Inflation/Gas Prices/Rising Prices in General

[GGG]

Originally Posted by blankall

My view on this is that it doesn't take a genius to realize that burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment, regardless of beliefs on climate change. Anyone who's ever stood near a car exhaust, knows that what's coming out of there is harmful. Even before climate change became front and center, environmentalist groups were pushing a reduction in fossil fuels for reasons related to the ozone layer, acid rain, air quality, etc...

Anyone who claimed to be ignorant to air pollution, because an oil company was lying to them, is lying.

The issue once again is alternative options/technology and individuals sacrificing their own lifestyle.

Well the C02 affect isn’t the same as tail pipe emissions. C02 in concentrations dangerous to climate is perfectly harmless to us so your stand beside a car it’s bad as a precursor to global warming isn’t good logic.

I agree with your general point.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by GGG

Well the C02 affect isn’t the same as tail pipe emissions. C02 in concentrations dangerous to climate is perfectly harmless to us so your stand beside a car it’s bad as a precursor to global warming isn’t good logic.

I agree with your general point.

I didn't say anything about CO2 and tail pipe emissions, only that it doesn't take a genius to see that whatever is coming out of the tail pipe is likely bad for the environment. People have been willfully choosing to harm the environment through their own behaviour, for their own convenience, not because they believed an oil companies disinformation on the subject. Passing the blame to the oil companies because you don't like to take the bus or want to travel abroad is BS.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by blankall

Passing the blame to the oil companies because you
don't like to take the bus or want to travel abroad is BS.

As with all social media these days, I see people dipping into the "BIG OIL" conspiracy theory in one post but then in another show their ridiculous family with multiple kids/grandkids, taking long distance holidays flying, going home for Thanksgiving, Memorial Day and the Christmas, or their new huge home.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by blankall

I didn't say anything about CO2 and tail pipe emissions, only that it doesn't take a genius to see that whatever is coming out of the tail pipe is likely bad for the environment. People have been willfully choosing to harm the environment through their own behaviour, for their own convenience, not because they believed an oil companies disinformation no the subject. Passing the blame to the oil companies because you don't like to take the bus or want to travel abroad is BS.

Do you seriously think that oil companies have had no influence on government policies regarding energy? There are tons of ways that governments could have reduced emissions without people needing to dramatically change their behavior (higher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles or increased investment in nuclear, hydro, renewables, etc), but those things directly cut into the profits of energy companies so they did whatever they could to prevent that. There's a reason that energy companies routinely donate 5-10x as much to Republican Presidential candidates compared to Democratic ones and why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on lobbying.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by opendoor

True, but you don't need to be rich to drive a fuel efficient car. Even at current BC diesel prices (about $2.25/L), my 15 year old TDI wagon only costs about $0.12/km in fuel. That's what a lot of bigger vehicles cost at $1.00/L gas.

Yeah, some people need big vehicles for work and it sucks for them. But a pretty large segment of the vehicle buying public places little value on fuel efficiency, and unfortunately there's a cost to that when energy prices rise.

Cheating emissions aside, isn't diesel terrible with particulate emissions that are significantly (thousands of times?) worse than CO2? Especially in older cars that up to current tech.

[Zarley]

Sooo, about that inflation...

Is the Fed bringing out the big bazooka today? Will it have any impact?

I worry that our central banks have created a monster that will only be defeated by Volcker shock style measures.

[PeteMoss]

It will involve giving money to poor people - so I'm confident we will have people here complaining about how its going to increase inflation and ignoring their prior posts that were expressing sympathy about the plight of lower income people.

[Leondros]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Do you seriously think that oil companies have had no influence on government policies regarding energy? There are tons of ways that governments could have reduced emissions without people needing to dramatically change their behavior (higher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles or increased investment in nuclear, hydro, renewables, etc), but those things directly cut into the profits of energy companies so they did whatever they could to prevent that. There's a reason that energy companies routinely donate 5-10x as much to Republican Presidential candidates compared to Democratic ones and why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on lobbying.

Every single industry has a lobby group - its the system that was designed and companies operate within that system. Lobbying governments in order to make business more friendly happens literally across everything from agriculture, to mining, to alcohol and pharmaceuticals.

