What does the anti-carbon activists' war mean?
Multinational oil companies produce just 10% of the world's oil and gas reserves. State-owned companies now control more than 75% of all crude oil production. Yet private producers, not state owners, are the anti-carbon activist's target. Nor do they target customers. Coal producers, petroleum producers and natural gas producers draw all their fire while the eager consumer, the other half of the supply and demand equation, gets a pass. It is reminiscent of the pusher and his customer; the customer is a victim of the pusher's greed and irresponsibility. The hapless user, perhaps otherwise a swell guy, is accidentally locked in a self-destructive relationship with a rapacious and greedy supplier. Somehow, like the abused wife, he cannot escape his situation. He is an innocent. The availability of the carbon pushes the equation his way. He needs it but knows it's not good for him.
What the anti-carbon activist sees as an endpoint of this war against the supplier is never fully explained. Obama says as a result of his war against coal, "electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket," as if there is a more expensive substitute waiting in the wings. But coal produces 40% of our electricity. What would that substitute be? The battery has not improved much in one hundred years and cannot pick up the slack of the inefficiencies of solar and wind. Nor will nuclear be tolerated. So what, then? Will the customer, the poor sap hooked on carbon, just suffer withdrawal? Will he just have to be brave? Cold showers and walking to work? How much of the advances allowed by carbon will we have to let slide? And what about those emerging countries who have seen our success that carbon has driven? Will they just shrug, look away and passively close their carbon plants?
This, indeed, seems to be a program long on hope but not far-sighted.
It is said by some that Thomas Newcomen in 1712 produced the most important single technological advance of the industrial age. He developed a crude, inefficient steam engine to pump away seeping ground water and allow men to work there. For what? To dig coal.
After all, as England was going to the steam age, they needed something to boil the water.
Multinational oil companies produce just 10% of the world's oil and gas reserves. State-owned companies now control more than 75% of all crude oil production. Yet private producers, not state owners, are the anti-carbon activist's target. Nor do they target customers. Coal producers, petroleum producers and natural gas producers draw all their fire while the eager consumer, the other half of the supply and demand equation, gets a pass. It is reminiscent of the pusher and his customer; the customer is a victim of the pusher's greed and irresponsibility. The hapless user, perhaps otherwise a swell guy, is accidentally locked in a self-destructive relationship with a rapacious and greedy supplier. Somehow, like the abused wife, he cannot escape his situation. He is an innocent. The availability of the carbon pushes the equation his way. He needs it but knows it's not good for him.
What the anti-carbon activist sees as an endpoint of this war against the supplier is never fully explained. Obama says as a result of his war against coal, "electricity prices will necessarily skyrocket," as if there is a more expensive substitute waiting in the wings. But coal produces 40% of our electricity. What would that substitute be? The battery has not improved much in one hundred years and cannot pick up the slack of the inefficiencies of solar and wind. Nor will nuclear be tolerated. So what, then? Will the customer, the poor sap hooked on carbon, just suffer withdrawal? Will he just have to be brave? Cold showers and walking to work? How much of the advances allowed by carbon will we have to let slide? And what about those emerging countries who have seen our success that carbon has driven? Will they just shrug, look away and passively close their carbon plants?
This, indeed, seems to be a program long on hope but not far-sighted.
It is said by some that Thomas Newcomen in 1712 produced the most important single technological advance of the industrial age. He developed a crude, inefficient steam engine to pump away seeping ground water and allow men to work there. For what? To dig coal.
After all, as England was going to the steam age, they needed something to boil the water.
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