How to Defeat Putin and Save the Planet (nytimes.com) 219
This week the New York Times published an opinion piece by three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas L. Friedman arguing that greener energy is the best response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Friedman starts by decrying America's "umpteenth confrontation with a petro-dictator whose viciousness and recklessness are possible only because of the oil wealth he extracts from the ground. "No matter how the war ends in Ukraine, it needs to end with America finally, formally, categorically and irreversibly ending its addiction to oil." Nothing has distorted our foreign policy, our commitments to human rights, our national security and, most of all, our environment than our oil addiction. Let this be the last war in which we and our allies fund both sides.... As long as we're addicted to oil, we are always going to be begging someone, usually a bad guy, to move the price up or down, because we alone are not masters of our own fate. This has got to stop...
Friedman notes that global oil prices collapsing between 1988 and 1992 "helped bankrupt the Soviet Union and hasten its collapse.... We can create the same effects today by overproducing renewables and overemphasizing energy efficiency."
Among his suggestions are requiring power companies to transition faster to renewable energy sources — as well as "eliminating the regulatory red tape around installing rooftop solar systems."
And he's also got a solution for the spike in fuel prices: If you want to lower gasoline prices today, the most surefire, climate-safe method would be to reduce the speed limit on highways to 60 miles per hour and ask every company in America that can do so to let its employees work at home and not commute every day. Those two things would immediately cut demand for gasoline and bring down the price.
Is that too much to ask to win the war against petro-dictators like Putin — a victory in which the byproduct is cleaner air, not burning tanks?
Friedman starts by decrying America's "umpteenth confrontation with a petro-dictator whose viciousness and recklessness are possible only because of the oil wealth he extracts from the ground. "No matter how the war ends in Ukraine, it needs to end with America finally, formally, categorically and irreversibly ending its addiction to oil." Nothing has distorted our foreign policy, our commitments to human rights, our national security and, most of all, our environment than our oil addiction. Let this be the last war in which we and our allies fund both sides.... As long as we're addicted to oil, we are always going to be begging someone, usually a bad guy, to move the price up or down, because we alone are not masters of our own fate. This has got to stop...
Friedman notes that global oil prices collapsing between 1988 and 1992 "helped bankrupt the Soviet Union and hasten its collapse.... We can create the same effects today by overproducing renewables and overemphasizing energy efficiency."
Among his suggestions are requiring power companies to transition faster to renewable energy sources — as well as "eliminating the regulatory red tape around installing rooftop solar systems."
And he's also got a solution for the spike in fuel prices: If you want to lower gasoline prices today, the most surefire, climate-safe method would be to reduce the speed limit on highways to 60 miles per hour and ask every company in America that can do so to let its employees work at home and not commute every day. Those two things would immediately cut demand for gasoline and bring down the price.
Is that too much to ask to win the war against petro-dictators like Putin — a victory in which the byproduct is cleaner air, not burning tanks?
Okay, so I understand why getting off oil is good (Score:5, Funny)
... but what about all the money rich people are making from oil?
Have you thought about all the money?
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The irony of a man decrying a US war with another petro-dictator, when the US's economy is propped up entirely by the petro-dollar.
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Propping up the dollar merely allows Americans to import cheap stuff from Asia. If the value of the dollar were to plummet relative to the yuan, factories in China would be decimated and American manufacturing would thrive with new internal demand and new export markets.
Which is why China has pegged the value of the yuan to the dollar for nearly 30 years now.
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Our governments want to destroy the environment to make more profits for their buddies.
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Too bad you were too slow to FP. Though the spirit was willing, the joke was weak and slow?
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Europe is the one his message should be directed at. They're the ones most addicted to Russian oil and gas, not the US. We're addicted to Canadian oil and gas.
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Nope, the price of gasoline has dropped since the restrictions on Russian oil imports. And while the ban was announced in early March, there was a 45-day wind-down period for existing contracts so it hasn't actually happened yet.