The issue people have is everyone is seemingly trying to blame oil and gas for all of their environmental problems - fata that. There is plenty of blame to go around, but you don't seem nearly as much being thrown at clothing manufacturers who are huge culprits, the meat industry, or mining companies. Ask yourself why?

[Locke]

Originally Posted by chemgear

It's not like global warming or things like acid rain or consequences of world population growth were hidden by some dark oil cabal. It was taught in schools even decades ago, I remember it myself.

I was always disappointed in Acid Rain.

'Twas the Scourge of the 90s it was! You think its going to be like an awesome horror movie, but really it just slightly discolors roofs.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by chemgear

Cheating emissions aside, isn't diesel terrible with particulate emissions that are significantly (thousands of times?) worse than CO2? Especially in older cars that up to current tech.

Worse depends on what you're talking about. They emit more particulates which are hazardous, though they do have filters to mitigate that somewhat. In terms of impact on warming, no they're not worse than gas vehicles. They mostly emit nitrogen oxide, which while not great for the environment, has much less of an impact on climate change compared to carbon (not to be confused with nitrous oxide which has a significant warming potential).

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Leondros

Every single industry has a lobby group - its the system that was designed and companies operate within that system. Lobbying governments in order to make business more friendly happens literally across everything from agriculture, to mining, to alcohol and pharmaceuticals.

And people are critical of those industries as well. If we criticize tobacco companies who funded studies to show smoking wasn't harmful, the pharmaceutical industry for their responsibility in the opiate epidemic, and the financial sector for lobbying for reduced oversight and regulations which led to the global financial crisis, then why can't we criticize oil and gas companies for the damage they've caused through their lobbying?

[blankall]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Do you seriously think that oil companies have had no influence on government policies regarding energy? There are tons of ways that governments could have reduced emissions without people needing to dramatically change their behavior (higher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles or increased investment in nuclear, hydro, renewables, etc), but those things directly cut into the profits of energy companies so they did whatever they could to prevent that. There's a reason that energy companies routinely donate 5-10x as much to Republican Presidential candidates compared to Democratic ones and why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on lobbying.

Firstly, I was speaking about technological innovation and consumer behaviour. Oil companies weren't barging into Samsung's research centres and preventing them from coming up with better batteries.

Of course every major industry has a lobby group. However, the majority of the blame for carbon output from the oil industry lies with the end use. In the case of the oil industry, this is largely the public. Road transportation is by far the biggest consumer of oil:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ors-worldwide/

[GGG]

Originally Posted by blankall

I didn't say anything about CO2 and tail pipe emissions, only that it doesn't take a genius to see that whatever is coming out of the tail pipe is likely bad for the environment. People have been willfully choosing to harm the environment through their own behaviour, for their own convenience, not because they believed an oil companies disinformation on the subject. Passing the blame to the oil companies because you don't like to take the bus or want to travel abroad is BS.

Sorry I misread your post

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by blankall

Of course every major industry has a lobby group. However, the majority of the blame for carbon output from the oil industry lies with the end use. In the case of the oil industry, this is largely the public. Road transportation is by far the biggest consumer of oil:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ors-worldwide/

Seems like something that improved fuel efficiency standards could have mitigated, but instead they were essentially unchanged in the US for about 30 years from the early '80s to the early '10s. By 2010, European and Japanese Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards were about half of what North American ones were. And as a result, in 2010 the US and Canada were #1 and #2 in the world in road sector gasoline consumption per capita, nearly twice as high as the next highest peer country (Australia) and about 7x higher than the EU average.

Blame consumers all you want, but it would have been relatively trivial for the government to do what most peer countries were doing by increasing efficiency requirements, which would have led to a significant reduction in fuel usage. But they didn't, largely because of lobbying by oil companies and North American automakers.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Seems like something that improved fuel efficiency standards could have mitigated, but instead they were essentially unchanged in the US for about 30 years from the early '80s to the early '10s. By 2010, European and Japanese Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards were about half of what North American ones were. And as a result, in 2010 the US and Canada were #1 and #2 in the world in road sector gasoline consumption per capita, nearly twice as high as the next highest peer country (Australia) and about 7x higher than the EU average.

