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Comment by r00fus | Hacker News Reader

False dichotomy.

Let’s limit extraction instead and invest instead into clean infrastructure like power lines.

> Let’s limit extraction instead

Just blocking pipelines without restricting extraction virtually guarantees these outcomes. Restricting extraction while shifting transport to pipelines looks like a better solution than just blocking pipelines.

Bad publicity for fossil fuels is good news for the climate. Any new infrastructure for fossil fuels creates investors with an interest in keeping extraction going.

Incentives (carrots) and enforcement (sticks) are the only things most big polluters will respect. And that will require strong political will, leadership and outreach relationships to accomplish, one region at a time.

To be more accurate you would say "restrict consumption" because that is what you are doing here. How do you plan to do that? If you did so by restricting extraction directly, as you seem to imply it would cause oil prices to jump dramatically. In fact, since oil is has extremely inelastic demand, this would be a massive windfall to the oil industry. The only other way to do it is rationing, which I'm sure would go over about as well as the massive price increase.

I'd say more like "redirect/rewire consumption". Oil demand is considered inelastic because we have minimal mass transit options in most North American cities. So, increase mass-transit and HVDC links combined with funded solar+wind sources and EV chargers to covert the fuel-demand into overall energy demand.

Also, the oil being consumed here is headed out to the global market. It's not being earmarked for local use. It's effectively fungible with global supply so the decrease here will simply have a small global price increase.

Actually, power lines aren't necessarily clean because they have significant losses, and would cause more emissions if they carried FF-generated electricity thousands of miles (losses as high as 60%). A better strategy is generating as close to consumption as possible, e.g., solar/wind/etc. right next to consumption to minimize losses.

Do you have a cite for the 60% loss? Perusing Google shows 8-15% average, so that's a hell of an outlier.

Gas engines on the other hand, have a maximum carnot efficiency of about 40% (that's 60%+ power loss there), which doesn't include extracting/transporting/storing as well as the kind of unplanned of losses this article talks about.

Let's render extraction unnecessary by reducing demand.

Meanwhile, use transport that minimizes environmental damage.

>Meanwhile, use transport that minimizes environmental damage.

You're gonna be hard pressed to find a means of transport that's more environmentally friendly than steel wheels on steel rails. Friction is a bitch.

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