Hundred-Ton Dome To Collect Oil Spill 565
eldavojohn writes "After failing to contain the Gulf oil spill any other way, a massive containment dome had the finishing touches put on yesterday. It amounts to a giant concrete-and-steel box made by Wild Well Control that is designed to siphon the crude oil away from the water. They expect an 85 percent collection with this device. It's not a pretty situation as Google Earth illustrates."
85% (Score:5, Insightful)
That number would be more encouraging if the amount coming out were not so massive. This spill is going to create a lot of suck for years to come.
Re:Man. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pay politicians more money to make sure they can continue drilling.
Re:American Chernobyl (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This thread is worthless without pics (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider R'ing TFA. Second link has pics. Dear Lord, people, who in the world ties your shoes in the morning?
The "dome" is called a cofferdam. (Score:2, Insightful)
Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been amazed at the Oil industries apparent inability to do any contingency planning. If this dome technology is known to be the best quick-fix for containing this type of oil leak, they should have had a few of them already built and sitting on a back lot in Port Arthur, just in case.
Instead, they have to construct them from scratch when the emergency presents itself. That's resulted in a huge waste of time as the clock is ticking and the environment becomes more and more damaged.
Having spares would have been a cheap insurance policy. Don't these people even think about risk mitigation?
You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact? If BP were forced to shoulder the entire cost of this mistake, they would go bankrupt. And so, as usual, it is the rest of us who will have to pay. Socialism for the rich, paid for by the poor.
If you and I lived next to each other, and I ran a pipe from my toilet into your yard, you would be pretty pissed off, wouldn't you? You'd probably demand I stop shitting in your yard. And I would say, "Human civilization can not exist without environmental impact, shit happens, get over your knee jerk reaction and get used to it, hippie."
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact?
You are welcome to try the alternative of not living in an energy intensive society if that would better suit your needs. I hear that sub-Saharan Africa is wonderful this time of year.
If BP were forced to shoulder the entire cost of this mistake, they would go bankrupt.
Got a citation for that or are you just making assumptions?
If you and I lived next to each other, and I ran a pipe from my toilet into your yard, you would be pretty pissed off, wouldn't you?
Bad analogy, because that implies a deliberate decision was made to cause this oil spill. A better analogy would be that your sewer pipe fails for whatever reason and floods my yard with shit. In that instance I would expect you to clean up the mess and fix the pipe -- actions that are well under way in the Gulf of Mexico.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:1, Insightful)
Thanks for telling us the equivalency of one imperial unit with another imperial unit, that helps a lot!*
* sorry if I broke anyone's sarcasm meter.
Re:Man. (Score:5, Insightful)
"condemn an entire industry because of one accident" ... one accident and their complete lack of preparedness for it.
If it was some fly-by-night corp, this would be expected. BP is a bit bigger and more established and should have had measures in place to deal, or attempt to deal, with this sort of scenario. And considering they seem to cook off a rig or two (in the event hurricanes don't do it for them) when ever it looks like oil prices aren't where they want them to be at they should at least be prepared to deal with the cleanup.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact?
You are welcome to try the alternative of not living in an energy intensive society if that would better suit your needs.
When did 'energy intensive society' come to mean 'poor people pay when the rich screw up'?
A better analogy would be that your sewer pipe fails for whatever reason and floods my yard with shit.
No, a better analogy is that his sewer pipe fails and covers the entire neighborhood with shit...and because cleaning that up would bankrupt him, everyone affected is told to pitch in and give him money for cleaning up his own mess. Screw that.
Re:Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score:4, Insightful)
So they put all their faith in a blowout valve that apparently had an unanticipated failure mode. That's not risk mitigation, that's as assumption that, since you don't recognize the risk, there is no risk.
One layer of protection here was far to thin. In Norway and Brazil they require that wells also have remote control shutoffs. That would have been another layer of protection.
Keeping extra domes around would have been another layer of protection - a relatively low cost "when all else fails" measure. Seems like they didn't do it because they had too much confidence that all else couldn't possibly fail.
They were wrong.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Man. (Score:5, Insightful)
Please tell me you aren't someone who is going to condemn an entire industry because of one accident. No human enterprise ever attempted managed to get underway without mistakes.
