Ask HN: What happens to society if we run out of oil? |
Ask HN: What happens to society if we run out of oil? |
And thank god, too. We can only pull up a quarter of our proven reserves before hitting 2 degrees warming (the Paris agreement). We hit 3 degrees warming (where the Pentagon says wars start over food) when we pull up a third of proven reserves.
I work in cleantech, and people used to wonder if oil would die at a high price (due to lack of supply) or low price (due to low demand). Nowadays everyone knows it will die at a low price. Also, here's my favorite climate change joke, "They say we won't act until it's too late...Luckily, it's too late!"
Is there a raw material that can be used to substitute for petrol to make plastics or is there an alternate to plastics for mass production and other uses?
When we do start running out of oil, the prices for this should rise quite a bit, making research into the alternative much more likely.
Electricity, until petroleum-burning plants are replaced with nuclear or renewable alternatives.
Travel and shipping, while we come up with alternative ways to fuel jets and ocean liners, and replace our car and truck fleets with electric ones. This cost trickles down to any goods not manufactured locally with locally-sourced materials.
Food, until we come up with alternatives to petroleum-derived fertilizers and retrofit our farm machinery to use electric motors.
Electric motors and batteries and the raw materials needed for the batteries, as demand for them rises.
Plastics (made from petroleum derivatives).
Food again, as some crops are diverted into use as combustion fuel or to produce plastics.
Some of this is already happening to a limited degree as we exhaust the least expensive sources of petroleum.
If the process were to accelerate - and especially if it were to outpace our capacity to substitute non-petroleum-dependent tooling and processes for petroleum-dependent ones - rising prices (especially of food) would presumably lead to social unrest and possibly even instability.
Except for home generators and the like, no one uses oil for electricity generation. Coal and natural gas are used, since they are much cheaper.
"The best way to curb the demand for oil and promote innovation in oil alternatives is to tell the world's energy markets that the “externalities” of oil consumption—security considerations and environmental issues alike—really will influence policy from now on. And the way to do that is to impose a gradually rising gasoline tax."
Rather, the article assumes that people will worry their pretty little heads about climate change, fossil fuel pollution, or their societies being dangerously dependent on a volatile part of the world, and that will provide the political incentive to enact taxes that nudge the market to renewables. Or, if the political spark doesn't occur, the rising cost & instability of extracting that oil will provide the market incentive needed to switch over.
We already have invented our way out of this problem - solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, batteries, and electric motors exist already, as do fuel cells & electrolysis at a somewhat higher price point. It's just that those technologies are only recently competitive economically with fossil fuels. Raise the price of oil and suddenly there's no reason to use oil anymore.
Is oil from the ocean floor a big thing in the future?
But the dirtiness of burning hydrocarbons has become well recognized so it looks like we won't get to that point at all.
So if we do run out of oil, Musk would probably achieve world domination.
Not plastic for tampons.
Is cotton production significantly affected by oil shortages? I thought cotton was an issue mostly because farming it is water-intensive and too much of it is produced in dry regions.
I have no idea. I was just correcting your incorrect comprehension of the message you replied to.