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> public opinion would still make it palatable to continue hydrocarbon fuels extraction for another 2 to 3 decades I don't think it's public opinion so much as

> public opinion would still make it palatable to continue hydrocarbon fuels extraction for another 2 to 3 decades I don't think it's public opinion so much as it is necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades. Renewable energy is still a relatively small fraction of overall energy use, and net global oil consumption has been steadily increasing the past few years (likely to surpass pre-covid levels this year). Our society is still very much addicted to hydrocarbons.

aaomidi 3y ago
Meanwhile companies with “climate pledges” forcing RTO. Even when society wants to shift, the ones in charge say no. We should have had a governmental mandate requiring companies over a certain size to allow WFH and justify why they can’t do it if they really can’t.
- ImHereToVote 3y ago
  I think the bottom up approach to combat climate change is doomed to fail. We need to start top down. The most powerful institutions and people need to lower their living standards and resource extraction. Start with eliminating private jets for instance.
- huthuthike 3y ago
  I fully agree with you but governments aren't exactly the ally on this one. Local and state governments in particular are losing out on tax revenue due to WFH. Lower attendance in offices (often in city centers) means less spending in those areas, so lower sales tax revenue. (I think New York City is projecting around $4500 less spending per worker annually.) Depreciating corporate property values means lower property tax revenue. On the plus side we have the greatest effect on politics at the local level, if we get involved.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    Oh definitely I know they’re not the allies. I’m just hoping and dreaming.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Global hydrocarbon consumption is down on a per capita basis. And that's despite the fact that renewable energy and electric vehicles had a negligible share. It's only the last year or two that renewable energy's share has become non-negligible. The EV transition is lagging the renewable energy transition, but it's happening too. EV's now have a non-negligible share of new vehicle sales, but since it takes ~20 years to turn over the global vehicle fleet, they still have a negligible share of the entire fleet. But that's changing, very slowly.
- TinyRick 3y ago
  Per capita metrics are useless when it comes to climate stats. The ice caps don't care about how much hydrocarbons are burned per person, they are only affected by the net amount of hydrocarbons burned on a global scale.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    True, but it disproves the narrative that oil consumption must inevitably go up. And if per capita consumption can go down in the 2010's when we had negligible amounts of wind, solar, EV's and heat pumps, what'll it do in the 2020's when we have non-negligible amounts of wind, solar, EV's and heat pumps?
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      There were a lot of heat pumps in the 2010s (and before). There’s been a lot of attention and press about heat pumps recently, including some push for heat pumps as sole-source space conditioning, but they’re nowhere as new-tech as mass-market EVs or even the adoption of solar/wind/battery farms.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  > And that's despite the fact that renewable energy and electric vehicles had a negligible share. I could not disagree with this more. While China is a "developing" country, they are arguably making herculean efforts to move away from oil for transportation. They will drag the developed world along, as they will have built up all of this EV and electric scooter/bike/moped manufacturing capacity with only so much domestic consumption for it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37307619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37307619 (China Reaches Peak Gasoline in Milestone for Electric Vehicles) From the Bloomberg piece: > Earlier this month, Chinese oil giant Sinopec made a surprise announcement that mostly flew under the radar. It’s now expecting gasoline demand in China to peak this year, two years earlier than its previous outlooks. The main culprit? The surging number of electric vehicles on the road. > China has been the largest driver of global growth for refined oil products like gasoline and diesel over the last two decades. But EV adoption rates in China are now soaring, with August figures likely to show plug-in vehicles hitting 38% of new passenger-vehicle sales. That’s up from just 6% in 2020 and is starting to materially dent fuel demand. > Fuel demand in two and three-wheeled vehicles is already in structural decline, with BNEF estimating that 70% of total kilometers traveled by these vehicles already switched over to electric. Fuel demand for cars will be the next to turn, since well over 5% of the passenger-vehicle fleet is now either battery-electric or plug-in hybrid. The internal combustion vehicle fleet is also becoming more efficient due to rising fuel-economy targets.
jacquesm 3y ago
> necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades You can't always get what you want.
ff317 3y ago
I think we'll never stop extracting oil in the foreseeable future, we'll just be doing a lot less of it. There will always be corner cases where diesel or other oil derivatives (or NG) are the /only/ reasonable option for fuel. Think generators for an antarctic station that can only use solar in certain months and wind isn't enough (or reliable enough)). Even if efficient electric commercial aviation at scale ever happens, you can bet military jets will still need jet fuel. I'm sure there's many others. Methane for rocket launches? On top of fuel, there's also the use of some fraction of oil in industrial chemical processes to make lubricants and plastics. There may be other chemical processes that can do it without oil, but they may be too costly (in terms of other extractive processes for ingredients, or in terms of yield, not just energy).
- datavirtue 3y ago
  Yeah, just seeing the axle grease requirements and inventory on an aircraft carrier is a wakeup call. Our military is 110% reliant on oil to even function at all. The economic scale of consumer oil consumption and the petro-dollar are a key military concern to enable warfighting ability. When that sinks in, Iraq and Afghanistan make a lot more sense.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    The US has plenty of oil and didnt need to go to those places to get more of it. We destroyed Iraqs oil pipelines and infrastructure in that war and a lot of it still is in need of investment in reconstruction today. Likewise Afghan oil production is a recent thing like in the last 10 years, and today the taliban government sells those mineral and oil extraction rights to chinese companies. If the goal was to get at those resources for American companies, we clearly failed. It seems China’s belt and road imperialism works better than our bomb the civilians and overthrow the government for a puppet method.
- lukeschlather 3y ago
  Electricity is probably going to be an order of magnitude (or more) cheaper in 20 years, at least for bulk purchase in most fixed locations (not Antarctic winter.) The assumption that oil extraction is worthwhile is based on it being the cheapest way to get a unit of power. But if power is 1/10th what it costs now it is economical to do some process that has absurdly bad efficiency (10:1, even 100:1) to translate power into fuel that works in jets. That might just be making conventional jet fuel. But I doubt we will be extracting it from the ground.
BurningFrog 3y ago
> I don't think it's public opinion so much as it is necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades. Those are pretty much the same thing.

