This one really pegs the incongruity needle.
There are many reasons to increase fuel efficiency and to begin to wean ourselves from the petroleum system. Not that such is going to be easy or brief, but there are many good reasons to at least begin and to continue working toward it in earnest.
My own principle reason is politcal - if we could, in the next half century, devise some way to make it an obsolete fuel, much of the world's problems would dissipate like so much exhaust...
But one that I hear quite frequently, apart from the standard pollution reasons, is that we should become more energy efficient to conserve precious petroleum resources -
WHAT?????
Petroleum resources are ONLY precious because they are useful - in the here and now. If they didn't burn like mad and release tons of energy, they would not be precious - they would be nothing more than the pollutants that they really are.
And conserve the resources for WHAT? Aren;t we trying to get away from a petroleum based world. If we succeed the precious resource will be useless!!!
It's nice to think up good reasons for this cause, but let's not look stupid in doing it.
2 comments:
Again with the "pollution" meme. Where, specifically? "Emissions", aside from CO2, are well-controlled. CO2 is a pollutant only by fiat. In reality, it is a potent agricultural resource, a trivial climate 'forcer', and a valuable resource. Its offset costs and pricing should be negative in a sane world.
Not CO2, Brian. Real 'pollutant' as in the stuff which seeped naturally into Oil creek in Pennsylvania where the stuff was first developed by drilling. I have worked in environmental remediation for a long time as well as mining and the stuff is a mess if let loose in the world.
The CO2 issue, as we know, is a farce.
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