Oh California...

[Anthony '58]

Much hinges on whether the Democrats can retake Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin (and Ohio). Plus if the Democrats flip Arizona they will have seven connected blue states in the West (eight if you count Hawaii).

[pbrower2a]

(07-24-2019, 02:03 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-24-2019, 11:39 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: They (Alberta) will have to walk away from it. Oil will not be permitted as a fuel much longer, or it will be taxed to make it unprofitable. Especially such dirty oil as from tar sands. As I said, the oil industry is drying up. People won't be buying it, since cars will use other fuels. So although I know their traditions and cultures are more like Alaska and Texas, they won't have the oil money as a reason to keep them in the red state fold. At least, if the rest of Canada agrees to let the US coasts join, they won't be able to block it. They will be outvoted, and they won't secede from Canada to join Montana and Idaho and the rest of Red America.

I think your optimism is misplaced.  Yes, fossil fuels will be banned at some point, but it won't be soon.  Someone somewhere will still buy the stuff until the entire world threatens them with extinction if they don't.  I expect to see a mostly fossil free future in my lifetime, but total?  Not likely.

There will be specialized uses for fossil fuels that depend upon their portability and easy transmission. Whale oil went out of vogue as the whales became nearly extinct due to hunting.

We will eventually see governments even in America tax the Hell out of it much as European countries do.

[Anthony '58]

(08-28-2019, 08:04 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-24-2019, 02:03 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-24-2019, 11:39 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: They (Alberta) will have to walk away from it. Oil will not be permitted as a fuel much longer, or it will be taxed to make it unprofitable. Especially such dirty oil as from tar sands. As I said, the oil industry is drying up. People won't be buying it, since cars will use other fuels. So although I know their traditions and cultures are more like Alaska and Texas, they won't have the oil money as a reason to keep them in the red state fold. At least, if the rest of Canada agrees to let the US coasts join, they won't be able to block it. They will be outvoted, and they won't secede from Canada to join Montana and Idaho and the rest of Red America.

I think your optimism is misplaced.  Yes, fossil fuels will be banned at some point, but it won't be soon.  Someone somewhere will still buy the stuff until the entire world threatens them with extinction if they don't.  I expect to see a mostly fossil free future in my lifetime, but total?  Not likely.

There will be specialized uses for fossil fuels that depend upon their portability and easy transmission. Whale oil went out of vogue as the whales became nearly extinct due to hunting.

We will eventually see governments even in America tax the Hell out of it much as European countries do.

That's if America doesn't become something like this:

https://www.salon.com/2015/03/02/my_libe..._debunked/

[Ragnarök_62]

(08-28-2019, 08:11 AM)Anthony Wrote:

(08-28-2019, 08:04 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-24-2019, 02:03 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(07-24-2019, 11:39 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: They (Alberta) will have to walk away from it. Oil will not be permitted as a fuel much longer, or it will be taxed to make it unprofitable. Especially such dirty oil as from tar sands. As I said, the oil industry is drying up. People won't be buying it, since cars will use other fuels. So although I know their traditions and cultures are more like Alaska and Texas, they won't have the oil money as a reason to keep them in the red state fold. At least, if the rest of Canada agrees to let the US coasts join, they won't be able to block it. They will be outvoted, and they won't secede from Canada to join Montana and Idaho and the rest of Red America.

I think your optimism is misplaced.  Yes, fossil fuels will be banned at some point, but it won't be soon.  Someone somewhere will still buy the stuff until the entire world threatens them with extinction if they don't.  I expect to see a mostly fossil free future in my lifetime, but total?  Not likely.

There will be specialized uses for fossil fuels that depend upon their portability and easy transmission. Whale oil went out of vogue as the whales became nearly extinct due to hunting.

We will eventually see governments even in America tax the Hell out of it much as European countries do.

That's if America doesn't become something like this:

https://www.salon.com/2015/03/02/my_libe..._debunked/

When I lived in Houston in the 1980's there were prototypes, called gated communities.

https://www.masonluxuryhomes.com/i/avalo...eal-estate

The Libertarian nightmare of 3rd world mass transit kinda presents some real dilemmas when it comes to taxing fossil fuels.When nobody can afford to go to their crap jobs, the economy will have some real problems.

Got Lead?  Lot's of drinking water does.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/...lints.html

Let's see.
1. Questionable water supply.
2. Poo in the streets. San Francisco, Seattle.   Questionable sanitation standards.
3. Measles outbreaks.  OK, questionable public health
4. Corruption. Epstein,  pay to play, campaign finance.
5. Assorted oligopolies. Amazon, Faceplant, Google, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and other Big this and thats.

So yeah a banana republic sort of future is quite plausible as well.

[Eric the Green]

Quite plausible, and where we're headed at the moment. And in any case, big institutions are the hallmark of the age we live in and won't go away, unfortunately. We need to create alternatives though, at least within the empire so to speak. They will eventually triumph.

[pbrower2a]

(08-28-2019, 06:18 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: When I lived in Houston in the 1980's there were prototypes, called gated communities.

https://www.masonluxuryhomes.com/i/avalo...eal-estate

The Libertarian nightmare of 3rd world mass transit kinda presents some real dilemmas when it comes to taxing fossil fuels.When nobody can afford to go to their crap jobs, the economy will have some real problems.

Got Lead?  Lot's of drinking water does.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/...lints.html

Let's see.
1. Questionable water supply.
2. Poo in the streets. San Francisco, Seattle.   Questionable sanitation standards.
3. Measles outbreaks.  OK, questionable public health
4. Corruption. Epstein,  pay to play, campaign finance.
5. Assorted oligopolies. Amazon, Faceplant, Google, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and other Big this and thats.

So yeah a banana republic sort of future is quite plausible as well.

Gated communities imply community only inside the gates. People outside those communities will need some level of social cohesion just for keeping things from falling apart. 

Questionable water supply? Great for selling bottled water! 

Poo in the streets? We need more public toilets, and we need to enforce laws against public defecation and urination just to have some social dignity. 

Measles outbreaks? People must see something wrong with anti-vaccination propaganda, which might depend upon people susceptible to pseudoscience. The cure to bad thought is more and better thought.

Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump are symptoms of elitist ideologies. Pay to pay is the antithesis of competitive enterprise more reliable than Marxism-Leninism and its inhuman mirror-image. Maybe the libertarians have something right in that Big Government has lost its opponents from the Right  (the Right can't even dismantle SNAP because entities such as Kroger, Safeway, Meijer, and Wal-Mart prefer that poor people become paying customers with their food cards rather than be shoplifters in the food aisles, and the Right has found that government contracts -- see Mitch McCon-man on supporting infrastructure so long as his cronies get the contracts for maintenance and building). 

Amazon replaces in practice such entities as Tower Records and Borders' Books. High-tech social media partly replace such entities as CBS-Paramount-Viacom, Comcast-NBC-Universal, ABC-Disney, and Time-Warner. It's one oligopoly replacing another or finding a new niche. Big Pharma is thoroughly corrupt, doing what monopolists usually do (getting control of the market and gouging to the extent possible -- Buy or Die). Big Oil seeks to defend its dinosaur status as other technologies threaten to make fossil fuels largely irrelevant.

What changes? The vehicle and its technology. Human nature does not really change, whether of the common man or the self-indulgent elites. American capitalism cannot survive as an inhuman monstrosity unless it is to doom itself.