"I cannot stress this enough, jack! It's everyone's fault except mine!"
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Them and nobody else, eh? Just opec? No other countries on earth that could be producing oil cheaply and not in a bunch of totalitarian dictatorships? No countries that could be producing oil cheaply that specifically went out of their way to produce less oil because we don't need it anymore (except we do so I guess we'll give all the power to russia and opec)?
Democracies have environmental regulations, dictatorships do not. Democracies have worker's rights and health and safety regimes, dictatorships do not. Democracies have (for now at least) basic human rights, dictatorships do not. Democracies have a way for bad stuff to come to light and be rectified, dictatorships do not. But we're going to just close our ears, pretend that because we managed to push all this stuff outside of our borders that it doesn't happen.
"Not in my back yard" is all this is. Flimsy Rationalizations.
It's an accounting trick to make us feel better about ourselves, and it's a bad one. We are one human race living on one planet Earth. Just because you rationalize taking it off our books doesn't mean it's not actually there. That dotted line on a map is imaginary.
We pretend that because the externalities of our lifestyle aren't immediately taking place within our borders that they no longer happen and so we can pretend everything is ok, when in reality it means that those externalities are worse because the people we're outsourcing it to don't care about what we care about.
"Not in my back yard" is all this is. Flimsy Rationalizations.
It's an accounting trick to make us feel better about ourselves, and it's a bad one. We are one human race living on one planet Earth. Just because you rationalize taking it off our books doesn't mean it's not actually there. That dotted line on a map is imaginary.
We pretend that because the externalities of our lifestyle aren't immediately taking place within our borders that they no longer happen and so we can pretend everything is ok, when in reality it means that those externalities are worse because the people we're outsourcing it to don't care about what we care about.
How about pipelines from Canada? We knew for 10 years that the pipelines from the oilsands were insufficient, and everyone nimby'd out. One of the first actions by the Biden administration was to cancel one of the very few pipelines that wasn't NIMBY'd into non existence.
That's just one example of policies that were widespread and intended to naively end fossil fuels by letting a bunch of dictators have the lions share of oil production, as if that was ever going to work.
Not producing oil and gas is the easy part. the default is not producing oil and gas, you have to go out of your way to produce oil and gas. The hard part is making sure poor people aren't dying of starvation, aren't freezing to death, because that's the default too. You have to go out of your way to prevent poor people from starving or freezing.
That's just one example of policies that were widespread and intended to naively end fossil fuels by letting a bunch of dictators have the lions share of oil production, as if that was ever going to work.
Not producing oil and gas is the easy part. the default is not producing oil and gas, you have to go out of your way to produce oil and gas. The hard part is making sure poor people aren't dying of starvation, aren't freezing to death, because that's the default too. You have to go out of your way to prevent poor people from starving or freezing.