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You will notice that your cite is from March 9, things have changed.
https://www.usnews.com/news/be... [usnews.com]
Re:Okay, so I understand why getting off oil is go (Score:5, Interesting)
The price of crude goes up 20%, and gas prices go up by around 25% within a couple days. Crude prices drop 20%, and over the next week gas prices drop by a whopping 0.3%
There's a saying about gas prices: up like a rocket, down like a feather...
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Yup, oil producers and refineries take advantage of the market, which shouldn't surprise anyone.
Prices get blamed on a lot of things, but much is about what the market will bear. So add up all the taxes, and prices in California are still higher than elsewhere. But even within California, the price at one Shell station may be ten cents off from another Shell station in the same city, and all the stations are cutting back their margins to the bone.
Back in the 90s there was investigation why San Diego paid h
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There's profit taking all across the board, every time the press whispers "inflation" corporations take that as a signal that they can get away with charging consumers more. Retail outlets are bringing in around three times their normal profit level currently, it's not surprising that prices are rising.
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This chart of actual prices sure does;
https://www.gasbuddy.com/chart... [gasbuddy.com]
Where I live the price of gas has dropped 25 cents in a week.
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it's global [Re:Okay, so I understand why gett...] (Score:2)
Note that since US is a net exporter, rises in oil prices worldwide actually improve the balance of trade slightly. But, of course, when oil companies make more money by exporting oil than by selling it domestically, they increase exports, and that reduces domestic supply (and raises prices)
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Oil is fungible. Reduction of demand by any country affects all countries.
Re:Okay, so I understand why getting off oil is go (Score:4, Informative)
Refineries are NOT fungible. Most of the Gulf Coast refineries for example are built to process sour heavy crude such as is produced by Venezuela. Feed it Saudi sweet light crude and it will puke. We stopped importing Venezuelan crude, so to keep them from going dormant we started importing sour heavy crude from Russia. Now we've stopped that, Houston is going to be laying people off soon.
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If you had bothered to read the article, Friedman explained we cannot switch off carbon-based fuels cold turkey. Biden's other actions towards reducing carbon emissions is proof he isn't dong this simply to promote American oil.
Re:Okay, so I understand why getting off oil is go (Score:5, Insightful)
Biden is enthusiastically sponsoring US fossil fuel production, not alternatives.
Then why did he ban fracking?
He didn't. Direct quote from Biden: "Let me be clear, and I know this always comes up. We're not going to ban fracking." https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/27... [cnn.com]
What he did was put new oil and gas leasing on federal lands on hold "pending a comprehensive review" by the Department of the Interior. "In November, the Interior Department completed its review and recommended a rise in leasing rates for both onshore and offshore drilling." https://www.politifact.com/tru... [politifact.com]
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
Stop getting your news from right-wing news radio.
Why did he kill the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day of office? That might as well be US oil production..
US production? You do know that Keystone XL extension was a project proposing to pipe Canadian crude oil from Alberta to refineries to sell overseas, right?
Re:Okay, so I understand why getting off oil is go (Score:4, Informative)
Why did he kill the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day of office? That might as well be US oil production..
US production? You do know that Keystone XL extension was a project proposing to pipe Canadian crude oil from Alberta to refineries to sell overseas, right?
Correct. Nobody on the right understands that the only way the US gets that oil is if we agree to match the high prices Canada gets when they sell it overseas, which does nothing to drive down the cost of oil in the USA. The Keystone XL extension is a big present to Canadian oil companies to help them make more money. It has nothing at all to do with making more oil and/or cheaper oil available to the USA.
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We have enough oil, we don't need fracking. And the feds aren't banning it anyway. We export a lot of oil, but we could use it domestically instead. We have oil well grants for federal use that are unused, because the land owners want to limit supplies and keep prices high.
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Why did he kill the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day of office?
Because nobody, including the oil companies, wanted it. It had something like two years of estimated effort remaining, and former President Trump gave them four years. It still didn't get built. Translation: They didn't actually want to build it.
