The Fossil Fuel Shell Game
Author: Douglass Carmichael Issue: 2024-11-06
The Fossil Fuel Shell Game
by Douglass Carmichael
No one can make a decision that cuts fossil fuel use. What doesn't get used here will be sold somewhere else.
The reason is interesting and fairly simple. But important to understand. If we cut the flow of energy to the home of the Joneses, the fuel that does not go to the Joneses, but used to, goes back into general supply and is part of what is being sold.
We know that fossil fuel use is increasing worldwide, not decreasing. The cut to any person or organization faces the same logic: it just gets sold somewhere else in a world of rising energy demands.
The only way to cut fossil fuel use (burning in some machine) is to pump it back into the ground or put it in large storage tanks. But beware, the world uses 100 million barrels per day.
The result is there is no way to cut fossil fuel use. If the price goes up it means increased demand, if the price goes down it means more opportunities have become economical. So our request to leaders to “do something” cannot be met.
So there are some core difficulties:
- All economic activity requires moving material or information. Both use energy and produce CO2.
- If not direct, then through the manufacture of the equipment to produce the energy used.
- Rising CO2 means rising temperatures.
- No way to stop selling energy in the aggregate.
- There is no such thing as clean energy. Gas produces half the CO2 of coal. Half is not clean.
- Net-zero promised that we can drill, dig and pump now because in the future we will be able to remove the CO2 with new technologies that do not exist at scale (total industrial CO2 in the atmosphere is about as much as the weight and volume of all the cars in the world).
Related:
- Douglass Carmichael (author)
- 2024 (year)
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