If it's an industry where one mistake translates to environmental and economical damage on the scale we are witnessing at the gulf coast right now, then yes, condemning (and perhaps even abolishing) said industry may be the right thing to do.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:2, Insightful)
When did Shakrai say that it did? He was saying that offshore drilling is not an inherently bad thing; this is nowhere near the same as approving of caps for cleanup costs.
Alternatives? I'd like to see them tried... (Score:2, Insightful)
Let us assume for a moment that the USA is pushing the world towards a climate catastrophe at an ever-increasing pace. Millions of people will die if nothing is done to stop this. We are getting ever closer to some "tipping point" where doing anything will be impossible and we just get to stay on the ride until the very end.
Sounds dire, right?
OK, so now we have this oil well accident that some want to call an ecological disaster of unimaginable proprotions. That this accident illustrates how incredibly stupid it is to drill for oil, and even worse to do so in some ecologically sensitive area.
Fine. Let's stop. How about if we give people a chance here to explore alternatives. We should stop all oil imports, all oil refining and just say it is over. The Oil Age has ended. This sort of alternative action would actually do something and be quite different than a lot of hand-wringing and people protesting without any real effect. Sure, there would be some immediate impact and people would die - perhaps fewer than are killed each day on highways.
I'd say after six months of this we might be able to carry on an intelligent debate on the real issues. Right now, I'm not seeing a lot of that. There is plenty of hand-wringing and plenty of pontificating on how bad things might be in the future.
Re:Should have had these waiting on the shelf (Score:3, Insightful)
They did. They had a blowout valve in place that was supposed to kill the oil flow. It failed. Not something that has ever happened before and not something that could have been predicted.
We could conduct offshore drilling for the next hundred years and probably not see another failure via this route.
If that's the only failsafe they had, that's a problem.
They were drilling at extraordinary depths, here, and they must've known that, if something catastrophic *did* happen, it would be exceptionally difficult to deal with. But instead of facing that fact and putting additional risk mitigation in place, they just assumed the risks were low enough that it wasn't worth the additional cost.
Really, this is a classic example of where government should be stepping in. In reality, as you say, the chances of something truly catastrophic happening are low enough that the cost of additional risk mitigation simply isn't justifiable from a cost-benefit perspective, and so it's incumbent upon the government to force them to take those additional steps.
Re:Starting to see things differently (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a big difference between 1-2 million birds dying in one geographic location over a short amount of time versus hundreds of millions spread relatively evenly across the globe. It also doesn't stop at birds. Crabs, clams, crawfish, fish, etc, etc.
Roughly a quarter million people die each day [answers.com]. That doesn't mean that wiping out the population of Buffalo NY [wikipedia.org] every now and again is "ok". It would simply devastate the area (for other humans who live around there, etc.. probably good for the environment tho...).
I know this stuff happens naturally and I get that. Natural disasters have more or less hit the "reset" button on the planet a few times. But going out and causing it (intended or not) is stupid and entirely preventable. Just because an asteroid or another event pretty much wiped out life on the planet in the past doesn't mean that killing/poisoning large quantities of life now, no matter how small in comparison, is a-ok!
Re:Man. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm would be all for off-shore drilling if:
1. There was a constant inspection regime paid for entirely by the industry. In other words, there is an armed government official with absolute power to stop drilling, and his salary paid entirely by whoever owns the well and the platform.
2. All caps on liability were removed and the owners of the well and platform were forced to pay all costs of a spills, without limit of any kind.
3. Any evidence of ignoring of safety requirements would lead to lengthy prison sentences for all involved, and a ban on the companies involved in the accident of no less than five years from any extraction.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:2, Insightful)
Shakrai was implying that the free market will take care of things and BP will shoulder the entire cost of the cleanup. He was also making a false dichotomy by claiming that we either pay the cost of having spills, or have no energy, which is bullshit.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, a better analogy is that his sewer pipe fails and covers the entire neighborhood with shit...and because cleaning that up would bankrupt him, everyone affected is told to pitch in and give him money for cleaning up his own mess. Screw that.
That analogy fails because his shit pipe is not serving a purpose for the rest of the neighbourhood. Oil drilling is keeping our civilization going - whether you think that's a good thing is another debate, but there are circumstances when society has to take the risks for the critical processes that it depends on. I'm all for reducing our dependence on oil and I'm all in favour of wind farms and tidal generation and orbital solar panels beaming power down by laser and nuclear power plants and thermal funnels and all that, but we are where we are right now and what means we need oil, and to a certain extent we must accept the risks that go with it.
