This from the California Tourism Board.

[The Grand Nudger]

Someone else will still use that fuel.  There won't be any reduction.  Environmentalism is frustrating.

Funny how it never has, then. In those sporadic periods of lower consumption, the surplus petroleum sits in warehouses and on tankers and the price drops like a paralyzed falcon. This happened as recently of March of this year.

The trouble is, the oil gluts and lower prices at pumps cause people to resume their old bad habits. It isn’t that the saved fuel is burned other places, it’s that the fuel is burned in the same places, but just a little bit later.

Boru

Absolutely.  In the short term a cartel can protect it's profits.  That falcon isn't paralyzed.  Case in point, the cartel knows that it can wait and sell at the higher price in the same region.  If that weren't an option, they would still sell their product to the next guy in line, and the next guy in line down the economic totem pole of wealth.  Burn it here, now..or burn it later, elsewhere, it's still burnt.  

I get that alot of people disingenuosly use this as an argument, in some sense, against reducing our personal consumption.  I'm telling you as a person -in- the environmental movement that we need to work on having realistic expectations for our efforts.  It's not realistic to expect that a world with the level of inequality currently in place is a world in which, when one well off person (or even an entire well off country) decides not to use one gallon of a very precious and useful thing, no one else will. They absolutely will, they're just priced out, for now.

Another frustrating (and deeply unsatisfying) component of our unrealistic expectations, is that we probably can't make the case for those people not availing themselves of that product. The US burnt through x amount of fossil fuels to develop. Telling someone that we've shut the door behind us is a losers bet. We need to deploy new models for producing the things we need and the things we desire. Reducing consumption in any specific case isn't even a bandaid, because it's categorically incapable of doing anything but assuaging a single person (or nations) conscience.

[arewethereyet]

@Eleven 

Found him! And I think he's been working out.

[Fireball]

@Eleven 

Found him! And I think he's been working out.

Throat! Shovel! Stat! 

[Brian37]

Thank you fossil fuel industry.

It's a forest fire, Brian.

Boru

Not the point.

It does not matter if a fire is started by lightening or arson. What matters globally are warmer, drier  conditions that make ease of spread more possible.

Of course forest fires happen. But burning fossil fuels and deforestation are making fires easier to spread regardless of initial individual cause.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It's a forest fire, Brian.

Boru

Not the point.

It does not matter if a fire is started by lightening or arson. What matters globally are warmer, drier  conditions that make ease of spread more possible.

Of course forest fires happen. But burning fossil fuels and deforestation are making fires easier to spread regardless of initial individual cause.

I don’t disagree with you.  My only objection is that you’re blaming the fossil fuel industry only.

Boru

[arewethereyet]

Not the point.

It does not matter if a fire is started by lightening or arson. What matters globally are warmer, drier  conditions that make ease of spread more possible.

Of course forest fires happen. But burning fossil fuels and deforestation are making fires easier to spread regardless of initial individual cause.

I don’t disagree with you.  My only objection is that you’re blaming the fossil fuel industry only.

Boru

Don't forget the exploding trees.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I don’t disagree with you.  My only objection is that you’re blaming the fossil fuel industry only.

Boru

Don't forget the exploding trees.

I don’t think even Brian would blame the fires on exploding trees.

Boru

[Sal]

Don't forget the exploding trees.

I don’t think even Brian would blame the fires on exploding trees.

Boru

I wouldn't put it past him. Who knows, maybe people like to hide dynamite in tree trunks.

[Anomalocaris]

I don’t disagree with you.  My only objection is that you’re blaming the fossil fuel industry only.

Boru

Don't forget the exploding trees.

Hate to tell you, but much of the recent bout of wildfire California had seen was caused by a series of unseasonable lightning storms in late August.   When trees are struck by lightning, the electricity is mostly conducted through the wet part of the wood.  The moisture violently evaporated and can explode the tree.

So the Start of these current wild fire can well be associated with many instances of exploding trees.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Don't forget the exploding trees.

Hate to tell you, but much of the recent bout of wildfire California had seen was caused by a series of unseasonable lightning storms in late August.   When trees are struck by lightning, the electricity is mostly conducted through the wet part of the wood.  The moisture violently evaporated and can explode the tree.

So the Start of these current wild fire can well be associated with many instances of exploding trees.

Hate to tell you, but that’s not what Trump said. He said trees lay on the ground, dry out, and ‘just explode’. His meaning was that the spontaneous explosion of dead trees was the cause of the wild fires. 

Boru