"Drill, Baby! Drill!" Revisited

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Ironically enough, the "natural" or "organic" lifestyle exacts a considerably higher cost on the ecosystem. Modern industrial technology allows us to support more people with comparatively fewer resources.

Absolutely spot on Orwell

Orwell raises some interesting points, but i still doubt we'd want polar bears on the extinct animals list. Considering it is a more complex life-form than bacterias, at the least. I wonder what would kids think if, years later, they watch a pub of Coke and their branding polar bear icon during Christmas, and why they've never seen one "before". <.<

Not necessarily, bacteria are marvelously complex and well-adapted. We humans and our mammalian kin are not somehow "more evolved" than bacteria simply because we are large and multicellular. If anything, big bumbling vertebrates like polar bears and us are most likely a temporary aberration, an evolutionary dead end.

Makes for some fascinating theological implications.

Are you comparing vertebrates to the housing bubble!

Well yeah Orwell, but y'know, the average joe probably cares more about bears than bacterias. <.< At least he can see the former.

Are bacteria even threatened in the same way animals are? I don't think I've heard the plight of bacteria.

get the use of a microscope and you too can see bacteria.

ruveyn

People follow the line of least resistance. Right now hydrocarbons are plentiful enough that finding alternatives is relatively more expensive than going with the current fuel sources. When they become truly scarce alternatives will be found, or we shall perish.

When whales were hunted to near extinction, it was only then that petroleum and its derivatives (kerosine in particular) were exploited. When Col. Drake struck oil in Pennsylvania in 1859, he was not looking for fuel to make his engines go. He was looking for a source of kerosine to replace whale oil which was becoming progressively more scarce and therefore more expensive. Fuel for lighting was, at the time, the primary objective. Gasoline (or petrol, as some call it) was initially a by product of kerosine refinement. It was not until the late 1800's that gasoline became desirable to power up internal combustion engines. The demand for kerosine abated when Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse made electrical power and lighting systems a practical reality. However just as kerosine demand was going down, the gasoline powered internal combustion engine came online, and oil became the feedstock for petrol production. If electric cars had been practical we probably would not extracting as much oil since coal and natural gas can be used for powering electrical generating stations.

The bottom line: the fuel of choice is determined largely by economic factors, in particular cost of production and distribution. It has nothing to do with a sinister cabal or conspiracy. It is purely (or almost purely) a matter of money.

ruveyn

why wait until the last minute, until something becomes scarce, before we seriously start developing alternatives? [especially when something like oil is so precious in terms of the many non-fuel-related things which oil has a hand in the making]
what will happen to plastics, for example, when the juice runs out? can high technology exist without oil products?

Oh and i do know how to use a microscope, for the record (Sheesh, i do have interest in biology y'know). =.= I was talking about those less lucky than i. <.<

The latest oil spill is a major disaster.

But the British have been pumping oil out of the North Sea which is a much more hostile environment than the Gulf of Mexico.

The Russian power station at Chernobyl blew up.

Does that mean that no one should ever build another nuclear power station?

If 100 coal miners get killed should the whole world stop mining coal?

We can derive polymers from coal and also from plant matter. Oil is the cheapest chemical feedstock we have, at this moment.

ruveyn