Quote:
Originally Posted by kalos72
Oil independence at what cost? The fact we are not spending more money on researching the NEXT new technology is troubling.
I do not want another 50 years on oil...
|
(Note: this may seem like I'm grousing at you, but I promise I'm not)
...at the cost of no more wars for the stuff? No more living under the sword of damocles and bowing and genuflecting to a bunch of 14th-century tribesmen who happen to have lear jets and bentleys and brutally suppress anyone who's not them (I mean, specifically them)? No more excuses for the OBLs of the world because fuck them and their big black rock in the middle of the damn desert?
Yeah that's a hell of a terrible price to pay.
Fact is, you're never going to get away from oil. Ever. Nuclear is safer, but what about the exotic (read: lithium) materials for the electric batteries in your car? Not exactly recyclable. Also those aren't in quantity in the US and we wind up going overseas for it...back to square one. Plus there's a lot POL does that doesn't go into your gas tank - tires, asphalt, lubricants, jets which despite recent advances don't fly on anything BUT dirty ol' kerosene. If we ditch oil and go electric with our vehicles, pollution will skyrocket because clean coal is further off than oil independence and still has a huge human cost and environmental impact. Plus - fun fact - coal smoke has radioisotopes in it! So downwind from a coal plant is like being downwind from a nuclear plant in terms of what you're breathing, eating and drinking in.
Solar cells wear out, and the chemicals used to make them are horrendously toxic and many are petroleum based plastics. Wind farms are a joke at the kwh/cost ratio, hydro-electric only works near places you've got the rivers, waterfalls and lakes to dam up (and good luck with getting that through environmental concerns). Fusion should start up in a "prototype" stage in France by 2050 thanks to a multi-national effort that will, when they switch the thing on, have cost $500
billion. And all it is is a prototype. By 2080, we'll hopefully have a working design where they can start using them regularly. Hopefully.
The reality is this: none of it is a great option but some are better than the others. As I said our vehicles are getting more and more fuel efficient and cleaner anyway, we're digging the stuff out of the ground here at home so it's gonna get cheaper - all in all we're in pretty good shape. Practically, we're "on oil" forever, in some way shape or fashion. There's no silver bullet fix for our energy needs...