Re:what are the chemical dispersants? (Score:4, Insightful)
Those who think letting the oil sink is a bad idea are a distinct minority. ...
There are creatures that will be effected by oil on the sea floor like crabs and such, but it's still better than letting it run ashore.
I don't think you understand the full consequences of oil on the sea floor.
Every time a big storm comes through,
(and this is the Gulf of Mexico... hurricane central)
the sea floor gets stirred up and oil gets carried to shore.
The gulf coast is going to have oil contaminations problems for years.
Re:Man. (Score:3, Insightful)
Please tell me you aren't someone who is going to condemn an entire industry because of one accident.
Because of course this is the first major incident that has dumped vast amounts of oil into the environment.
Re:Alternatives? I'd like to see them tried... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternatives? I'd like to see them tried... (Score:1, Insightful)
Score: 4, Insightful? Have you all lost your minds?
Immediate cessation of oil refining into gasoline means that the entire infrastructure we have to deal with getting food from farms to people in cities goes bye-bye. Since 90% of the population in the Western world lives in cities, that means 90% of the population starves. I don't know about your math, but killing off 90% of the population is still more people than are killed each day on freeways.
Never mind that backup generators at critical infrastructure points like, oh, I don't know, hospitals and telecommunications stations are powered by diesel.
Furthermore, even a moderate proposal like a gradual phase-in tax on gasoline doesn't work for the same reasons. Seems reasonable, right? Just gradually tax gasoline more and more until other energy alternatives are cheaper? The problem with that is you've effectively taxed food more and more, and for people that struggle to make ends meet, you've condemned to starvation again.
That's why the government subsidizes alternative energy instead of doing something drastic. Corn/ethanol subsidies are (in hindsight) stupid (I'm a nuclear fan, myself), but at least they are trying something that might work instead of trying something that would have a significant negative impact on their chances to get re-elected.
News flash: you aren't sparking intelligent debate. You're either an anarchist, completely brain-dead, or both. Which is it, Dr. Strangelove?
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, how about this: I build a sewer that leaks onto your property accidentally. And I say, "eh, screw you, I'm not paying for it. My liability is capped by the government, YOU pay for it."
You present a false dichotomy, claiming we either have to pay for these kinds of spills, or use power plants that run on unicorn horns. Sunshine and wind, obviously, are real things and plants CAN run on those. But the point is, it is not an either/or situation.
I'm not saying, "don't drill." I'm saying, make companies pay for their mistakes. Not the taxpayer.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
the only industry that would be impacted is transportation based on heavy fuels like jet fuel and diesel and those also have alternatives.
You do realize that virtually every other industry depends on the transportation sector to move goods around, right? How do you think your food makes it from the fields to the cities? Scotty, beam me up?
Re:Man. (Score:3, Insightful)
So similar to the Mine Safety and Health Administration? Or how about the SEC? We've seen how well those have worked out. Any time you have a small regulatory body working in a single industry you end up with conflicts of interest. Industry players come into the agency to control it, ex-agency employs go to industry to show how to game it, and lots of expensive dinners all around.
Both of those amount to "bankrupt any company that has an incident". Remember that for 2) "pay all costs, without limit" actually means "pay all costs until the company goes bankrupt". While that might sound great to you in theory, in practice it's a terrible idea. Take a look at Arthur Anderson - exactly what you describe happened to them after Enron. Did 85,000 employees that had absolutely nothing to do with Enron deserve to have their lives thrown into chaos as the company imploded? Also bankrupting BP wouldn't really do anything structurally - the other big oil companies (Shell, Exxon, etc) would just pick up the pieces and everything would go on as if nothing happened.
The only thing I agree with you on is the need for criminal action against directors. Far too often companies see regulatory fines (and appeals to avoid them) as simply part of the cost of doing business, as is blatantly obvious in the case of Massey's WV mining operation. Start threatening criminal action against supervisors for repeat offenses and they'll suddenly have a real incentive to implement real protocols.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Shakrai was implying that the free market will take care of things
I said no such thing, don't put words into my mouth.
BP will shoulder the entire cost of the cleanup
False. I only said that the cost of the cleanup was as yet unknown and that it was premature to assume that BP couldn't cover it without going bankrupt.
