There will come a time in the not too distant future when it is clear that beyond every manipulation including subsidies and tariffs that fossil fuels will never be able to claim profitability again- not that fossil fuels ever actually were profitable, just radically subsidized. This will be due in large part to the green replacements which unsubsidized are already dramatically cheaper, being not only radically superior in every way, which they already are, but radically superior on cost by a factor of 10x and dropping without limit to a full cutting of the petrol rent seeking cord. Even the clear shadow of that reality will end the fossil fuel industry over night by drying up its finance instantly. When this realization settles into the financial industry it will spread immediately. The usual tricks will not help, the government won't be able to bar divestment or force consumption as the US Fed is attempting now with coal. Financial hostage taking won't stop this either. For instance about 9/10s of the revenue in petrol is for fossil fuel applications and of course the remaining 1/10 of revenue may remain but just being tied to that critical piece of petrol will not stop the collapse at all and we know how easily states can nationalize the material producing piece if need be and clearly they would in an emergency. But no state or even group of states at this point is powerful enough to stop the permanent collapses and overnight obsolesces of fossil fuels.
Note that the UK actually said no to Saudi Arabia on oil trade over human rights and recently hit 50% green electricity production. Corbyn looks likely to be the next PM and wants to use QE in a resource based economy kind of way where money is printed for direct purchase of infrastructure holding out the possibility that the UK will go green faster than even China, that is a signal! But also add California and Norway and France, Washington DC and countless cities like Seattle. Think of the divestment movement which claims to have divested 5 trillion dollars when the fossil fuel industry is said to be worth only 5 trillion globally- clearly that divestment is still pending to a degree and think of the essentially unanimous Paris accord sign on and think of the recent suits against petrol where even when two ere dismissed in the US another state added one after the dismissal.
This signal is already going out, the shadow of it is already hear as green energy is already better than what hot fusion promised and this is so even if current green tech was about the most pedestrian way to this result. This will hold even as green energy destroys the primary basis of rent seeking in the world in the necessary destruction of the fossil fuel industry.
But lets hammer home the practical psychology of how this is already happening in the market. Start by thinking about "aggregate energy" efficiency. In a thermodynamic sense with fossil fuels you have to find it (expensive in aggregate energy cost and money cost,) you have to fight for it (expensive added cost) defend it (expensive added cost,) extract it (expensive added cost,) ship it (expensive added cost,) store it (expensive added cost,) refine it (expensive added cost,) ship it again (expensive added cost,) store it again (expensive added cost,) retail it (expensive added cost,) then you have to have all these machines with countless moving parts for combustion (expensive added cost,) then you have to let it tear up your infrastructure even in just shipping it (expensive added cost,) then you have to let it pollute your air (expensive added cost,) pollute your water (expensive added cost,) pollute your food (expensive added cost,) pollute your health (expensive added cost,) pollute your climate (expensive added cost,) pollute and corrupt your politics (most expensive added cost,) subject you to disaster with centralization of infrastructure (expensive added cost,) cause climate migration (expensive added cost,) cause resource wars and additive existential risk (most expensive added cost,) subject your economies to speculation and supply vagaries (expensive added cost,) and petrol is mature, built out, at scale tech that has a cost or efficiency floor below which it cannot go with any remotely foreseeable tech so it has been stagnant or terminal for decades (another expensive cost) and finally you must let all this horrid sub threshold in-efficiency hollow out your entire public and financial sectors with all the artificial scarcity created by its ultra-low aggregate efficiency and basically impoverish your domestic population and take you backwards as a society toward the plantation and feudalism (expensive!!!!.)
Look at the perversion of the US financial sectors every financial sector instrument including mortgages and every form of so-called insurance (health,life, auto) or pension has been captured to invest in petrol and constantly socialize regular rent seeking loses in higher costs in the underlying product and of course the public sector petrol subsidies run to a 1/3 of the Federal budget while the industry still claims imaginary profits and dividends (same scam for its history) and still takes massive private debt which it defaults regularly on and passes on the losses through austerity. If this weren't enough its economics are so horrid that it requires regular bailouts known as pre-emptive wars but sometimes taking other names like Trump's Tariffs and trade war. Each of its failures while predictable is greater than the last with cumulative damage It is so bad we might as well be mining an ore off Pluto to try to run an economy. Its sub threshold low efficiency means we might as well be pushing our own cars around with our physical bodies much of the time. It got us to 1950 but it shouldn't have got us further.
