Let’s say tomorrow, or in 10 years or even 15, that by some feat of magic that wind and solar could fully power the global economy. We could then stop extracting oil and the natural gas that’s a byproduct of drilling. Right?
No, it wouldn’t work that way – because it can’t.
Even in a world that ran entirely on renewable energy, it would still be necessary to drill for crude. Why? Because of, as Dustin Hoffman’s character Benjamin Braddock was told 1967’s “The Graduate,” plastics.
“There’s a great future in plastics,” Mr. McGuire, a family friend, told Ben at his college graduation party.
More than a half century later, none of us can imagine our lives without plastic and other products made from the oil refining process.
We’ve heard the argument that we should be moving toward an economy in which we drop the fuels for transportation and power plants and drill only enough to make plastics and other products of modernity. It’s made by those who believe they’re always the smartest person in the room but don’t know what they don’t know.
To use crude oil to make only consumer products and asphalt (about 21% of a 42-gallon barrel of oil is dedicated to these components, the balance is made into transportation fuels) is simply not economical.
“It would not be profitable for anyone unless you raised consumer prices” on the more than 6,000 goods that are made from a barrel of oil, says energy consultant Todd Royal. “You would likely go into a recession or even a depression.”
We’re not talking small increases but “astronomically” inflated prices, he says, on these products, which include pharmaceuticals and life-saving medical devices, as well as the fertilizers and pesticides that are necessary if farmers are to grow enough food to keep us fed.
Royal tells us that refining oil to make only consumer products would “throw the entire [refinery] model on its head.” The entire market would have to be repriced.
Presidential candidate Joe Biden guaranteed during a 2019 campaign stop that “we’re going to end fossil fuel.” Well, he not only hasn’t ended fossil fuel, the production of gasoline, the most common product of crude and of course the most hated of all hydrocarbon fuels, has increased since hitting a valley in the pandemic panic of 2020. In 2023, Biden’s third year in office, nearly 9 million barrels of gasoline were being produced domestically each day. That’s not far from the all-time high of 9.33 million barrels set in 2018 in a more energy-independent era.
No one, not even the most radical green, expected Biden to end fossil fuel within a four-year term. The fact is, he couldn’t do it in eight. But that doesn’t mean that the eco-left won’t stop agitating for the eradication of oil and gas. It’s been on a civilization-killing mission for decades and isn’t going to easily give up its campaign to tear down what better people have built over the generations.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Worse than foolish. Insanity.
People, start checking different sites on Crude Oil not the climate crisis doom and gloom sites that want your money to tell you more lies. We are never ever going to run out of crude, why? Because it is naturally made by the earths crust, real researchers have went back to capped wells thought pumped dry and guess what filled the wells back up? The United States has the richest reserves of petroleum in the world and we have have earth worshipers in the white house who do not want you to make money and want to cripple the economy.
DUHHHHHH!!!
Mass Delusions! So many. Why?
Where do these wild delusions come from to possess the minds of otherwise normal people, like the Defund the Police delusion? End Fossil Fuels is more mass delusion, misinformed, unrealistic and so starkly stupid.
And the mass delusion of righteous indignation that caused national riots, destruction of cities, and 22 murders after a known criminal, George Floyd died of his own massive overdose of illegal drugs in custody, (please view “The Fall of Minneapolis” video), and now another massive national delusion of thousands of naive college students, with merely a high school diploma as their credential, mindless as the delusions by arrogant, insufferably sanctimonious and shockingly uneducated college students?
How do so many people get so terribly deluded?
Regarding the, “Delusion de Jour,” the meltdown of college students, start by firing college admissions departments who admitted those fools, who are woefully unprepared for critical thinking at a college level and for learning. Also, require every freshman to sign a contract acknowledging that he/she will be expelled immediately for anti-academic, uncivilized and rude, shouting down speakers, and for any of their unAmerican Hitler Youth behavior; no ifs, ands or buts. Good-bye!
So, what’s your solution to global warming/climate change? Ignore it? Deny it? Carbon capture and sequestration.
People who talk about a “solution to climate change” should study this chart showing temperature records for the past 450,000 years. https://energyeducation.ca/wiki/images/8/8f/Ice_ages2.gif. According to this, the planet got *a lot* warmer during the last interglacial than it is now — without any help from mankind. More worrisome: based on this 450,000-year pattern, we are close to the end of the current interglacial. And since glacial periods last 7-9 times longer than interglacials and are far more deadly to living beings, I’d say the “solution” is to keep burning fossil fuels!
You describe a problem that does not exist. It certainly does not exist to the extent that a government solution is necessary. Carbon and Carbon dioxide are not pollutants. No, this is not “deny it.” You are caught up in a religion, not any sort of data-driven point of view.
The fools running the government are foolish to end fossil fuels. The fools in the population are foolish to let the government be foolish.
It would be INSANITY to to STOP using FOSSIL FUEL!
WE GOTTA keep on making gasoline, ‘cos we no longer have any reserves! Thanks, Joe!
In 10 or 15 years if we are smart, thorium will be powering the global economy.
No such a thing as fossil fuel it’s more leftist fake info
Oil is abiotic they want you to believe that oil is finite
It never will run out!
Will all those Useful idiots who oppose Fossel Fuels all take up living in a Cold and Drafty Cave with little Creepy Crawlies all over them at night
I respect the author’s viewpoint, but I can’t fully align myself with the conclusions drawn in this article.