Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
It looked for a time we may be heading that way, but humanity gave up on pricing externalities, so it didn't work. I think it really could have gone either way 10 years ago. It's clear which way it has gone now, though I don't think that's anything to celebrate.
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Helping to bring millions of people around the world up to our standard of living
is something to celebrate though. People focus on the environmental externalities, but forget how much having reliable access to abundant and affordable energy has played in improving people's standard of living in drastic ways.
We take energy for granted because we were lucky enough to be born into a society already built on its foundations, but there are plenty of countries who are still looking to climb the ladder. I mean we are ashamed that our energy isn't clean enough...while something like 2 Billion people in the world still cook and heat their homes on open fires with wood scraps and animal dung! It may not register high in the corporate ESG annual report, but going from burning frickin' dung, to having a steady stream of even our dirtiest oil and gas (or even coal) would improve the lives of these people tremendously.