We should both note and celebrate when the political process tells us something that is actually true — it’s rare enough after all. So it is with this new report from the Trump administration, that conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative. The point is true. That fracking revolution has indeed meant that we don’t need to worry about the oil running out in 20 or 30 years or whatever it was the Club of Rome tried to tell us.
True, this doesn’t quite mean that we should break out the V12 engines to mow the lawn as there are other issues: climate change and emissions aren’t altered (whatever your views on the point, they’re not altered) by there being sufficient oil around. There’s also that little matter of expense. We definitely have a shortage of $30 oil and a gross surplus of $120 oil, but that seems to be the sort of thing we can all deal with.
In fact, the report here is only telling us what sections of the environmental movement have been telling us for some years now, increasingly vocally too. This is what that whole series of ascendingly pitched whines about stranded assets, even the divestment in carbon campaign, is about. Their case is that there’s plenty of oil out there, so much so that if we went and used it, we’d boil the oceans. Therefore, we’ve got to not use it, thus some too much of what we’ve got will not be used and is thus valueless. That is the stranded asset argument, and that is the reason we should all divest, so that companies don’t go look for more.
Yes, obviously, there’s a bit of fun in seeing Trump agree with the environmentalists, but they are both saying the same thing. There’s plenty of oil out there, and we don’t have to try to save it just to save oil. And do note, again, that they are saying the same thing, exactly the same thing, although this won’t stop the environmentalists from shouting at the Trump administration, obviously.
The question is: What does this change over what we do about the world? Emissions might (dependent upon your climate change views) mean we should still be parsimonious in burning the stuff. But nonemittive uses now seem to be unconstrained, which means that we’ve not got to worry about recycling plastics.
Think on what the twin arguments about plastics are: They litter the oceans, the planet as a whole, etc. That may be true. But also people argue that by not using them, we’ll preserve some precious natural resource. But we’ve just all agreed, Right and Left, free-market and environmentalist, that we have no need to conserve either oil or natural gas, our two main raw ingredients of plastics. That means that plastics are just a waste management issue, not a resource one.
At which point, the mania for recycling plastics becomes entirely irrelevant. We just don’t need to go to the expense nor develop the technology. Sure, we’ve got to gather it all up once we’ve used it, but then, we simply need to dispose of those bottles, plastic straws, and all the rest. Burn them or bury them — makes little difference.
The Trump administration is correct, as is that militant wing of environmentalism whining about stranded assets. We just don’t have a grand shortage of oil nor of any of the fossil fuels. The big implication of this is that we just don’t need to be recycling plastics because, well, why? What natural resource are we trying to conserve by doing so, what natural resource that we actually need to conserve?
As long as we don’t litter with plastics, we’re done, aren’t we?
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at The Continental Telegraph.
