We don't find it surprising that there is a huge ecosystem of fake reviews for 2 dollar trinkets on Amazon. Fossil fuels are wealth extraction from everyone on the planet to fossil fuel overlords. This game must go on.

First, fossil fuels are not viable without massive subsidies but we almost never this statistic in the news. This is trillions of dollars in subsidies and growing! Last year, fuels that drive climate change and pollute the air were underpriced to the tune of $7 trillion. [1].

We will see so much news of how land is being used for solar, but nobody talks about 40 million acres for ethanol, which is a small additive to fossil fuels and the agricultural subsidies. Worldwide, this is 100 million acres. So much talk about food inflation, these 100 million acres could be used to grow food instead. but "news" don't want to talk about an easy win of stopping fossil fuel subsidies, which will also bring the prices.

Facts like fossil fuel shipping account for 40% of global shipping, account for the largest water withdrawals[3], account for 10 million pollution deaths (but we do see 1.5 birds killed by wind turbines, lets never talk about the billions of birds killed by cats or buildings), these are never part of the conversation.

Lets also never talk about the easiest metrics to use is deaths per TWH, renewables and nuclear are 2000x better.[4]

I put together a comparison worksheet for kids [5] (fossils vs renewables), any 10+ year old can work through this sheet and figure out that fossil fuels are a horrible idea.

Lastly, and more importantly, lets never talk about price-fixing Oil, a commodity doesn't behave like most commodities do, Eg: Salt (and lots of industrial products manufactured at scale - millions of tons) which is so incredibly cheap that no one thinks or budgets for buying salt[6]. OPEC has a monopoly and pricing power and they destroy demand to keep prices up. Nobody has a problem with this!

And, lets spend trillions of dollars on military budgets to protect oil supply. Why don't we let the oil companies pay for defense of their own infrastructure? This is not factored into any of the subsidies.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-16/climat...

[2] https://qz.com/2113243/forty-percent-of-all-shipping-cargo-c....

[3] U.S. thermoelectric plants are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals, accounting for more than 40% of total U.S. water withdrawals in 2015: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698#:~:tex....

[4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldw...

[5] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y_VFQC5qMuLYKoqLg0ooKIgV...

[6] https://www.amazon.com/Turning-Oil-Into-Salt-Independence/dp...

Why is it that no one goes after the biggest price fixing in the world? OPEC does price fixing openly and blatantly. Thousands of skyscrapers, entertainment, airlines, oil wealth owning pretty much everything in the world -- all of this is funded by us. The harms caused by everything else is largely irrelevant.

Oil should have been a commodity which we don't have to think about. Just like salt and tons of other commodities that we consume. [1]

[1]Turning Oil Into Salt: Energy Independence Through Fuel Choice: https://www.amazon.com/Turning-Oil-Into-Salt-Independence/dp...