Price of U.S. crude oil crashes below $0, first time in history

[anon15258403]

@heng

Solar really can, and many times over.

Maybe long term, but not nearly soon enough with current PV tech + the needed storage and distribution - even at realistic rates of growth in those areas. Including the development chain, the how-do-you-get-there-from-here in my reckoning here. It’s freaking amazing that today you can completely supply your own power for a modest daily commute in a Tesla of 25 miles or so with an array of ~30x latest tech 250W panels … but worldwide how many of us are in that position or are soon to be? How about electric trains? Where I live the BART commuter train uses 400,000MW per year, they’re contracting for two solar projects right now that will, combined provide ~100MW by next year (1/400th) total consumption. The system aims to be near 100% renewable by 2045, it would be very surprising if that was all or even mostly solar. And this is in an affluent, politically willing and green-energy motivated region. We need all the non-carbon energy options and actionable development tracks asap if we want to avoid getting cooked.

[anon62122146]

@Flapjack

Lets assume what you say is true lets assume that the decisions within our grasp could only hope to get us a third of the way there, does that mean we should not still make the effort and sacrifice to do our part?

1. I think an optimistic assessment for what you could conceivably get by people making personal choices in the US is more like 10%.

2. Even if we start with your vastly inflated estimate of 1/3. That would be enough to get US per-capita emissions down to about the level in Europe.( Doing that would actually require significant structural changes, not just individual choices) If everyone in the world had Europe’s per-capita emissions, we would have 7 times our current global emissions. Unless your plan involves using a whole lot of violence to keep people in the third world poor, we’re going to need fundamental, structural changes in the way we produce energy to keep them from industrializing with fossil fuels.

3. Even if everyone cut their emissions by 1/3, and we maintained that, it would only buy us a few more years. We need to do something much more drastic.

Anything other than fundamentally reworking our energy infrastructure is feel-good bullshit. At best, it’s neutral, and more likely, it will lead to people feeling ok about whatever useless steps they are taking instead of working towards structural reform.