I guess extreme right wingers are loons regardless of geography, although I dare say he’d be right at home in the U.S. House or Senate.
Australia seems like such a politically polarized country - their right is really right, and their left is really left (and wrong, heh). It’s hard to believe that the some country elected someone as awesome as John Howard and then Julia Gillard.
Re Newman’s naive comments above - the inevitable consequence of using hyperbole and exaggerations and straying from the science to try to get (needed) attention to the issue of climate change. It’s a huge mistake, because it’s giving ammunition to the naysayers and calling into question the credibility of larger issues - the situation is so serious that there’s no need to overstate or exaggerate it, and what’s known and not known, and you end up getting far less progress on real and realistic solutions. Although he presumably means well, the worst enemies the environment has in the world are the Zak Gordons.
Heh, speaking of hyperbole… ;)
Makes so much sense, in the context of much of this threads details:
‘Shell gets ‘conditional’ US Arctic drilling approval’:
Oil firm Royal Dutch Shell has won approval from the US Department of Interior to explore for oil in the Arctic.
The approval depends on Shell getting a nod from other US regulators, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said.
Shell stopped Arctic exploration more than two years ago after problems including an oil rig fire and safety failures.
Environmental campaigners oppose the move.
Shell has spent about $6bn (£3.85bn) on exploration in the Arctic - a region estimated to have about 20% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas.
Yeah, that’s really bad news. In part Obama may not have had much of a choice as the leases were already sold under Bush.
Here’s some more on the issue
Advisers to Mr. Obama say that legally, the administration probably had no choice but to process that permit. If he had wanted to block the drilling, Mr. Obama could have faced legal challenges from Shell and may also have had to buy the leases back from the company at a loss to taxpayers.
“If there was a cost to the government of not moving forward, then that would weigh on him,” said Carol Browner, Mr. Obama’s senior energy and climate change adviser in his first term. “He would consider that. He is very practical in that way.”
Timex
1866
Why exactly is this terrible? I mean, why would Obama NOT process the permit?
Because drilling for Oil is evil or something?
I think because the huge added complexity involved in drilling for oil in arctic conditions dramatically increases the associated risk of failures and in turn environmental impact.
Timex
1869
That basically just suggests that no one should ever try and get oil from the arctic…
Sorry, but that’s not really a realistic perspective to take.
Not in a world run by Evil™, Darth, that’s for sure. But soon they will tighten their grip so much they will strangle the life out of the planet, and they will be gone like the rest of us…all that will be left is the gold of their greed.
MikeJ
1871
This gets back to the basic problem in the first post of this thread. The already proven reserves are large enough that if we could really only burn less than 20% of them without blowing past climate change goals. So what’s the overall benefit of huge efforts sunk into finding additional reserves? Are we on some sort of religious crusade to find and burn all hydrocarbons in Earth’s crust?
I guess in part it is to do with who owns what portion of identified reserves and what that might mean for self sufficiency, if push comes to shove.
Or it is all about Profit, and in particular in relation to sectors like Big Oil, how they really don’t give a fudge about our collective future, it’s profits now - screw everything else (even life on this pretty unique planet). That’s how we have let Capitalism evolve, and it is ‘undoing’ us bit by bit, all over the world, everyday.
Timex
1874
Well, the climate change goals aren’t actually what drive things.
What drives things is that, in order to not live shitty lives, humans require energy. Fossil fuels provide the majority of that energy.
Until you build a bunch of nuclear plants and can feasibly replace those fossil fuels with nuclear, then the answer is never going to be “stop drilling for oil”. Because what you are actually saying then is, “Live a shittier existence.” And, what you are REALLY saying, is “People in developing countries like China in India should live a PROFOUNDLY shittier existence than us westerners, FOREVER.”
Like I said, not really a realistic expectation… And honestly, only when limiting yourself to a superficial perspective does it even appear to be remotely ethical or moral. As soon as you start examining it in any detail whatsoever, you quickly realize that it’s basically a horrific proposal. You’re saying that everyone should basically reduce their standard of living to just barely above the current average standard of living for citizens in undeveloped African countries… or, you’re saying that some large subset of humanity should forever live with a massively lower standard of living than other subsets of humanity.
MikeJ
1875
You speak as if the key to giving everyone a US standard of living is to chase the oil to ever more remote, dangerous and expensive locales. If we just keep sinking capital and engineering talent into finding more fossil fuels and building more fossil-dependent infrastructure then we are just setting up a bigger energy crunch down the road and further wrecking the environment in the process. Every billion we spend on oil exploration is another step down a completely unsustainable path.