Why, you might ask, would they not want to build it? Because prior to Putin's little tantrum, oil prices were low enough that tar sands oil through that pipeline would not have been profitable for something like a decade. And by the time it became profitable, t
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Actually the last time the US invaded a neighbor was 1919, in pursuit of Pancho Villa.
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Actually the last time the US invaded a neighbor was 1919, in pursuit of Pancho Villa.
Except that the Chihuahua state hit us first [wikipedia.org]. I never said the U.S. didn't defend itself or strike back when attacked. ;-)
Also, to be pedantic, you're off by a couple of years. It was 1916 through 1917 [wikipedia.org].
But how many Friedman units of time would it take? (Score:4, Interesting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The Friedman Unit, or simply Friedman,[1] is a tongue-in-cheek neologism. One Friedman Unit is equal to six months,[2] specifically the "next six months", a period repeatedly declared by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to be the most critical of the then-ongoing Iraq War[3] even though such pronouncements extended back over two and a half years.
You don't even have to change speed limits... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just enforce the ones we have today!
People don't follow the existing speed limits, so what you're asking by saying "lower speed limits" is to simply increase enforcement.
I mean if gas prices rising more than 30% per gallon isn't enough for people to merely drop from 80MPH to 70MPH, changing the number on the sign isn't going to do anything.
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The only speeding ticket I ever got was an intentional speed trap with a limit designed to drop from 50MpH to 30MpH in a short period to collect money from speeders and give felony speeding tickets away. All connecting roads were 45MpH. The cop that pulled me over immediately turned around and pulled another person around for I assume, speeding. I paid a $165 fine to avoid felony charges. Hey, modern bribes, I guess.
Re:You don't even have to change speed limits... (Score:4, Interesting)
Where I live, they forced commercial trucks to be limited to 105km/h on the main highways. That knocked down average highways speeds by at least 20km/h practically overnight. The posted limit didn't change from 100km/h, but it's really the commercial truck speeds that set the overall pace. Most people seem okay with slowing down when they don't have to constantly deal with big rigs riding their ass.
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Yes, increasing enforcement is one way to lower traffic speeds.
A cheaper way is to stop widening roads and let traffic congestion naturally increase until it starts to limit traffic speeds.
A third way is to redesign the streets to make speeding more dangerous, like putting trees closer to roads the way they used to be before we cut them down so cars could go faster [youtu.be].
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Yes, increasing enforcement is one way to lower traffic speeds.
A cheaper way is to stop widening roads and let traffic congestion naturally increase until it starts to limit traffic speeds.
That tends to result in stop-start traffic which is very bad for fuel efficiency of ICEV.
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The problem with coordinated traffic lights that is you can only coordinate them well in one direction, the direction that carries the most traffic. The other three directions are screwed.
There's a light near me that's coordinated in a way that favors commuters and delays locals by up to 5 minutes instead of the normal 2 minutes. And because it helps add more cars to th
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Just enforce the ones we have today!
People don't follow the existing speed limits, so what you're asking by saying "lower speed limits" is to simply increase enforcement.
And what cost would you like to put on the price of an "oops" with your very human foot on an accelerator after the automated cameras go up everywhere, with 30% of that revenue going to some corrupt person who sold that inhumane concept? Remember this was the same flavor of Greed that was caught dangerously shortening the length of yellow lights simply to catch more "red light" runners with cameras. Don't assume your request will be "fixed" with a human, and your car insurance rates better hope your foot
Re:You don't even have to change speed limits... (Score:5, Insightful)
The solutions in this article, your post, and most of the responses to your post provide example after example of the decay of our culture. We do not need more law. We do not need more enforcement. In our hayday, a leader could call for our nation to make some sacrifice for the sake of freedom and right, and they would respond in terrifying unity. That seems to be gone and without it we can only resort to using sticks to beat our people into line. It has resorted in a mass of laws and percentage of incarcerated that top all the nations of the world while the problems the laws and incarceration are supposed to stop continue to spiral out of control.