Blame consumers all you want, but it would have been relatively trivial for the government to do what most peer countries were doing by increasing efficiency requirements, which would have led to a significant reduction in fuel usage. But they didn't, largely because of lobbying by oil companies and North American automakers.

Sorry but I just don't think you and Mathgod / others are accurately capturing things here. I also am not even sure what exactly is being debated so why don't we make clear what issues are at stake. I am further not saying you're wrong or that lobbying efforts have not happened nor am I debating the effectiveness of them in steering political agenda. However I definitely take issue with oil company lobbyists having some kind of material impact on consumer demand. No. Just no.

However the crux of the issue of climate change is (we think?) too much use of fossil fuels. Let's assume this is correct and personally I am definitely willing to believe that.

Here is the note from National Bank this morning: "The headline from the June IEA report that was released this morning is ‘23 oil demand to exceed pre-pandemic levels. Not only is oil demand expected to exceed pre-covid levels, the IEA continues to see demand tailwinds driven by China lifting oil consumption by 2.2 mmb/d next year vs. 1.8 mmb/d in ‘22. This demand growth next year also comes in ahead of non-OPEC supply growth of 1.8 mmb/d (led by the US) which is lower than the 1.9 mmb/d the IEA is looking for this year. In terms of OPEC+, the IEA acknowledges risk to Russian production and producers outside of the Middle East. As well the IEA assumes Libyan volumes will recover but events as of late are a reminder that Libya is anything but a reliable producer"

Use of fossil fuels is because populations are rising. Third world countries are modernizing, and adapting to "western" ways of life. Respectfully, you can go on about "evil oil companies" all you want but the reality is all they are doing is trying to make as much money as they can by selling a product, which is filling a need. Rising commodity prices are a market function of demand. You can't look at any market or system and say that the only ones responsible for a problem in order to find a solution are the suppliers. This is akin to drug dealers selling products to addicts, wherein you can't simply just continually combat drug dealers and jail them and think the problem goes away when you have a demand for a product and an addict. Consumers, the public and the demand side needs to change, but how do you do that when populations are increasing and huge countries modernizing and demand rising?

So you may say well Mr.Coffee, the demand side is being hoodwinked by the oil companies. And I would reply really? This is where energy literacy needs to come in, and this is something I have been saying for years. The people who are worried about climate change are the same people that should be leading the charge in changing energy systems and how humans interact with energy and demand. Indeed there are many people and companies actively involved in this field right now. How did they overcome the evil oil companies lobbying?

Oil companies lobbying is not the horse that leads the carriage of energy demand. You have it backwards. Oil demand is up because people use it. A lot of it. Not because Exxon tells you to. Come on now. Perhaps I misinterpreted what you guys are getting at or insinuating with the whole "lobby" thing, but even if it was an issue, it definitely is not the one to focus on. Snap the demand.

Lastly, let's assume we force all oil companies to stop production or go out of business or whatever, can't lobby- whatever. What do you think happens? I am willing to predict that, just like almost every other country on earth save for a few (the minority, to be sure) western countries, nations themselves will pick up the slack and start their own production. Why? Because people need it.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Seems like something that improved fuel efficiency standards could have mitigated, but instead they were essentially unchanged in the US for about 30 years from the early '80s to the early '10s. By 2010, European and Japanese Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards were about half of what North American ones were. And as a result, in 2010 the US and Canada were #1 and #2 in the world in road sector gasoline consumption per capita, nearly twice as high as the next highest peer country (Australia) and about 7x higher than the EU average.

Blame consumers all you want, but it would have been relatively trivial for the government to do what most peer countries were doing by increasing efficiency requirements, which would have led to a significant reduction in fuel usage. But they didn't, largely because of lobbying by oil companies and North American automakers.

You don't think that consumers wanted increased fuel efficiency? That was literally the first thing I asked the dealer about when I purchased my first car. Not just for environmental reasons, but because I was broke and wanted cheaper driving. There's always been more fuel efficient vehicles available. People didn't drive them because they didn't think it was cool.

