I have to, ruefully, laugh when I see eco-activists swanning about in one public venue or other waving signs that proclaim "NO MORE OIL". This is a slogan born of a very fine and special kind of blithering stupidity. Where do these ignoramuses think the bulk of what they use daily comes from? They simply do not know how pervasive, and necessary, crude oil is to a modern technological existence. Damn near everything comes from, however far removed, crude oil. Virtually the entire chemical industry depends on crude oil feedstocks. The entirety of composite and polymer production depends on it. And before I hear you cry "But what about plastic in the oceans?" I'll point out that the U.S. dumps virtually no plastics into the ocean. Some of it is recycled and most of the rest is in landfills. China and India alone account for ninety percent of the plastics found in the ocean, and we can't do a darned thing about that.
A thousand different types of synthetic rubber depend on crude oil feedstocks. Many thousands of different types of paint and coatings ultimately come from crude. A large percentage of medical equipment depends on it. Countless types of electrical insulators come from it. Millions of gallons of transformer oil and a bewildering array of lubricating oils and greases come from it. And that includes lubricants needed in electric motors, of which there are hundreds of millions in use in this country alone. The blades of giant wind turbines are made entirely from composite materials, all sourced from crude oil. I could go in this oily vein for some time, but you get my point.
There is at present no substitute for crude oil for all these crucial products. There isn't even a hint of what might replace it. Sometime in the future a universal petrochemical feedstock might be invented, but it would have to essentially be crude oil synthesized from some other organic materials. And we would need hundreds of billions of tons of said materials to synthesize enough of it. There is nothing on the technological horizon that can do the job. Even if the problem is solved in the lab, it won't be implemented without the investment of very many trillions of dollars to build new synthetic petroleum refineries. And without any doubt synthetic crude will be cost far more than current crude prices. Far more. And it is a one hundred percent solid bet that such processes will entail carbon emissions.
What those gormless protesters may mean is that they don't want oil to be used for motor fuels so there will be plenty of crude left for other uses. That's fine, assuming the protestors have a clue about how important crude is to the world economy. So, No More folks, pony up the much larger than the total world GNP cost of doing that. For all those countless trillions we'll just, A, Soak billionaires for the costs, or B, just declare the supply of money octupled and bugger the economic consequences. The first simply won't happen because there aren't enough billionaires to soak, and the second is already in progress. Let me know how that works out. So far it's not looking good.
