this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Not saying I disagree but methinks many of you don't realize everything we use fossil fuels for from plastic to fertilizer it's not just gas. You think costs are spiralling out of control now.... oooh boy just wait.
That's true, we need fossil fuels for so many things besides transportation. At the same time, we are simply running out of fossil fuels. Even if we ignore the impact on the environment completely, there will be a point in the not too distant future when there will simply be nothing left to pump.
So what I am wondering is, even if one thinks man made climate change is a hoax or something similar, shouldn't the first and foremost thing everyone agrees on be to still spare those scarce resources? For things we really ("really") need to make from oil?
The first thing that comes to mind (maybe since I work in the lab) is medical equipment. You don't really want to have to wash and reuse things like catheters, do you? I am not sure if bioplastics (i.e., still plastics, but made from plants) would be an alternative here once we run out but I sincerely hope so.
Prices will go up, in any case, and it will be a painful transistion. But now we are at a somewhat luxurious point where we can still make this transistion somewhat controlled and "smoothly". If we continue to treat oil as a never ending resource and then do a surprised pikachu face once there is nothing left this will be much much worse, won't they?
We already know how to create plastics from CO2 extracted from the air and hydrogen from water. There is no shortage of raw material for plastics. The main question for the industry is cheap plastics and the answer to that has always been cheap oil and gas.
Using proven reserves and current consumption you get to 47 years and things run out. That's a "within my lifetime" number for many.
Society would change, a lot. I’d be very interested in what a plastic-phobic society would look like. Remember milkmen, who would take one empty glass bottle and give you a full one?
As in, billions will die? That is a big change indeed...
Yeah it's scary that people don't seem to understand that this would lead to billions dead which would cause chaos and resources wars that totally doom the planet.
We need infrastructure to transition, we need technological innovations and cultural stability