Again think about how bad it really is. Early watts steam engines would only convert 1lbs of every 100lbs of fuel to movement. A brand new Toyota Camry will use 60lbs of every 100lbs to heat up the atmosphere or have the occupants of the car behind it in traffic smoking its tail pipe. Scams like petrol powered hydrogen are even worse because they have even less aggregate efficiency than petrol another layer of expense and are dirtier with long tail pipe games hiding the use of even more petrol and its pollution! Clean coal is just as bad, trying to sequester the CO2 adds massive aggregate efficiency losses.
That we didn't leave petrol by 1950 or completely by 1970 was just a result of of the rich in the US wanting to keep rent seeking alive past the actual death (despite the lean proposition of petrol) of the economic problem or the scarcity problem and take us back to the plantation or slavery which really only ended in the US in 1950 by re-introducing scarcity through increase petrol useage and the ultimate stupidity of the petrol dollar. Its clear that this petrol push increased even nuclear proliferation where having pursued cleaner forms of nuclear technology might have led to dramatically less proliferation. So you must understand that petrol is Civil Rights part II or Civil Rights on a world scale and its continued existence even this far was based on the idiotic notion that there is a right to exploit people or treat them like property or slaves.
A lot of this was pushed globally from the US through the so called Texas Energy Sector. Very obvious that a lot of the corruption in US politics came by way of Texas and the so called Southern mentality which didn't properly die in the Civil war. Quite ironic that Musk is from Apartheid South Africa or to a degree post Apartheid South Africa.
Aggregate Efficiency of Green
With regard to the fossil fuel killing replacement technology, the electrons come to you (no added cost,) the electrons are free (no added cost,) there is no question of supply, its rock solid straight line cost curves for 30 years or so (no added cost,) no question of speculation (minus costs,) the energy is properly distributed or decentralized (minus cost,) to this point there is generally more than enough enough energy density on a calculator or a house or factory roof top to take care of the need on site so there aren't even any transmission costs- this will only get better as with solar cells that for instance work at night in IR (no added cost,) and the basic tech of energy capture and usage is solid state no moving parts and tech is made out of stuff as abundant as sand (again minus costs) the price reductions in green tech don't have a limit where its reducing on a Moore's law basis because its basically a chip fab tech and as such energy will be essentially free at some point in the not so distant future (again cost minus,) and it is a hardener against petro induced externalities and contingencies it hardens against disasters and again the tech is incredibly rugged and durable but its decentralization is a huge cost cutter. Whereas you get brittleness out of fossil fuels and the politics of desperation (again minus huge costs and risk,) with green you get almost no externalities generally not even heat pollution and instead you get a way to clean up fossil fuel externalities like loss of snow pack with equatorial solar desalinization (huge cost minus.) Financing on it is a huge cost reducer as well but makes it hugely disruptive to petrol as it eliminates petrol cash flow as you pay once and you don't pay again for decades, it is opting out of the petrol rent seeking enclosure and it can be done with very little money with huge financial pay offs for the average family.
continued next post
Note that the UK actually said no to Saudi Arabia on oil trade over human rights and recently hit 50% green electricity production. Corbyn looks likely to be the next PM and wants to use QE in a resource based economy kind of way where money is printed for direct purchase of infrastructure holding out the possibility that the UK will go green faster than even China, that is a signal! But also add California and Norway and France, Washington DC and countless cities like Seattle. Think of the divestment movement which claims to have divested 5 trillion dollars when the fossil fuel industry is said to be worth only 5 trillion globally- clearly that divestment is still pending to a degree and think of the essentially unanimous Paris accord sign on and think of the recent suits against petrol where even when two ere dismissed in the US another state added one after the dismissal.
This signal is already going out, the shadow of it is already hear as green energy is already better than what hot fusion promised and this is so even if current green tech was about the most pedestrian way to this result. This will hold even as green energy destroys the primary basis of rent seeking in the world in the necessary destruction of the fossil fuel industry.
But lets hammer home the practical psychology of how this is already happening in the market. Start by thinking about "aggregate energy" efficiency. In a thermodynamic sense with fossil fuels you have to find it (expensive in aggregate energy cost and money cost,) you have to fight for it (expensive added cost) defend it (expensive added cost,) extract it (expensive added cost,) ship it (expensive added cost,) store it (expensive added cost,) refine it (expensive added cost,) ship it again (expensive added cost,) store it again (expensive added cost,) retail it (expensive added cost,) then you have to have all these machines with countless moving parts for combustion (expensive added cost,) then you have to let it tear up your infrastructure even in just shipping it (expensive added cost,) then you have to let it pollute your air (expensive added cost,) pollute your water (expensive added cost,) pollute your food (expensive added cost,) pollute your health (expensive added cost,) pollute your climate (expensive added cost,) pollute and corrupt your politics (most expensive added cost,) subject you to disaster with centralization of infrastructure (expensive added cost,) cause climate migration (expensive added cost,) cause resource wars and additive existential risk (most expensive added cost,) subject your economies to speculation and supply vagaries (expensive added cost,) and petrol is mature, built out, at scale tech that has a cost or efficiency floor below which it cannot go with any remotely foreseeable tech so it has been stagnant or terminal for decades (another expensive cost) and finally you must let all this horrid sub threshold in-efficiency hollow out your entire public and financial sectors with all the artificial scarcity created by its ultra-low aggregate efficiency and basically impoverish your domestic population and take you backwards as a society toward the plantation and feudalism (expensive!!!!.)
