We'll go till we're out. so what's that last bit going towards?
Serious answer: the last refined oil will probably be left in storage until it goes bad, because it's ultimately not valuable enough to keep extracting once the reserves run low enough that alternatives become cheaper, and they have clear enough data on their reserves that they'll know when that point is going to be. Oil is used because it's cheap, readily available, and there have yet to be any consequences for the people profiting off of it for the harm it has caused, is causing, and will continue to cause, not because there are no alternatives when push comes to shove. Between electric vehicles, synthetic solutions, and shit like GMO algae modified to create large hydrocarbons they can replace oil as a fuel source once oil stops being profitable enough to bother extracting.
The obvious problem there is that continuing to use oil at even current levels until it hits that point will be catastrophic, just as having used oil as it has been used is and will be catastrophic. This is one of the many reasons liberalism and its market solutions fundamentally cannot solve climate change: the oligarchs will not allow themselves to be held accountable for the consequences of their actions, nor will they allow themselves to pre-emptively bear the costs they will cause; they scream bloody murder and fight tooth and nail against even the most tepid and ineffectual measures aimed at politely discouraging their destructive behavior, they certainly wouldn't tolerate the price of oil being increased by an order of magnitude through taxes or the common use of oil being banned outright, nor even tolerate aggressive subsidies for carbon-neutral alternatives to oil to make those the cheaper and more profitable option for everyone else.
This is the post I was baiting for. Really good response, thank you.
I love that I managed to finish that and post it like a minute before anyone else got in a fast joke answer.
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My guess is some guy in philly just gettin' to fuckin' work
manufacturing the rope that the capitalists will sell us to hang them
They're discovering new oil reserves all the time. There's no danger of oil running out; it is merely uneconomic at the current rate. When the price goes up, the oil becomes economic to extract.
Petroleum isn't just used for fuel, but for plastics as well. Plastic is just about the most useful material ever invented. Light, strong, and most importantly cheap. You can say you'd like to live in a world without plastic, but everything you buy would become ruinously expensive and you'd be in poverty. Just look around the room you're in right now and start identifying all the things made of plastic. It would take you a half hour to list them all.
If you're already in poverty never mind. You'd just be in super-duper poverty, which isn't that different except you'd have only one wooden bowl and spoon, and you'd carve them yourself from a tree branch.
