This isn’t news, big oil has been bankrolling lobbyists across the globe to maintain their position via fear mongering about “global security”. There were several wars fought over oil in the past three decades, in fact.
https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZ/comments/18jeumy/do_gen_z_guys...
Unfortunately some people will fight for these things to just watch the world burn.
But fossil fuel has 2 main drawbacks:
1. Contribute to global warming
2. It takes millions of years to produce, and few days to consume (aka limited resource)
So, we need to adapt the economy to those 2 drawbacks. Even if one thinks that global warming is not an issue, then the fact that it is a limited resource is going to eventually kick in (coal, oil and gas peak).
In the current economy, any drastic change of fossil fuel price would end in chaos. That is the threat. The sooner we minimize our dependance on fossil fuel, the better.
In some industries, we would need fossil fuels for a long time as it is difficult to replace them (e.g. fertilizers, plastics). in some other industries (transportation, heating), we can substitute fossile fuels with other energies (e.g electricity generated using renewable or nuclear).
So, yes it is a matter of national security, and that is why we need to adapt our economy to use less fossil fuel. And obviously we need to extract fossil fuel, as long as we can, during that transition.
I would be less optimistic as 80% of the energy used is fossil fuel (source: https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insight...).
Everything that we wear (plastic) or eat (fertilizers, and farming, trucking) comes from fossil fuel. Oil is everywhere. It is going to take a while to withdraw from our addiction.
> We should have been off oil in the 80s or 90s after the crisis in the 70s...
Oil is a fr(e)aking miracle. It is virtually free (just drill), it is energy dense, easy to transport, it makes fertilizers which allowed to fed the planet with less fields, it makes plastic, etc.
The countries fortunate enough to have some in their underground, have a natural printing money machine.
But, it is a limited resource, and using it at the scale we have been doing in the past 100 years, is impacting the environment.
> but instead we just paid off powerful men in the Middle East with weapons and kicked the can.
I agree that we kept kicking the can. But fortunately (or unfortunately if we are not prepared) it will eventually come to an end. It takes million of years to produce oil, and we consume it faster and faster. There will a time, where we would not find the easy oil, and it would become more and more expensive to find. If we are not prepared, then chaos will follow (wars as the last countries that have access to oil will keep it for them, economies will collapse as worldwide trade will break, etc.)
Clearly the past 100 years have been golden thanks to oil. We need to build a future where oil would be less abundant and more expensive.
Lots of countries are putting incentives to electrify their economy, which is a necessary first step to later switch to renewable and nuclear (and ditch coal or gas).
People want Green energy resources to be slashed? I'm all for it, once we spend roughly the same amount of time and money we've dedicated to developing oil.
Between wars to secure oil, excessive industry tax breaks, etc, I wouldn't doubt the cost to get oil to where it is today is in the tens (if not hundreds) of trillions of dollars.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ropr.12369
> Most states have maintained methane release exemptions from these taxes through either statute or administrative discretion between 1960 and 2000, although a few have allowed some form of pricing. Two state legislatures have explored applying these taxes to methane releases on multiple occasions since 2000, amid expanded shale era output and growing public concern about climate and air quality impacts. Steadfast production industry opposition, rather than technical feasibility, emerges as the primary factor leading to rejection in these cases. Even when framing releases as a conventional air contaminant or as permanent loss of a nonrenewable natural resource, states largely continue to exempt flared or vented methane from severance taxes.
> The Texas House of Representatives has given its approval to a new bill as a substitute for the Chapter 313 tax break. However, it explicitly excludes renewable energy companies from its provisions
https://www.keatax.com/texas-approves-prop-7-to-support-foss...
- Tax credits specifically for producing oil and gas from maringal wells and oil discovery
- Tax deductions for drilling and development cost of oil and gas wells
- Passive loss exceptions for working interests in oil and gas property (think dry wells)
- Removes exceptions for tar sands and oil shale[1]
These are just some. Then there's the second order costs, like how much of our defense budget is geared toward simply protecting oil tankers[2] specifically.
[0]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1483...
[1]: which had additional tax breaks due to land use classification
[2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/21/us-spends-81-billion-a-year-...