A couple of days ago
Guardian
published the results of a research about plans and investments of biggest fossil fuel firms. The
result - all of them are investing heavily into new fossil fuel production, aiming to
spend
$103 million per day for the rest of the decade on these projects. On top of that, they
have developed project options that could lead them to spend additional
$84 million per day.
If all that oil is burned it would increase global average temperature to almost 3° C above
pre-industrial (1850-1900) levels - not counting the feedback emissions, which are
increasing exponentially with increase in CO
2. Taking these into account, the increase will
be 4° C at least.
These companies were always at the top of the richest companies in the world, and with
current surge in oil prices they became even more valuable - Saudi Aramco has recently
overtaken Apple as the most valuable company in the world.
They are earning so much money that it is unlikely the additional options will not be realized.
They knew about climate change before anyone else and they were counting (betting) on it so they can
drill in the Arctic - these plans have not changed (they have even grown). Despite all the climate
policies and hype about renewables, it's still
business as usual for fossil fuel
industry.
Apart from having large influence on politics in
democratic capitalism, you can be sure
that these companies did a thorough research on the current and future state of the world and
its technology - so if they're betting against humanity halting global warming you can also be
sure it's a pretty safe bet.
For a lot of us, this is not surprising. Polarized people instinctively seek short-term profit, it's
in their nature, and nature of beings cannot be changed easily - it requires transformation of
consciousness which is likely predetermined to happen only for a small part of human population in
the current generation.
It is not only the price of oil that is rising - among other things, the prices of lithium, cobalt
and nickel are rising and so the price of batteries and electric vehicles have to rise too.
Demand for lithium will only rise and, to prevent prices rising even more, new mines will be
required. This is a problem with current technology due to water requirements - ≈2000 tons
of water are required to extract 1 ton of lithium.
In places like Nevada (which has lithium deposits) one would have to choose between spending water
on mining and spending water on farming (it is currently used for farming).
For local residents at least, food (and water!) should be more important than batteries.
The price of oil (if taxes on oil don't increase) should be falling with all these new projects
while the price of batteries could be increasing.
But imagine what will happen if (or, more likely, when) China enters the 3rd world war. It surely
won't be fighting against Russia. At that point, you can totally forget about cheap solar
panels and cheap technology in general (cheap technology and food will be limited to China and
Russia, although, Chinese and Russian people may not enjoy it much due to fear of nuclear
weapons).
You will then have a choice - to sacrifice your lifestyle or go back to
cheap oil and gas.
So... yeah - everyone goes back to oil and prays it's enough for one man (ie.
Jesus) to
sacrifice his lifestyle. Again.
And that's how you get hell on Earth.
While the Earth has mechanisms of self-regulation, the man has destroyed much of these
mechanisms on its surface and is still destroying them. So there will be no global regulation of
temperature (cooling down to sustainable average).
The future is, thus, not abundantly green, but abundant with decay fueled by fossils of green.
Neutral people should, however, be able to survive this hell. And for that, I recommend
to
start
increasing local diversity of greenery and start
burying
your house.