When I try to put my mind around what we've lost, I can come up with many symptoms, but not what it is. I think that is because it is a complex web of cultural mechanisms as opposed to a single or few things. Nobody had to have every one of the mechanisms within their own set of beliefs, but most had to have significant portions of them. They might include manners, shame, beliefs that beliefs matter enough to not always just agree to disagree, mostly united goals such as assuring that each generation has it better than the last, a belief in being part of something as or more important than ourselves, even seemingly unrelated things like just knowing how things, systems, etc. work well enough to detect the lies of salesmen of all types.
We all seem to know it is gone. Nobody has suggested that we simply call for all who will listen to slow down and look for ways within their lives to move away from oil. It is not that we don't have the leader to do it. It is that the structures that should be there to guide people to respond in a cohesive fashion are gone.
More more more solar panels. (Score:2)
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Good. Now make these panels by the square kilometer, and plant them every bloody where you can. That is the level of fanaticism we need here. Also, create massive gravity storage so that we can enjoy that power during the day. Sadly our country has no mountains, so we will have to agree things with neighbors, but there are many opportunities.
You don't need mountains...
https://heindl-energy.com/ [heindl-energy.com]
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Ignore this opportunistic troll... (Score:4, Insightful)
From wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]
In April 2018, Barrett Brown criticized Friedman for "his serial habit of giving the benefit of the doubt to whoever happens to hold power",such as Friedman's column supporting Vladimir Putin as a modernizing reformer, in which he urged Americans to "keep rootin' for Putin". Brown also used this phrase in the title of his 2014 book "Keep Rootin' for Putin: Establishment Pundits and the Twilight of American Competence"
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I do remember he wished that the US could have the same dictatorial powers as the CCP, because it would help solve climate problems.
of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I'm not a "Pulitzer Prize winning economist" but I'm fairly sure there have been land hungry barbarous thugs since long before oil was a meaningful thing.
I'm pretty certain that Stalin wasn't able to murder millions of his own people because of the tiny trickle of oil coming out of Baku in the 30s.
Certainly, Putin has been enabled to prop up his kleptocracy with a shambles economy with the assistance of oil money, sure. But there are tinpot dictators all over the world, not just in petrostates.
Norway has gobs of oil money and I don't see Sweden living in fear of a totalitarian king Olaf the eighth, either.
There's clearly nothing intrinsically evil about oil money, while there have been terroristic Russian czars since forever. His causal chain sort of falls apart when one isn't trying to contrive some eco-justifying contortions.
Norwegians (Score:2)
Trump wanted to let Norwegians into the U.S.
Think of Eric the Red. Think of Hagar the Horrible.
Good thing that was stopped.
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Trump wanted to let Norwegians into the U.S.
Think of Eric the Red. Think of Hagar the Horrible.
Good thing that was stopped.
The Norwegians said no thank you because they didn't want to lower their standard of living.
Blue-eyed Middle Easterners (Score:2)
There is that thing.
The only place Norwegians would feel welcome would be in Alaska, where one gets a government oil-royalty check.
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>"Now, I'm not a "Pulitzer Prize winning economist"
Neither is he. His degrees are in "Middle East Studies"
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Wow, that is so insightful, i.e., there have been tyrants in the past so we might as well just ignore them and what funds the Great Putini's excesses. Now go explain your insight to the Ukrainian mum who just lost her entire family to Russia.
Re:of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, I'm not a "Pulitzer Prize winning economist" but I'm fairly sure there have been land hungry barbarous thugs since long before oil was a meaningful thing.
I'm pretty certain that Stalin wasn't able to murder millions of his own people because of the tiny trickle of oil coming out of Baku in the 30s.
Certainly, Putin has been enabled to prop up his kleptocracy with a shambles economy with the assistance of oil money, sure. But there are tinpot dictators all over the world, not just in petrostates.
Norway has gobs of oil money and I don't see Sweden living in fear of a totalitarian king Olaf the eighth, either.