We should be putting resources into building a non-fossil energy infrastructure, and yes that includes building nukes. It would be a tremendous waste of resources if we keep sinking capital into oil exploration and development until the very moment we get the whole alternative system up to the level to replace every drop of it. That very exploration delays the development of alternatives. Alternative energy sources are really the only long-term option to providing the bulk of humanity with a high standard of living.
Timex
1876
You speak as if the key to giving everyone a US standard of living is to chase the oil to ever more remote, dangerous and expensive locales.
No, but the answer most definitely is a huge increase in humanity’s energy consumption.
Currently, fossil fuels are where that energy comes from.
Like I said, you can transition over to nuclear, with some supplemental energy coming from other renewables, but that’s what needs to happen if you want to avoid using fossil fuels to support that increase in standard of living for most people.
Most of the environmentalists are seemingly unwilling to address this simple fact. Energy use isn’t going to go down. Ever. Period. Humanity will continue to use an ever increasing amount of energy to support its ever increasing improvement in living standards across the globe. There are currently only two ways to feed that energy requirement. Fossil fuels and nuclear power.
If you want to reduce humanity’s carbon footprint, then you should be campaigning to build more nuclear plants… Trying to stop fossil fuel exploration is a waste of effort.
Every billion we spend on oil exploration is another step down a completely unsustainable path.
You aren’t spending that money. It’s not public money. It’s private money. So you don’t really have any say in how its spent, nor should it really matter, beyond holding corporations accountable if they screw up and damage the environment like BP in the gulf.
MikeJ
1877
The human race has limited resources such a labor and capital. Our current system for allocating those resources to projects (capitalism) is, in this case, allocating resources in a way that is wasteful from a global perspective. The suggested fix is to tax carbon in a way that reflects the damage to the environment. Use the income from carbon tax to decrease other taxes and/or subsidize other alternatives. This will discourage counterproductive enterprises such as oil exploration and encourage more productive alternatives (such as nuclear). Thus through government, people can have a say in how private enterprises spend their money, when necessary (see huge interventions in the free market during WW2 and a billion other places).
However, that path would decrease the value of existing fossil fuel reserves and so lose important people a lot of money. Those people have a lot of political power, hence the crusade to burn every last drop.
Timex
1878
Or you could just support building nuclear plants which are already economically competitive, can actually produce enough power to support future needs, and has no carbon footprint.
Taxing fossil fuels doesn’t actually make energy cheaper. You are just making the cheapest energy more expensive, and thus making literally everything that anyone needs more expensive, and thus effectively lowering everyone’s standard of living.
MikeJ
1879
I don’t see how you square your first paragraph with your second. Nuclear plants are economically competitive, but fossils are cheaper and putting a tax on them to reflect externalities will condemn the planet to a sub-saharan level of existence.
I expect taxing fossil fuels will make fossil fuels more expensive, reduce their use at the margin and speed up the deployment of alternatives. Note that for many people, the cost of more expensive energy is offset by the corresponding reduction in other taxes.
A tax on carbon would improve the economic viability of nuclear plants, though there are a lot of other hurdles. I wish people were more open to nuclear power, but there are dollars and cents issues as well. Even if everyone was in favour of build new nuclear plants tomorrow, they would still take a long time to construct, and ramping up the necessary supporting industries for construction at a large scale can’t happen overnight. I say put a tax on carbon to reflect it’s true cost, and let the alternatives compete on a level playing field.
Timex
1880
Nuclear plants don’t really need you to tax carbon to make them competitive. They are already economically competitive.
The larger problem is that people are irrationally afraid of them, think they will somehow meltdown and destroy everything, and this the permitting and insurance processes are insane.
The actual costs to construct and operate a modern nuclear plant are absolutely competitive with fossil fuels in terms of cost per kilowatt hour, especially over the long term as the initial costs get spread out and the savings in fuel costs start to take over.
Edit–
You’re falling prey to the old, “nuclear power plants take a long time to build” fallacy.
They don’t. All of the time associated with construction is basically all in the permitting stage.
Actual construction of a modern reactor like the Westinghouse AP1000 takes two years. 4th generation reactors will be even more modular and easy to construct.
And yet the reactors being built at Vogtle have been repeatedly backed up in court cases by idiot environmentalists who have, literally, used Fukashima as a reason for why we shouldn’t build nuclear reactors. The idiots on Germany shut down half of their already operational reactors.
Yes, that makes sense, because it’s totally rational to be afraid of tsunamis hitting a virtually landlocked country. Bonus rationality for the fact that even after being hit by the biggest earthquake in recorded history, and then a tsunami, the environmental impact at Fukushima was still relatively minor.
People who oppose nuclear power are the greatest threat to the environment at this point, because they are directly contributing to continued use of fossil fuels.