aaomidi 3y ago

Meanwhile companies with “climate pledges” forcing RTO. Even when society wants to shift, the ones in charge say no. We should have had a governmental mandate requiring companies over a certain size to allow WFH and justify why they can’t do it if they really can’t.

ImHereToVote 3y ago
I think the bottom up approach to combat climate change is doomed to fail. We need to start top down. The most powerful institutions and people need to lower their living standards and resource extraction. Start with eliminating private jets for instance.
huthuthike 3y ago
I fully agree with you but governments aren't exactly the ally on this one. Local and state governments in particular are losing out on tax revenue due to WFH. Lower attendance in offices (often in city centers) means less spending in those areas, so lower sales tax revenue. (I think New York City is projecting around $4500 less spending per worker annually.) Depreciating corporate property values means lower property tax revenue. On the plus side we have the greatest effect on politics at the local level, if we get involved.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  Oh definitely I know they’re not the allies. I’m just hoping and dreaming.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Global hydrocarbon consumption is down on a per capita basis. And that's despite the fact that renewable energy and electric vehicles had a negligible share. It's only the last year or two that renewable energy's share has become non-negligible. The EV transition is lagging the renewable energy transition, but it's happening too. EV's now have a non-negligible share of new vehicle sales, but since it takes ~20 years to turn over the global vehicle fleet, they still have a negligible share of the entire fleet. But that's changing, very slowly.

