Quote:
Originally Posted by WarrenC12
The end of fossil fuels will happen in stages. We're already seeing the end of coal now. Yes, some countries around the world are still using it, but real growth is gone. Miners aren't getting their jobs back and coal companies are going bankrupt in North America.
Stage 2 will be Oil, and it will start with the expensive producers (cough, Alberta). Again, it will be used for some time, but demand growth is almost over.
Stage 3 will be natural gas, which will probably grow for a decade or two before beginning it's inevitable decline.
Long term investments in oil are a fool's errand today.
|
I completely agree, that is the order which fossil fuel death will take.
The thing with GHG emissions is that it is the developing world that is most desperate to get off them. 30 years ago, the developing world , led by China, didn't care about either GHG emissions nor even pollution and you can't really blame them as both those things were very much caused by the developed world as their relative emissions were quite low. They were desperate to industrialize and were more concerned with feeding their people and improving their standard of living.
The situation today however is completely different. Now those big countries {ie China and India} are very heavily polluted, causing millions of premature deaths, costing their already inadequate and overburdened healthcare systems a fortune, and costing then tens of billions every year in lost productivity. The recent dire situation in Delhi exemplifies this.
We are the beginning phase of a de-carbonizing world and that effort will increase exponentially over the next few decades. Anyone who questions that reality is either woefully ignorant of current events or just living in a delusional hope that things will continue as they always have.