There's clearly nothing intrinsically evil about oil money, while there have been terroristic Russian czars since forever. His causal chain sort of falls apart when one isn't trying to contrive some eco-justifying contortions.
Dictators, like any ruler, need a base of support.
If it's a popular base of support they need a big motivator like ideology (Communism) or one side of an ethnic conflict (often the smaller side because they're united by fear of the majority).
But if you have a big wealth source like Oil you can both build some popular support (everybody is rich!) but more importantly maintain a really well funded police state.
Now I don't think Friedman's plan to suddenly limit the demand for Oil is practical, but he's correct that a crash in Oil prices is very bad for Putin.
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Oh no! What if we conserve energy and we're wrong? We'd end up with cleaner air, less global warming, more equal distribution of wealth, less commuting, fewer traffic accidents -- that would be terrible!
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Don't forget, all of America is stolen land as well.
And Putin's conquered way less land than Ghengis Khan too!
What's the Russian strategy for defending the indefensible? Look for examples of other people doing bad things....
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Well, I didn't defend Russia.
indeed....
But, given that the civilian casualties in Ukraine are over 100 times smaller than US civilian casualties in the last 30 years, one has to wonder why the western world doesn't sanction the US.
Followed by another enthusiastic defence of Russian atrocities.
I'm sorry if you expect us all to have the reading comprehension of a preschooler and miss your slight of hand.
When Russia does bad thing X, and you respond by talking about how others did (non comparable) bad things that they weren't punished for it's pretty clear that you're saying that Russia shouldn't be punished for what it's doing.
In other words, you're defending Russia.
Oh, and it turns out that Russian soldiers were systematical [kyivindependent.com]
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Most land has changed hands at some point, if not between different peoples then at minimum different regimes, but there's been plenty of both. This is not meant to in any way defend doing it, but really just to get arguments about morality out of the way and move on to practicality. Not having wars is better for the majority of people than having them, so we should do our best to stop wars regardless of how many wars have happened before.
Realism (Score:2, Informative)
>"How to Defeat Putin and Save the Planet " "end with America finally, formally, categorically and irreversibly ending its addiction to oil."
Nothing we (the USA) do with energy right NOW is going to "defeat Putin". Nothing we (the USA) do with energy in the foreseeable future will make that much of dent in the emissions of the rest of the world.
We (the USA) are already on a trajectory for a non-economy-devastating reduction in fossil fuel use, but it is going to take many years. And solar/wind and espe
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The fastest path would be nuclear, but we can see what is happening there (nothing).
In which sense do you mean that? Because I used to be a huge proponent of nuclear until I found out that none of the waste solutions were practical. And I always heard about fancy pantsy reactors that were supposed to solve all the problems, but then they never seemed to pan out for one technical reason or another. So if what you mean is that they never actually deliver on the promise of nuclear power, I'm with you one hundred percent.
Like everything else, the trend in optimization is to use less materials
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>"In which sense do you mean that? Because I used to be a huge proponent of nuclear until I found out that none of the waste solutions were practical"
I just mean fastest. Not necessarily best, for sure. Nuclear has inherent risks and certainly disposal issues. But we do KNOW nuclear and have plenty of fuel available for it and can store waste properly. That that is certainly the case for western Europe, even more than the USA.
The reality is that this stuff is complicated. Producing and using energy
Pray for green energy (Score:2)
And produce American oil locally (Score:2)
Re: And produce American oil locally (Score:2)
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China also has plans for the U.S.A. and India. So in the end, it's either corruption disguised as democracy and freedom, or totalitarianism disguised as unity that wins.
As a Canadian, I have to apologize that my opinion is that I don't like these two options.
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Meanwhile in the US, half the nation is ignorant morons that are still convinced the way forward is coal gas and oil.
Bad education leads to the inability to make rational decisions based on facts.
What doesn't help either is that published facts are often lies because money is involved.
TL;DR: money is at the core of almost all problems. The rest of the problems are caused by people. Eliminate these two things and the problems will solve themselves!
