US oil lobby launches ad campaign to promote oil as 'vital' to global security

US oil lobby launches ad campaign to promote oil as 'vital' to global security
theguardian.com

I don't think it makes sense intentionally suppressing fossil fuels production. The way renewables are developing now, they'll start seriously displacing fossil fuels by themselves. The green mania must be over, renewables are at a point they can survive and grow by themselves without being artificially propped and prioritised.

>“Renewable sources have a role to play, but oil and natural gas will be needed for decades,”

Which is true. Coal won't. It's time to end coal. It is possible and beneficial both economically and politically. Oil will stay around for decades no matter what; natural gas for the time being is even beneficial for energy transition and suppressing it is the last thing we need to do.

>“But [the industry] is trying to expand the fossil fuel system, expand pipelines, expand fracking, and make more of our economy and our existence dependent on fossil fuels, even though clean energy is advancing at a rapid rate.”

So good, let them both advance at a rapid rate and see who wins.

Yet oil was at that phase over a hundred years ago.....and we still to this day prop up O&G companies with massive tax breaks and other benefits.

I'm all for cutting resources to Green Energy to make it more able to stand on its own economically. But we MUST do that for Oil as well, and thinking that we don't spend insane amounts of money securing oil (think wars) and developing its efficiency is just crazy. I'm all for spending the same amount $$-wise on Green energy as we have oil.

Oil was given plenty of time and money to develop into the industry it is. Green energy should be given the same.

But fossil fuel has 2 main drawbacks:

1. Contribute to global warming

2. It takes millions of years to produce, and few days to consume (aka limited resource)

So, we need to adapt the economy to those 2 drawbacks. Even if one thinks that global warming is not an issue, then the fact that it is a limited resource is going to eventually kick in (coal, oil and gas peak).

In the current economy, any drastic change of fossil fuel price would end in chaos. That is the threat. The sooner we minimize our dependance on fossil fuel, the better.

In some industries, we would need fossil fuels for a long time as it is difficult to replace them (e.g. fertilizers, plastics). in some other industries (transportation, heating), we can substitute fossile fuels with other energies (e.g electricity generated using renewable or nuclear).

So, yes it is a matter of national security, and that is why we need to adapt our economy to use less fossil fuel. And obviously we need to extract fossil fuel, as long as we can, during that transition.