Well, shiver me timbers!

Truly, the only demographic that matters, in cases like these. /s

Then I guess we’re fucked.

Why are you showing data on renewables? Of course their use is increasing. Our overall demand for power is increasing all the time. Renewables aren’t the problem.

Oil production, is. And aside from a few outliers involving economic collapses, production has been steadily increasing for decades, without any signs of slowing down.

Nothing will change unless we do something to stop that. Adding renewables to the supply, does nothing to decrease the effects of fossil fuel use, unless you stop using fossil fuels. How is this so hard for you to understand?

And none of that slowed down oil and gas production, at all. Did it? Why would it? The oil and gas industry makes billions in profit, every year…largely due to the subsidies and grants provided by the government. They are funding the problem, along with the solutions.

So, of course, they are never going away. Climate change is only going to continue to get worse, because no one is willing to do what’s actually necessary in order to change anything.

It doesn’t matter how many alternatives there are available. They aren’t going to stop producing it, unless they are forced to.

Ummm, ok. And how’s that been working, so far?

So…what you’re saying is…we will never solve climate change? That is the opposite of what this post was looking for, but cool. Thanks for sharing.

They were used in almost everything that required compressed air to function…from fire extinguishers to refrigeration units, air conditioners, and even hair spray bottles. Entire industries needed to come up with alternatives, with millions of products directly affected.

Sure…fossil fuels are a bigger issue. But that only means that even harder methods are required to force a change.

Look around you. What gains have we made, by leaving it up to the fossil fuel industry to phase itself out, voluntarily? We already have cheaper alternatives…thanks to the incentives you mentioned. But we are still nowhere near the point of replacing them on any significant scale. That will never happen as long as they are still “allowed” on the market.

Remember when we discovered there was a giant hole in the ozone layer, and scientists determined that it was due to all the chlorofluorocarbons we were using for a million different things?

Yeah. They didn’t get rid of CFC’s by incentivizing alternatives. They straight up banned them. And it forced the world to start finding other ways to get the same things done. Period. The world didn’t end. We just started using less harmful methods.

When it comes to fossil fuels, we’ve been fucking around with incentives, in the hope that industry and the market will change their patterns, voluntarily…and we are still nowhere near our goals. And at this point, it’s starting to look like they’ve stopped even pretending they care.

If you make it an “option”…they will never change. If you make it mandatory…they have no choice. It really is that simple.

The simple fact is, we buy what’s available on the market. If we want to phase out fossil fuels…the government needs to step in and ban using them. Then, car companies will all be forced to switch to cleaner alternatives, and that’s what consumers will start buying.

This goes for every single product on the market. Regulate the shit out of it, and the market will shift. But if you leave it up to the market to decide…it will always choose the cheapest, most profitable option.

We, as consumers, have almost no say in the matter. We buy what we need, based on the available options.