TinyRick 3y ago
Per capita metrics are useless when it comes to climate stats. The ice caps don't care about how much hydrocarbons are burned per person, they are only affected by the net amount of hydrocarbons burned on a global scale.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  True, but it disproves the narrative that oil consumption must inevitably go up. And if per capita consumption can go down in the 2010's when we had negligible amounts of wind, solar, EV's and heat pumps, what'll it do in the 2020's when we have non-negligible amounts of wind, solar, EV's and heat pumps?
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    There were a lot of heat pumps in the 2010s (and before). There’s been a lot of attention and press about heat pumps recently, including some push for heat pumps as sole-source space conditioning, but they’re nowhere as new-tech as mass-market EVs or even the adoption of solar/wind/battery farms.
toomuchtodo 3y ago
> And that's despite the fact that renewable energy and electric vehicles had a negligible share. I could not disagree with this more. While China is a "developing" country, they are arguably making herculean efforts to move away from oil for transportation. They will drag the developed world along, as they will have built up all of this EV and electric scooter/bike/moped manufacturing capacity with only so much domestic consumption for it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37307619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37307619 (China Reaches Peak Gasoline in Milestone for Electric Vehicles) From the Bloomberg piece: > Earlier this month, Chinese oil giant Sinopec made a surprise announcement that mostly flew under the radar. It’s now expecting gasoline demand in China to peak this year, two years earlier than its previous outlooks. The main culprit? The surging number of electric vehicles on the road. > China has been the largest driver of global growth for refined oil products like gasoline and diesel over the last two decades. But EV adoption rates in China are now soaring, with August figures likely to show plug-in vehicles hitting 38% of new passenger-vehicle sales. That’s up from just 6% in 2020 and is starting to materially dent fuel demand. > Fuel demand in two and three-wheeled vehicles is already in structural decline, with BNEF estimating that 70% of total kilometers traveled by these vehicles already switched over to electric. Fuel demand for cars will be the next to turn, since well over 5% of the passenger-vehicle fleet is now either battery-electric or plug-in hybrid. The internal combustion vehicle fleet is also becoming more efficient due to rising fuel-economy targets.

jacquesm 3y ago

> necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades You can't always get what you want.

ff317 3y ago

I think we'll never stop extracting oil in the foreseeable future, we'll just be doing a lot less of it. There will always be corner cases where diesel or other oil derivatives (or NG) are the /only/ reasonable option for fuel. Think generators for an antarctic station that can only use solar in certain months and wind isn't enough (or reliable enough)). Even if efficient electric commercial aviation at scale ever happens, you can bet military jets will still need jet fuel. I'm sure there's many others. Methane for rocket launches? On top of fuel, there's also the use of some fraction of oil in industrial chemical processes to make lubricants and plastics. There may be other chemical processes that can do it without oil, but they may be too costly (in terms of other extractive processes for ingredients, or in terms of yield, not just energy).

datavirtue 3y ago
Yeah, just seeing the axle grease requirements and inventory on an aircraft carrier is a wakeup call. Our military is 110% reliant on oil to even function at all. The economic scale of consumer oil consumption and the petro-dollar are a key military concern to enable warfighting ability. When that sinks in, Iraq and Afghanistan make a lot more sense.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  The US has plenty of oil and didnt need to go to those places to get more of it. We destroyed Iraqs oil pipelines and infrastructure in that war and a lot of it still is in need of investment in reconstruction today. Likewise Afghan oil production is a recent thing like in the last 10 years, and today the taliban government sells those mineral and oil extraction rights to chinese companies. If the goal was to get at those resources for American companies, we clearly failed. It seems China’s belt and road imperialism works better than our bomb the civilians and overthrow the government for a puppet method.
lukeschlather 3y ago
Electricity is probably going to be an order of magnitude (or more) cheaper in 20 years, at least for bulk purchase in most fixed locations (not Antarctic winter.) The assumption that oil extraction is worthwhile is based on it being the cheapest way to get a unit of power. But if power is 1/10th what it costs now it is economical to do some process that has absurdly bad efficiency (10:1, even 100:1) to translate power into fuel that works in jets. That might just be making conventional jet fuel. But I doubt we will be extracting it from the ground.

BurningFrog 3y ago

> I don't think it's public opinion so much as it is necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades. Those are pretty much the same thing.