An inconvenient truth

[Beestie]

Here's another inconvenient truth that must be acknowledged: as long as there is fossil fuel on planet earth, someone is going to burn it.

If the US, Europe and Japan stopped burning or buying crude tomorrow in favor of some technology that was implemented today (just an example) guess what would happen 48 hours later? The price of crude would plummet to around $10/barrell. Guess what would happen next. The third world would gobble it up and their economies would benefit tremendously from the windfall stimulating their demand for crude even higher. Is the third world subject to Kyoto? Nope. So, in the new world where the US, EU and JP stop burning oil, the amount of oil burned will drop at first but will soon (in geologic terms) resume at its present rate.

Now, given that there is only so much oil left in the earth, who do you want burning it: CO2 conscious nations like the US, EU and JP that try to scrub the byproduct or the Kyoto-exempt third world who won't scrub the byproduct at all?

I don't think its even worth entertaining the idea that something magical is going to happen which will make burning fossil fuel economically disadvantageous so I think we better focus on who's going to do the best job of burning it conscientiously. We can cut our consumption all we want to but eventually all the oil is going up in smoke.