this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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Yes, there is simply no other way to achieve energy independence.
If the world ran out of oil tomorrow, the world would basically return to the Stone Age. Oil is used to make basically everything you use every day in one way or another, and sunlight no matter how you use it is not a replacement. Good luck making batteries without oil btw. Good luck making the car to put the batteries in without oil too.
Using oil to make things instead of setting it on fire for personal convenience would dramatically reduce the rate of consumption, effectively ending this crisis.
Setting things on fire is rarely the best use of a resource.
Problem is not in how much we pump, it is about refineries. And realistically there is no alternative to oil at this moment.
At this moment, but oil exploration and re-expanding our oil refining capacity doesn't exactly happen overnight either.
I agree with you that our energy system is dependent on oil, and we're continually kicking the can down the road on this one.
The best time to invest in a green energy future was decades ago, the second best is now.
We just have to stop waiting for the free market to do it, because it won't do it, and if it does, it'll be way too late.
Storage needs to be built like yesterday, even if it's terribly unprofitable at first. Until we have that, no for-profit company will want to invest further in renewables (assuming we continue capitalism).
In any case, we need to build it (via the government), because the private market hasn't, and won't.
The final thing is, we won't have a choice, oil is finite, and climate change is gonna fuck us. Moving back to rail freight except the last-km, electrifying as much of our transport as possible, building and incentivising public transport for 95%+ of personal trips, the list goes on.
It's not impossible, it's just not easy.
What you listed is exactly means "impossible". To be more precise "Practically impossible". And really, batteries are not a answer, we simply can't make enough to cover the need. But more realistic way to rid off coal, nuclear never get promoted by so called "green". Be back to earth, plan for something which possible to achieve in next 10 years, we just do not have time for something which take 30 years to materialise. And oil have to stay anyway, but more as material than source of energy.
100% with you here. Hence why we need to preserve it and move to stop burning it ASAP.
Also agree with you on this. Batteries habe their place, but not for long duration storage, they aren't practical for that. There a number of promising technologies (beyond pumped hydro which is probably the best, but requires certain terrain) while have poor round trip efficiency, are still worth it in my opinion - compressed/liquid air energy storage, vanadium flow batteries, other thermal solutions like sand.
It also bears noting that a lot of our thermal energy needs (both heating and cooling) could be built our as district heating/cooling.
There's a bunch of stuff that can be done, we have literally no choice but to try.
Nuclear, while vaguely better than oil and gas, is a stupid long-term solution, because there still is almost no permanent storage of waste, and to get the most out of it, you need to do recycling which the US and other nuclear powers don't want you to do because you can enrich plutonium.
I could maybe live with building it provided no alternative in the short-term, but just doesn't seem like the smart play to me. Everyone just conveniently forgets about the waste which will last for 10,000s of years.
Thorium seems interesting though.
Almost everything listed above could be built right now. It wouldn't be the absolute most efficient thing possible, not profitable, but we could start right now - and are, but usually drips and drabs and banks don't want to fund them at the scales we need.