Nyxella
TokyoPewPew
Tlaloc
Turtlicious said
Hahahahahaa you know what you're doing.I haven't done enough research to have a strong opinion on it, my knee jerk reaction is:Instead of spending that money on moving more fossil fuels, use it to fund a green power alternative instead.
It'll actually save quite a bit of money in the long run to pump it via pipeline instead of by ship or truck, which have a lot higher potential for not very fun environmental disasters. In that regard, it's something that will make a return on its investment in a not-too-unreasonable amount of time, especially in light of how many millions of barrels worth of crude would be shipped a week.
I'm all for developing sustainable green technology, but we can't just turn the switch off of oil, not for a long time to come. Pretty much everyone depends on it and all of our technology derives from oil-based resources, processes, and use. People are certainly working on developing and making green solutions, but so far nothing that can replace the scale of production or overall use of oil. There's also growing pains, and two of the leading alternative solutions, electric vehicles and ethanol fuels, have no small amount of growing pains.
In cities that are electric car friendly, there's a problem of there not being enough plugs for the vehicles, and it is causing fights with people unplugging other vehicles to plug their own in, which is hilarious until you realize that somebody can't drive home at the end of the day, and that's in cities that are actively trying to build infrastructure and electric vehicle culture. Couple that with the fact that electric vehicles don't have a huge range before needing a recharge, it's only useful so far in very small areas. You couldn't take the thing for a long road trip because the infrastructure to recharge the cars simply aren't widespread. You'd either need to own a second, gas-powered car or take the plane to a destination that may only be a few cities away, which doesn't really do much for promoting the use of electric cars.
With ethanol and bio-diesel, it's simply a matter of production scale and the fact some engines can't really handle pure corn or organic waste fuels without a conversion. When you're talking the scale of oil production and consumption verses what a farmer can grow and provide, it's pretty much dooming that to a curious novelty than a practical solution.
This isn't to say I am pessimistic that somebody won't come up with the miracle solution that can start to replace oil in the future, but for now, it's the best resource we have for energy production and by far the most abundant. We need to keep developing oil infrastructure and extraction and refining practices to make it as efficient and clean as possible, since it simply isn't good enough to just stop with the way things are to keep throwing money at technologies that might be decades off.
Let's use a bit of a quick analogy here, if you're driving a car with a leaky oil pan and exhaust leak, but can't afford a new car to replace it, you don't just keep driving without fixing the problems of your current car because the money it would cost to fix it could be used towards a down payment for a new car.
Yes, I know that you can get a good price on a lot of good used cars and a decent down payment with the money it would cost to fix the original car, but sadly that doesn't directly apply to the issue at hand. There aren't used cars when it comes to the energy industry.