TC Energy scraps Keystone XL pipeline project after Biden revokes key permit
This idea that oil is on its way out is truly laughable.  In fact, cancelling this pipeline might do far more harm than good.<p>Simple exercise:<p>- Fire-up Excel
- Model a future with 100 million electric cars
- Determine how much power (not energy) will be required to plug them in every day<p>Now answer a simple question: Were is this energy going to come from?<p>Then realize that the oil economy goes way beyond just fuel.  This is a complex problem with an almost unlimited number of variables.<p>For example, the buttons and the cloth of the shirt you are wearing are likely made with oil byproducts.  The same is the case for parts of the sewing machines, tools, computers and even the building where it was made.  The machines required oil-based lubricants.  The factory used other oil-based products, such as release agents and other chemicals.  The people who work there, in turn, could not live or even get to work, without myriad products made from or that require oil derivatives.  And then there’s the vehicles, transportation and communications systems, all of which depend on oil for materials (plastics) and fuel.<p>And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.<p>Ignoring reality does not lead to better outcomes.<p>Go back to power required to charge 100 million vehicles.  Given our current energy infrastructure we would have to burn astronomical quantities of everything we can burn in order to support “clean” transportation.  Either that or we have to start building nuclear power plants at a pace and a scale never before seen.<p>Not saying this pipeline saves the world.  I am simply suggesting we are failing to exercise critical thinking and, because of this, tend to focus on the wrong problems.<p>It is far easier for politicians to sell “pipeline = evil) than to discuss the energy realities of all-electric transportation at scale.<p>One gets you votes.  The other one gets you voted out.  And that’s how we end-up on the wrong path.