He was also making a false dichotomy by claiming that we either pay the cost of having spills, or have no energy, which is bullshit.
No, I said that society comes with an environmental cost. The only thing that's bullshit here is your lies about my previous remarks.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
All BP's operations on US soil and offshore in US waters should be nationalized.
If corporations want to have all the rights of people, of US citizens, then they have to be ready to accept all of the responsibilities. A corporate "death penalty" for a screwup of this magnitude is not unreasonable.
Right now, corporations get to privatize the profits but socialize the risks.
There is a difference between "shitting in my yard" and "covering my entire property with three feet of shit for more than a decade".
Re:Alternatives? I'd like to see them tried... (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, so now we have this oil well accident that some want to call an ecological disaster of unimaginable proprotions. That this accident illustrates how incredibly stupid it is to drill for oil, and even worse to do so in some ecologically sensitive area.
Yes we have some people making these claims. These people are irrational or have an agenda. The fact of the matter is that all that the actual damage we have documentation of so far (despite all the journalists looking for disaster evidence) are one dead jellyfish and two birds that needed to be cleaned of oil contamination. Otherwise no significant oil contamination in ANY sensitive marshes or wetlands.
The fact is that oil is itself a product of natural biological processes, and nature does have mechanisms for dealing with it over time. The Gulf itself is naturally and continuously contaminated by seepage from oil deposits, to the tune of an estimated 2,000 barrels a day. Every day. Over a history of millions of years. The ecology there has adapted to deal with oil, although not the large quantities from a point source like this incident without some damage.
The fact is that once this spill is contained the ecosystem will recover. It might seem to take forever if you are a fisherman working those waters, but to call it an ecological disaster is just silly.
The only true ecological disasters this planet faces is the accumulated biosphere pressure of human overpopulation and the occasional asteroid strikes.
Re:Tax from oil goes in government fund (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Shouldn't, oh I don't know, their profits be less, to cover the costs?
That's an idea, but ultimately it's still the rest of us that will be paying for it. If you have a 401(k) or mutual fund account you almost certainly hold some oil company shares and receive dividends from them. Slash their profits through newer taxes and/or fees and you'll either for it with reduced earnings or a higher price at the pump.
You were NOT implying that BP will shoulder the cost of the cleanup?
They've said they will, but as I've said it's too early to say with certainty what will happen. Why don't you wait until the cost of the cleanup is known before you make assumptions about whom will pay for it?
I'm glad that you, too, are tired of the rich stealing from us
The only thing I'm tired of is hearing people on the left side of the political spectrum blame the rich for all the woes of society. Do you have a 401(k)? Do you own an automobile? Do you eat food? Do you use plastics? Do you purchase goods at the store? You've contributed as much towards this problem as the rest of us have, rich and poor.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why's it gotta happen tomorrow, Shakrai, or is that another strawman?
If during the oil embargo of the 1970's, when Americans had to line up to get gas and we had our first national fossil fuel freakout, we'd had a "Manhattan Project" for getting off of fossil fuels, there's a good chance that we'd have not only moved well along the way to cleaner sources of energy, but we'd be probably be energy independent and wouldn't have to fuck around with Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia on top of it.
But when Ronald Magnus Reagan tore down those largely symbolic solar panels on the roof of the White House, he was sending a clear signal to the Oil industry that the party was just getting started, and they wouldn't have to worry about any interruption in the flow of profits for a long time.
Unless you believe that oil fields are refilling themselves from some magical source at the center of the Earth, there's going to be a reckoning day for fossil fuels. The willingness of generation after generation to let this reckoning day smack our children or grandchildren in the face with a brick sort of gives the lie to all the claims from the Right that they're worried about how budget deficits are going to affect "our grandchildren". If they really cared about the well-being of "our grandchildren" there would be more concern about finding a better way to travel down the road than by burning gallon after gallon of refined flammable liquid, of which there is a finite supply.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if we'd only drilled closer to shore, like we did in Santa Barbara when we had that huge oil spill, then suddenly the oil industry would not have tried to cut corners and would have been a lot more responsible and everything would just be fine.
That's not the way things work when companies are always walking the line between maximum profits and safety. They are always going to use the least amount of precautions that they can get away with, and even if we were to drill 10 feet off the beach in shallow water, there would still be ecological catastrophes.