Look at the perversion of the US financial sectors every financial sector instrument including mortgages and every form of so-called insurance (health,life, auto) or pension has been captured to invest in petrol and constantly socialize regular rent seeking loses in higher costs in the underlying product and of course the public sector petrol subsidies run to a 1/3 of the Federal budget while the industry still claims imaginary profits and dividends (same scam for its history) and still takes massive private debt which it defaults regularly on and passes on the losses through austerity. If this weren't enough its economics are so horrid that it requires regular bailouts known as pre-emptive wars but sometimes taking other names like Trump's Tariffs and trade war. Each of its failures while predictable is greater than the last with cumulative damage It is so bad we might as well be mining an ore off Pluto to try to run an economy. Its sub threshold low efficiency means we might as well be pushing our own cars around with our physical bodies much of the time. It got us to 1950 but it shouldn't have got us further.
Again think about how bad it really is. Early watts steam engines would only convert 1lbs of every 100lbs of fuel to movement. A brand new Toyota Camry will use 60lbs of every 100lbs to heat up the atmosphere or have the occupants of the car behind it in traffic smoking its tail pipe. Scams like petrol powered hydrogen are even worse because they have even less aggregate efficiency than petrol another layer of expense and are dirtier with long tail pipe games hiding the use of even more petrol and its pollution! Clean coal is just as bad, trying to sequester the CO2 adds massive aggregate efficiency losses.
That we didn't leave petrol by 1950 or completely by 1970 was just a result of of the rich in the US wanting to keep rent seeking alive past the actual death (despite the lean proposition of petrol) of the economic problem or the scarcity problem and take us back to the plantation or slavery which really only ended in the US in 1950 by re-introducing scarcity through increase petrol useage and the ultimate stupidity of the petrol dollar. Its clear that this petrol push increased even nuclear proliferation where having pursued cleaner forms of nuclear technology might have led to dramatically less proliferation. So you must understand that petrol is Civil Rights part II or Civil Rights on a world scale and its continued existence even this far was based on the idiotic notion that there is a right to exploit people or treat them like property or slaves.
A lot of this was pushed globally from the US through the so called Texas Energy Sector. Very obvious that a lot of the corruption in US politics came by way of Texas and the so called Southern mentality which didn't properly die in the Civil war. Quite ironic that Musk is from Apartheid South Africa or to a degree post Apartheid South Africa.
Aggregate Efficiency of Green
With regard to the fossil fuel killing replacement technology, the electrons come to you (no added cost,) the electrons are free (no added cost,) there is no question of supply, its rock solid straight line cost curves for 30 years or so (no added cost,) no question of speculation (minus costs,) the energy is properly distributed or decentralized (minus cost,) to this point there is generally more than enough enough energy density on a calculator or a house or factory roof top to take care of the need on site so there aren't even any transmission costs- this will only get better as with solar cells that for instance work at night in IR (no added cost,) and the basic tech of energy capture and usage is solid state no moving parts and tech is made out of stuff as abundant as sand (again minus costs) the price reductions in green tech don't have a limit where its reducing on a Moore's law basis because its basically a chip fab tech and as such energy will be essentially free at some point in the not so distant future (again cost minus,) and it is a hardener against petro induced externalities and contingencies it hardens against disasters and again the tech is incredibly rugged and durable but its decentralization is a huge cost cutter. Whereas you get brittleness out of fossil fuels and the politics of desperation (again minus huge costs and risk,) with green you get almost no externalities generally not even heat pollution and instead you get a way to clean up fossil fuel externalities like loss of snow pack with equatorial solar desalinization (huge cost minus.) Financing on it is a huge cost reducer as well but makes it hugely disruptive to petrol as it eliminates petrol cash flow as you pay once and you don't pay again for decades, it is opting out of the petrol rent seeking enclosure and it can be done with very little money with huge financial pay offs for the average family.
continued next post
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