but "close your eyes and wait for our doom (or a miracle)" is not one.

If I can't squander my children's future for my own selfish desires, what's the point of America?

Aye? And are Republicans gonna be honest with farmers about the long-term consequences of not swallowing this bitter pill?

Are your politicians prepared to talk about the real welfare queens in this country, the truck-driving rural population whose lifestyle is propped up by oil & gas subsidies?

> so that you can feel better about yourself.

I don't grasp this sentiment. It's clear it's not about feeling better about oneself but being preoccupied about a materially predicted catastrophe that can tear the fabric of many societies if left without action.

Even if it means lowering some standards of living for a while, and spending money to move us out from the high consumption of fossil fuels, it's worth it long term both in economical and social aspects.

You don't want a world where social strife due to mass starvation, mass migration, destroying societies that want to protect themselves from the potential millions that will seek refugee elsewhere where they can have food, is possible because it would be a little bit inconvenient to some of the richest folks on Earth. Those will also cause massive economical impacts, broken supply chains, less supply of some raw materials, more protectionism from nations wanting to hoard resources, wars between nations when water sources move borders or disappear altogether.

Yeah, there might be some inconveniences that are required, but previous generations had to deal with much worse inconveniences: wars, famine due to crop failure, etc.

It sounds really entitled to be offended by being asked to not drive your car so much, shop more locally produced food (and even stuff in general) if possible in your budget, change some ways of business to not require so many flights for simple meetings, so on and so forth.

There are lots of low hanging fruits, there's also massive societal changes required, we should be brave enough to be inconvenienced a little to avoid much more suffering in the lives of our kids, grandkids and so on.

> it's worth it long term both in economical and social aspect This is an opinion that should be debated. Not enforced secretly

That's an empty platitude that says nothing, please expand.

Debated by whom? The laymen that are way out of the scientific consensus without anything apart from "I feel this is bad because it inconvenience me"?

The scientific consensus is pretty clear on this topic, unsure why uneducated people feel they should have a say in it...

You sound like a real snowflake. Dealing with 3x the amount of 100F days where I live is a far lower standard of living than any boogie man you can come up with.

It’s now snowfake-like to ask for honesty? Glad to know lying is cool if it’s for the greater good

>If the prices mean that we move off of oil... we'll it's painful medicine.

I'm know I'm an odd duck, but I think the price of gasoline in the US is way too cheap. Even at the highest price per gallon in the US, that's about the same price per liter in Europe. I'm not considering bigOil profits in saying that. I'm saying that until the price of gasoline hurts, nobody will care about the ramifications from using it (if even then). People are less concerned about the environmental effects as they are their personal financial effects, but I'll take it either way if it reduces the use.

That's political suicide. As much as I wish for what you write to become true, look at how stupidly unimportant (or unsolvable) items made people like trump from 0 to hero. This is majority of US voters, and same applies in many other countries. This would hurt literally everybody and cost given political side couple of elections.

Look at how every single politician across all spectrum is playing politics and PC and is on full PR mode 24/7 when on camera. That's not the kind of people who make good long term decisions just because... they are good. Not when they massively hurt back.

> That's political suicide. As much as I wish for what you write to become true, look at how stupidly unimportant (or unsolvable) items made people like trump from 0 to hero.

Or look at how the carbon tax is killing the ruling party in Canada. It reduces GHG emissions, is structured in a progressive way that's a financial benefit to most people, is strongly supported by most economists, and is wildly unpopular at large.

> structured in a progressive way that's a financial benefit to most people

I think most people are unable to draw a line from the carbon tax to how it financially benefits them

It has had a very visible surface level impact of making gas more expensive at gas stations, which is very clearly not a financial benefit for individuals who drive gas cars

People need a concrete reason to believe that this puts money in their pocket. Not some just some vague assurance of "This financially benefits you"

> I think most people are unable to draw a line from the carbon tax to how it financially benefits them

I probably agree, but if people can't draw that line from quarterly deposits into their bank accounts, it feels pretty hopeless.

Maybe digital money is too ephemeral and the government should have insisted on mailing paper cheques to everyone.

The guy running the office before him was elevated on a pedestal of hope and dreams and didn't really deliver. Not that he as successor did either.

There are deeply rooted problems with the elite and people will eventually realize that the frontrunner aint got nothing up against it.

Every country has the government it deserves.

  - Joseh de Maistre

I wish the politicians that also wish the same as you would also state it publicly :)

The US federal gas tax has gone down since 1993 in any way you measure it except nominal dollars per gallon (since it has been fixed in nominal dollars per gallon since 1993). It's low enough now to neither be an effective excise tax (it's lower than sales tax in some places), nor fund the federal spend on highways.

Nominal dollars per mile: gone down by about 10% on average since cars have gotten more efficient since 1993

Real cost per gallon: gone down by more than half, since we've had ~116% inflation since 1993

Real cost per mile: just multiply the two together and it's about 60% lower than it was in 1993.

Percentage of spend on gasoline: Gas was $1.11 per gallon in 1993, and it's about triple that today.

All you're really proposing is stranding poor people at their houses in the middle of nowhere.

This attitude of imposing pain that maps trivially to regressive taxation on lower- and middle-class voters is not a good look for the green left.

You can obviously compensate by changing other taxes to be more progressive, this is such a silly argument.

A nuance is perhaps lost, I'm not saying don't do it, merely that simplistic messaging feeds into the binary crisis.

Sure but that doesn't happen. Start by doing that, not by implementing the regressive part first.

Instead of sending the money to oppressive regimes, we should send it to atmospheric carbon capture facilities.

It costs about $1/gallon (maybe $2/gallon, with recent inflation) to suck the CO2 emitted by gasoline out of the air, and put it back in the ground.

That's a heck of a lot less expensive than dealing with the consequences of climate change, and certainly less than the amount gas prices fluctuate due to price gouging, etc.

Do you have any source for that 2$/gal CO2 removal ?

According to the EIA domestic crude production is at an all time high: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61523

It's almost as if you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

Keystone was about pumping oil straight from Canada to the Gulf Coast for the export market, crossing key aquifers to get there. It literally never mattered with respect to US gas prices and never will regardless of what occurs in the future.

The US literally produces more oil today than any country has in the history of the world. One of the main reasons its doing so is because oil prices are high enough to sustain production. Making oil cheaper REDUCES production. Wells become unprofitable to pump and maintain. When Trump negotiated a deal to crash the oil market, thousands of people in the industry lost their jobs.

More than that, the Keystone pipeline would have increased oil prices in the US. Canada exports most of that shale oil to refineries in the US. The pipeline would have bypassed the US and forced us to compete with other buyers for the oil. The pipeline could only have had negative impacts on the US. https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/ma...

We are producing more oil in the US than we ever have.

"The environmental constraints bit was in retrospect an obvious lie."

It was pretty obvious when said without needing retrospect

Why are you so committed to being wrong?

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