The real problem with oil/gas prices (Score:2)
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Does the US produce enough oil for diesel?You need heavy oil to create that, and Russia has heavy oil.
Funny.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Funny.. (Score:2)
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So going full green EU can screw not only one petro-dictator but TWO?
Count me in.
Next! (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't matter whether it is a worthy goal or not, it is simply another way to shift the topic. And in one of the worst, and most clumsy attempts of shifting the topic away from the countries actually fighting each other, and laying the blame at the feet of the USA.
And Friedman whom I generally respect, has dropped several notches, to become an axe grinder.
Re: Next! (Score:2)
It doesn't matter whether it is a worthy goal or not, it is simply another way to shift the topic. And in one of the worst, and most clumsy attempts of shifting the topic away from the countries actually fighting each other, and laying the blame at the feet of the USA.
Getting rid of Putin is bigger in scope than his cruel war with Ukraine. Oil, not STEM careers, is 40% of his income.
That's the topic, duh.
Clickbait headlines, in my Slashdot? (Score:3)
Not sure it's going to work, but we can try! (Score:2)
Me: "Hey boss, I'm going to be working remotely from home from now on!"
Boss: "What? You better give me a good reason for that!"
Me: "I have two good reasons! I'm saving the planet and I'm helping in the war against Putin!"
Boss: "..."
Great missed opportunity ... (Score:5, Insightful)
We had a super phenomenal crisis in 9/11. There was a spontaneous groundswell of opinion against Saudi Arabia and oil. If we had made a serious commitment to wean our economy off oil, insulate our politics from the gasoline prices on the street, ... we would have had 20 years to contain the oil menace.
Instead we had an oil man for President and an oil man for vice-President. They moved to make sure no matter what our addiction will not be affected. Then a bunch of American oil oligarchs thought, We pushed Iraq off Kuwait in just six weeks, if we topple Saddam and install our puppet, imagine ... . They don't let a good crisis to go to waste. They took charge of the Anger in America and directed it towards Saddam Hussein, an enemy of Saudi Arabia!
The writing seems to be on the wall. Finally, 20 years later, everyone knows we can wean our economy off oil and natural gas. Windmill and solar to create energy, batteries to even out the intermittency problem. We don't need any new technology breakthroughs. Just seven to 14 day supply of natural gas and oil to run the powerplants for the unlikely event of a 500 mile radius cloud cover over two full weeks. Store the gas and oil in salt caves or tanks ... LFP batteries are heavier but good enough for grid/home energy storage. LFPs can replace all diesel locomotives too. We need Li-ion for cars and light vehicles. But eventually low end cars might switch to LFPs.
We are at the cusp of finally driving the nails into the coffin of oil.
Get Russian citizens on-board first (Score:2)
Of course none of this is likely to happen. Putin will fail in Ukraine, he'll come down with a sudd
People won't lift a finger unless forced. (Score:3)
Re:The Friedman of WMD-in-Iraq fame? THAT Friedman (Score:5, Insightful)
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Now, the problem is that Putin is clearly playing for his own agenda, not ours; so what is he seeing that we're not?
While no one but Putin knows what he’s thinking, I’m going with the simplest explanation I’ve heard which is he actually started to believe his own propaganda, surrounded by yes men, being blind to how the kleptocracy has rotted out everything in Russia. It’s consistent with his actions which all point to him thinking it would take 2-3 days because of his bribing officials to roll over and the country would embrace them with open arms. He never thought officials would just pocket
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Friedman friends with the military-industrial complex? Nice try, but he's no friend of theirs.
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Plus, we already tried 55 MPH speed limits in the US. People hated them and mostly ignored it.
Trying to enforce a 60 MPH national cap is a bad idea, unless you're trying to get the music industry to create a squeal to "I can't drive 55".
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Tell drivers of zero-emission vehicles they can drive 75 mph.
