Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
Things like this are constantly being worked on. Every new generation of airplane (car, boat, home appliance, home itself) is better than the last.
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Totally. But a lot of it is still done within the parameters of tech we currently use.
"Ok, how can we make this gas engine use less gas?"
vs
"Ok, how can we make an engine that doesn't use gas?"
"Ok, offset carbon emissions or how can we generate energy will less carbon output?"
vs
"Ok, how can we just not use fossil fuels for this purpose at all?"
These things are being worked on, but not as heavily as I believe they should be. Because they're not profitable. But I don't think that should really matter in this context.
What if an energy company (a big one, like Shell or BP. Not a new start up) just went "F*** it. Were taking all funds out of oil R&D and putting it into renewals. All profit will be dedicated to this."
Their stock would plummet, no one would invest, and the company would crumble. But with the resources they have on hand, they may be able to actually do something meaningful in this area, and be a pioneer, and thus potentially profit BIG TIME as everyone else lags behind. Just continuing to pour resources into oil extraction (with minute resources going to alt R&D) seems crazy to me, even from a long-term profit perspective.
I like to use Netflix as an example. Completely re-vamped their business model, took a huge hit in stock prices, but came back with a vengeance and basically monopolized a future market that didn't really exist before. Now they're on top of the world. How can something like that not be palatable to a business person, even if it means short term hardship?