Environment and Capitalism

[CCCPneubauten]

How, exactly, does 'big oil' ( a bunch of competing firms) prevent research into alternative fuel sources. What power do they have? If I want to go out and get some investors to fund my research efforts in biomass, how could they stop me?

Oil is widely used because it is very cheap, abundant, and energy rich. Eventually we will run out of oil, but that will not be for quite a long time. As oil becomes more scarce, its price will climb. People will then use less of it, or turn to alternative sources. If the price per Kj of biomass is twice that of oil (I am just making that number up), and if oil triples in price, eventually people will make the switch. I really don't see why this is something to even worry about.

Companies have a strong incentive to correctly predict dramatic economic shifts such as the one I have outlined above. Private enterprise has a long and proven track-record of producing innovation, and of predicting dramatic structural shifts in the economy. I therefore thinks it makes little sense to say that we are under-investing in these technologies. The people with the money and the incentive to invest have evidently decided differently from you, and I trust their expertise and their greed more than your erudition.

Also, for the record, primitive societies can do remarkable amounts of environmental damage. The early Icelanders deforrested almost their entire island, and the ecosystem is only now improving thanks to wealth creation through capitalism.

I found that interesting....and in a way it has a point, I mean haven't our big natural disasters kinda been stopped in the USA? Won't people make the switch when it becomes economicly viable?

Any responses to this? I just read it and wanted to see the ideas...

[Janus]

I mean haven't our big natural disasters kinda been stopped in the USA?
Not really. In fact we have more and more problems here that are due in part to earlier generations. Just look at the Superfund sites everywhere.


Won't people make the switch when it becomes economicly viable?
The problem is that energy research is a measly part of the government's budget. I think it amounts to the cost of like 5 F-16 jets or around 1 billion. :(

[Tarik]

But a war cost enough too, $1billion a day, so earlier we will give up fossils energies and developed a new generation of energies, and less that will cost.Better is worth to begin there earlier to anticipate.

[red team]

The ironic thing is you don't need any new energy technologies. Simply cover the deserts with solar panels and you have more than enough energy absorbed from the sun (fusion power) to run all the machines on earth and still have energy left over. If you think about it everything including ultimately the food we eat and therefore our own human labour energy comes from the sun, so saying there's not enough resources to go around is simply a myth. With today's technology anybody who says there's not enough resources to go around is either deluded or looking to selfishly preserve their own wealth and power.

A common complaint is that solar panels located in the deserts would be buried in sandstorms, but that's only if we're stupid enough to build them as stationary platforms. Camels don't get buried in the desert do they? :rolleyes: We can build these solar power plants as autonomous self-propelled robots which digs themselves out using the energy they absorbed in case they get buried too deep in sand. They can be made smart enough to be self maintaining and self sustaining even with "obsolete" computer hardware that's two decades old.

[adz170]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2006, 07:04 PM

How, exactly, does 'big oil' ( a bunch of competing firms) prevent research into alternative fuel sources. What power do they have? If I want to go out and get some investors to fund my research efforts in biomass, how could they stop me?

Oil is widely used because it is very cheap, abundant, and energy rich. Eventually we will run out of oil, but that will not be for quite a long time. As oil becomes more scarce, its price will climb. People will then use less of it, or turn to alternative sources. If the price per Kj of biomass is twice that of oil (I am just making that number up), and if oil triples in price, eventually people will make the switch. I really don't see why this is something to even worry about.

Companies have a strong incentive to correctly predict dramatic economic shifts such as the one I have outlined above. Private enterprise has a long and proven track-record of producing innovation, and of predicting dramatic structural shifts in the economy. I therefore thinks it makes little sense to say that we are under-investing in these technologies. The people with the money and the incentive to invest have evidently decided differently from you, and I trust their expertise and their greed more than your erudition.

Also, for the record, primitive societies can do remarkable amounts of environmental damage. The early Icelanders deforrested almost their entire island, and the ecosystem is only now improving thanks to wealth creation through capitalism.

I found that interesting....and in a way it has a point, I mean haven't our big natural disasters kinda been stopped in the USA? Won't people make the switch when it becomes economicly viable?

Any responses to this? I just read it and wanted to see the ideas...
what if theyre isnt a good source of energy to switch to when the time comes ? , and what if mass protests start to happen when the oil runs out? therfore also petrol prices climb , and instead of being able to de-tax them to lower the cost , they cant because they dont have anything to lower taxes on . Therefor i think when the oil runs out mass protests will be carried out everywhere and it is going to cause more problems then people think... Damn iam so close to passing my test! :( lol