Wrap it all up in the flag of patriotism like they did in WW2.
https://energyhistory.yale.edu... [yale.edu]
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Two different speed limits for one road that are active at the same time? That sounds like a nightmare with all the potential problems, from enforcement to the inevitable increase in traffic accidents.
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Already happens many places. I don't know about the USA, but in the Scotland on a single-carriageway road (outside towns, and without a specific speed limit) cars may go up to 60mph, vans (2 to 7.5 tonnes) up to 50mph, and lorries (anything over 7.5 tonnes) up to 40mph. And yes, this does mean that the car drivers get stuck behind lorries a lot.
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Two different speed limits for one road that are active at the same time? That sounds like a nightmare with all the potential problems, from enforcement to the inevitable increase in traffic accidents.
I remember when most highways in the US had different speed limits for cars and trucks. Don't know when that disappeared, actually-- it just happened without any fanfare.
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>"Two different speed limits for one road that are active at the same time? That sounds like a nightmare with all the potential problems, from enforcement to the inevitable increase in traffic accidents."
Yep. Speed DIFFERENCE is one of the major causes of accidents because it causes people to start doing stupid things, and it creates unexpected presence when changing lanes or predicting flow. This, along with following too closely for conditions/speed, distracted driving, and not checking blind spots.
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Speed DIFFERENCE is one of the major causes of accidents because it causes people to start doing stupid things
If people just follow the rules and pay attention then it's really not a problem to have lanes operating at differing speeds, especially if the differences are not large. And one of the things you should do in those situations is slow down to a reasonable overtaking speed.
But all this just illustrates another way in which roads suck. We should be not just figuring out how to electrify cars, but also how to obsolete them.
Speed [Re:End gam] (Score:5, Insightful)
Estimates are that reducing the speed limit to 55 MPH would save 175,000 to 275,000 barrels of oil daily. That sounds like a lot, but Americans on average use about 21 million barrels of oil daily, so this is barely a 1% change.
Better would be to get Americans who currently love boxy SUVs to switch to more aerodynamic cars. Yes, there are some people who do go offroading and use capabilities of SUVs to the max, but for the most part, the love for SUVs instead of cars is social, not practical.
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Prices in America go up, the public wants more small cars, the prices go down and then sales of gas guzzlers go back up. Either we're highly short sighted or we all have memory problems from inhaling too many petrol fumes.
But it's not just America. Europe generally has small and efficient cars for commuting as well as better/smaller deliveries; and yet when some are posted in the US for a few years I have seen many of them immediately go out and buy or lease an SUV or a muscle/sports car... It seems like
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However, you may be around to see large parts of formerly dry land become submerged. Care see how much that will make your much beloved cars cost? Just wait, you will.
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However, you may be around to see large parts of formerly dry land become submerged.
Actually, the amount of land area that will be lost by sea level rise in the next century is a truly negligible fraction of the land area of the earth.
The problem is, however, that so many humans live (and farm on) or near the seacoast that it represents a very large amount of value (and the displacement of the humans living there will have non-trivial costs).
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Re:Trading one dictator for another (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, but mining lithium doesn't tend to raise the planet's temperature.
You: Doctor, doctor, I'm overweight and drink too much.
Doctor: Ya, well, I told you to diet and lay off the alcohol.
You: But then it would only be some other problem I'd have run into.
Doctor: Yer right, go forth and die.
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I suspect they're suffering permanent brain damage as a result of accidental exposure to a highly toxic substance (Agent Orange).
Re: Trading one dictator for another (Score:2)
Re: Trading one dictator for another (Score:2)
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Yeah, it'd be beautiful, in a Stalinist/Putinist kind of way. Sorta like Moscow, or Bei
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human problems are of no consequences if the end result is a dying planet
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I'd say that technologically we're almost there, but society is not quite ready. All we need is fusion power, but the good news is that we're only about a decade away from that becoming reality!
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>"AMERICA - Love it or Leave it."
What a ridiculous retort. America is not without faults, and our questioning our policies *IS* part of democracy.