There are elements of the industry that were affected by the oil industry lobbying. These would be examples like refinery efficiency, which are extremely small impacts when compared to the direct choices of consumers.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Seems like something that improved fuel efficiency standards could have mitigated, but instead they were essentially unchanged in the US for about 30 years from the early '80s to the early '10s. By 2010, European and Japanese Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards were about half of what North American ones were. And as a result, in 2010 the US and Canada were #1 and #2 in the world in road sector gasoline consumption per capita, nearly twice as high as the next highest peer country (Australia) and about 7x higher than the EU average.

Blame consumers all you want, but it would have been relatively trivial for the government to do what most peer countries were doing by increasing efficiency requirements, which would have led to a significant reduction in fuel usage. But they didn't, largely because of lobbying by oil companies and North American automakers.

I thought the US was increasing efficiency requirements when Democrats were in charge and rolling them back when Republicans were in charge.

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by blankall

My view on this is that it doesn't take a genius to realize that burning fossil fuels is bad for the environment, regardless of beliefs on climate change. Anyone who's ever stood near a car exhaust, knows that what's coming out of there is harmful. Even before climate change became front and center, environmentalist groups were pushing a reduction in fossil fuels for reasons related to the ozone layer, acid rain, air quality, etc...

Anyone who claimed to be ignorant to air pollution, because an oil company was lying to them, is lying.

The issue once again is alternative options/technology and individuals sacrificing their own lifestyle.

Originally Posted by chemgear

It's not like global warming or things like acid rain or consequences of world population growth were hidden by some dark oil cabal. It was taught in schools even decades ago, I remember it myself.

This intuitive understanding of the dangers of pollution isn't nearly as strong as you seem to think it is. Most people have always had a base level understanding of "air pollution is bad", but have for the most part lacked a true deep understanding of the enormity of the problem and the looming consequences, both for the health of individual humans and for the well being of humanity as a whole.

Some of this stuff was taught in schools, and that's great and everything. But when you're a teenager going through school, that stuff mostly goes in one ear and out the other, as you have more pressing concerns such as exams, dating, etc. Then you hear your peers telling you not to worry about it because it's all a liberal hippie hoax... and guess what, chances are you're not going to be all that concerned about air pollution and the consequences thereof.

Public acceptance for things like a carbon tax, stronger fuel efficiency standards, and greater public funding for clean energy R&D has been lacking up until the past decade or so, and climate change denial is largely to blame. While it's true that people have largely prioritized their own personal lifestyles and material comforts over supporting climate action policies, it's rather dishonest to claim that climate change denial efforts haven't played a major role in shaping public opinion on this issue for decades.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by opendoor

And as a result, in 2010 the US and Canada were #1 and #2 in the world in road sector gasoline consumption per capita, nearly twice as high as the next highest peer country (Australia) and about 7x higher than the EU average.

To be fair while Europeans drive smaller, less powerful vehicles and travel less then North Americans, comparing only gasoline distorts the comparison somewhat because 2010 was at the tail end of the European diesel car boom when roughly half of all new passenger vehicles being sold were diesel powered.

And also before the SUV/CUV really took off in Europe. Despite massive fuel taxes and modestly worse fuel economy, the lure of the crossover has become so great that small sedans, hatchbacks and station wagons are dying off even there.

[chedder]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Seems like something that improved fuel efficiency standards could have mitigated, but instead they were essentially unchanged in the US for about 30 years from the early '80s to the early '10s. By 2010, European and Japanese Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards were about half of what North American ones were. And as a result, in 2010 the US and Canada were #1 and #2 in the world in road sector gasoline consumption per capita, nearly twice as high as the next highest peer country (Australia) and about 7x higher than the EU average.

Blame consumers all you want, but it would have been relatively trivial for the government to do what most peer countries were doing by increasing efficiency requirements, which would have led to a significant reduction in fuel usage. But they didn't, largely because of lobbying by oil companies and North American automakers.

Does that gas consumption per capita take into account that North America is a vastly larger and more spread out land mass than Europe or Japan?

For fun, I looked up your car on fueleconomy.gov. It gets virtually the same mpg and emissions rating as my new f150. I'd call that a pretty large improvement in fuel-efficiency and emissions standards over the last 15 years.