You're looking for an easy way with fossil fuels. There is no easy way. Even if we were to collect every drop of oil in the Northern part of the Western Hemisphere, there still comes a time when we have to find other solutions to our energy needs. We can wait for devastating shortages later to decide to do something, or we can start doing something now before we have huge world wars over the dwindling supply of oil.
I've got no problem paying an extra dollar a gallon to fund a serious, all-out effort to get off fossil fuels. I've got no problem with nationalizing all of BP's US operations until this mess is cleaned up and all the economic damages to the businesses and individuals in the region are paid. But pretending, in 2010, that there's just no end to the cheap supply of oil makes me distinctly uncomfortable.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why's it gotta happen tomorrow, Shakrai, or is that another strawman?
Because unless it can happen tomorrow, we are still going to have to extract oil from the Earth and the whole point of my original comment was to condemn those that fail to realize this basic fact.
we'd had a "Manhattan Project" for getting off of fossil fuels
I'm getting tired of hearing this. The Manhattan Project cost $2,000,000,000. Wikipedia says that would be around $22,000,000,000 if it was adjusted for inflation. DoE's annual budget for 2009 was $24,100,000,000. That's 109% of the total cost of the Manhattan Project. It's probably 200-400% DoE's stated mission is to end American dependence on foreign oil. How well is that working out for us?
You need to realize that not all problems can be solved by throwing money at them. If it was a simple matter of money we would have figured this out a long time ago. The sad reality of the situation is that there really aren't a whole lot of non-nuclear alternatives for fossil fuels that can compete with them in terms of energy density. Nuclear, hydro and wind are a decent bet for replacing fixed energy production/consumption (power plants, factories, houses, etc.) but won't work so well for mobile purposes (ships, planes, automobiles).
But when Ronald Magnus Reagan tore down those largely symbolic solar panels on the roof of the White House
Yes, it's all Ronald Reagan's fault that the laws of physics conspired to make hydrocarbons an easy to extract energy dense resource.
If you really want to debate a complicated issue like energy policy by blaming one man for it's failure, I would see your Ronald Reagan and raise you a Jimmy Carter. Carter's decision that the United States would not reprocess spent nuclear fuel created the nuclear waste issue and removed a carbon free energy source from the table. One would think that a US Naval Officer with reactor training would have known better, but there you go....
Good intentions but... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. There was a constant inspection regime paid for entirely by the industry. In other words, there is an armed government official with absolute power to stop drilling, and his salary paid entirely by whoever owns the well and the platform.
Bit of a conflict of interest there don't you think? Do you seriously expect an inspector to readily shut down production on the person that pays their salary? If so you are FAR more optimistic and trusting of human nature than I am.
2. All caps on liability were removed and the owners of the well and platform were forced to pay all costs of a spills, without limit of any kind.
I'm not aware that there are any caps on liability (please cite if you know of any) other than the flesh eating lawyers employed by the oil companies. Given the results of previous litigation the oil companies seem to be able to defend themselves rather effectively.
3. Any evidence of ignoring of safety requirements would lead to lengthy prison sentences for all involved, and a ban on the companies involved in the accident of no less than five years from any extraction.
Sounds great on paper but the problem is in the details. How do you decide who goes do jail and who doesn't? It is NOT an easy question to answer. Furthermore the companies involved are huge multinationals. BP isn't an American company and most of their revenue does not come from the US. Explain to me how you plan to shut down BPs operations in the US gracefully and not seriously disrupt the energy prices and product flow. If you think that is a simple thing to do you haven't really thought about it.
Re:You won't mind if I poop in your yard, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a false dichotomy. You make it sound like we have only 2 choices: Either deal with oil spills like this, that could have been prevented if BP had installed a $500,000 blowout valve on the well, or live in a tribal village with no electricity or oil.
What about a company like Norway, who is literally wealthy from their oil production, yet requires their offshore drilling platforms to install sonar activated blowout valves to stop exactly this type of leak? Why can't we do something like that? Simple, common sense solution: you pay $500K to put this safety equipment on your rig or you can't drill. No, this is America, we wouldn't want to mess with the "free market." Free my ass... The market is free to literally fuck over the planet so BP can keep their executives flying corporate jets and lighting their cigars with wads of cash.
Re:Alternatives? I'd like to see them tried... (Score:1, Insightful)
The fact is that oil is itself a product of natural biological processes, and nature does have mechanisms for dealing with it over time. The Gulf itself is naturally and continuously contaminated by seepage from oil deposits, to the tune of an estimated 2,000 barrels a day. Every day. Over a history of millions of years.
The prairie of the American Midwest naturally deals with periodic drought in a variety of ways; we're still finding out about interesting feedback systems that operate(d) in the native grasslands. That stability didn't make it impervious to abuse by humans bent on using unsustainable farming practices that killed the soil and started the Dust Bowl.
We do not know precisely what the introduction of a sudden, large, concentrated amount of additional seepage is going to do; we can only speculate given past experience. Past spills usually caused ecological damage that lasted for decades. Unless we want to wait for thousands of years for the ecosystem to correct itself, we're going to be responsible for doing the cleanup ourselves. It's going to be expensive, and it's rather likely that in spite of our best efforts, the Gulf's marine life will suffer severe losses. If you ignore "green" concerns, fishermen have been the first ones hurt here; the tourist industry is close behind (happy Cinco de Mayo). It won't do any favors for the region's shipping industry, either, nor for post-Katrina New Orleans.
The fact is that once this spill is contained the ecosystem will recover. It might seem to take forever if you are a fisherman working those waters, but to call it an ecological disaster is just silly.
What the heck would it take for you call an event an ecological disaster? Burning rivers? Blighted coral reefs? Rotting heaps of dead baby seals? Exxon-Valdez was universally called a disaster, and this has every indication of being a bigger spill. We have yet to see whether the oil will cycle inland significantly to affect US river systems and wetlands, but this WILL affect ocean life. As to "evidence" of damage, we're still waiting for the oil to come to land; Google Earth had satellite data [google.com] showing that much. The hope, today, is that we won't have to wait for stupefying evidence of tragedy before taking action to mitigate its effects. Back during the Dust Bowl, the US Congress couldn't be bothered to sign in agricultural reform law until someone was able to crack the Senate's windows during a session and allow Midwestern dust to cover the room. Hopefully, we've learned something in the most-of-a-century since then.
Not necessarily (Score:2, Insightful)
If there is an all out no holds bar war against Iran, and it spirals out of control when China, Russia and Japan get real antsy about things, plus losing one third of the planet's oil supplies within a few days...we might not have the time to do much of anything, plus the expense would be huge.
We can do it now, but not later, the changeover costs would be un-doable. Make sub prime so called crisis look like a 7-11 stickup. There are too many potential planet impacting black swan type events that could really screw the pooch on a smooth peaceful and economical transition to alternatives to petroleum. And once something bad happens like that, the race to own the remaining supplies could further exacerbate potential bad news situations, ie, major resource wars. Real wars, not little teeny wars like we have now.
I agree with Ratzo, we needed a huge push starting back right after the OPEC embargo, and we dropped the ball bad. It stagnated after the tax credits ran out in the mid 80s, and weren't renewed until very recently (and I think they should come back at a full 100% to stimulate alternatives), and the oil industry all of a sudden flooded the planet with cheap oil as well back then, real cheap. That worked, killed off solar and the push for electric cars, etc for two decades more or less. They did not want any alternatives to their products to succeed. They *like* having energy monopolies and cartels, makes big money constantly with vendor lockin.
We had electric cars a century ago. Heck, jay leno owns one, and the original batteries still work! This BS that electric vehicle aren't practical until they can go 300 miles with an onboard charge is nuts. We've had that "solution" for a long time now, it is called the 50 mile, they could build it today relatively cheaply, electric car, then the generator trailer, for those occasional long trips where you need to go that far. Most people just do not need a 300 mile range day to day to day vehicle, they just don't drive that far except once in awhile. The generator trailer could be rented for longer trips, or owned by the driver and used as an emergency whole house generator as well, for those times it is needed. This would work until such a time as they really do improve the batteries, and the battery pack doesn't cost more than the rest of the vehicle. We have boutique car builders now with examples, and home DIY guys have proven that the tech exists just swell for an electric commuter car.but no majors have them forsale yet. "coming soon" and in the meantime, look at these hydrogen million dollar prototypes we have...nuts. Or they want to push hybrids, the most rube goldberg of designs.