>>I think you're missing the negative externalities inherent in oil extraction
The same can be said for the production of lithium-ion batteries. The mining and production of these batteries is just as bad for the environment. This is mainly due to the high concentration of Copper and Aluminum needed to make them work properly - which both need to be mined.
Fuel cells are a much better alternative to both combustion engines or lithium-ion electric vehicles:
" like groundwater pollution, earthquakes, above ground pipelines, etc"
Groundwater pollution and earthquakes are rare, and the latter are minor and have negligible impact. It's no more problematic than most other extraction industries.
'Above ground pipelines' are completely benign entities with almost zero environmental impact. Leaks are rare enough, and most of them are very minor and easy to clean up. Oil is an organic product, found commonly in nature, and small amounts of Oil spilled have no real impact. Unlike the big tanker spills, which can be devastating.
The highway you drive your car on has considerably more environmental footprint than any 'above ground pipeline'.
I wouldn't want a coffee shop 'in my backyard' and I have nothing against coffee shops.
But if I had to chose between an Oil Pipeline and a 'highway' - I (and I think most people) would chose the Oil Pipeline any day of the week.
You do realize they are quite common? And that natural gas pipelines - which carry the same carbon-based materials run everywhere in urban areas - and that there's a good chance there is a gas pipeline, literally, in your backyard right now?
If you are living in an urban area, my guess is there is an 80% chance there's a carbon-based pipeline within 500m from where you are.
That injections wells ( not fracking - although they are related, hydrocarbon extraction activities ) cause earthquakes is still in the hypothesis phase.
There seems to be correlation. Causation is not yet proven.
In health and sciences that would be enough to prohibit certain activities. But when industry for the benefit of jobs, GDP, etc has its way it means continue as normal regardless of the warnings.
This is why we are nearing a climate crisis. I suppose it is a form of the tragedy of the commons.
The ready availability of hydrocarbons is a pretty significantly public good. Secondarily, the oil industry was one of the first ones regulated ( Sherman Act ) and when an industry is regulated, they get better and better at finding the edges to slip past over time.
"In health and sciences this would be enough to.." is a massive problem, IMO. If the full measure of tobacco law is brought to bear on "energy companies", you could pretty well wreck the US economy without meaning to.
It appears to be clearly in the middle cigarette processing phase of actively denying any science, passing state laws prohibiting local control (see for example Dallas Texas). I expect it will take a while to get to the levels of the late cigarette industry (recognition that it has impact and controlling it to reduce danger).
The problem is that there's nothing illegal about "actively denying science." Nor should there be. The science of earthquakes is unlikely to ever be capable of even making those sorts of predictions. But who knows?
As socially agreeable as the D.O.J v Phillip Morris decision may be in many circles, it's a terrible precedent.
All - all - prohibitions are Bad.
I don't think there will ever be any "control"; if there's regulation of it, the effect will be to send people out of the business. You'll be left with the people who feel up to tangling with the government over it. Guys like Dick Cheney.
My friend lived in house with an oil well in the back yard. Really wasn't noticeable after you got used to the noise it made. After a week I forgot it was there.
I think you may be mistaken about amounts of energy. Typical modern domestic-use light bulb (ccfl) are rated around 20 watts. 100 W was the typical maximum in incandescent light bulbs for domestic use, excluding some very bright halogen bulbs at around 200 W. 1000 W bulbs are mainly used in studio applications (as someone else mentioned) and for stage lighting.
On the subject of getting around the block: A kilogram of gasoline contains some 46 MJ of energy. Gasoline is a bit lighter than water, so one kilo is around 1.3 liters. 46 MJ is equal to, roughly, 13 KWh, so 4.5 KWh are around 300 grams, or around 400 ml. A Manhattan city block is around 80x280 Meters, for a circumference of roughly 720 Meters. An inefficient modern car might use 8 Liters per 100 Kilometers, so 400 ml (or roughly 4.5 KWh) will move an inefficient modern car by around 5 Kilometers.
In other words, it'll get you around the block. Not once, not twice, but slightly less than 7 times.
Even 100W bulbs are pretty rare now days (illegal in the EU), replaced with LED versions that consume far less energy.
4.5 kWh is really a tremendous amount of energy just to refine a single gallon of gasoline. And it's energy that's completely lost, just converting hydrocarbons from one form into another.
By putting that energy directly into electric vehicles instead, you'd be able to power around half of all the vehicles on the road!
The Saudis certainly don't. That oil is easy to tap and, under some circumstances, be used with little refinement (shipping). But Canadian oil, shale oil, requires massive energy to extract.
"they tend to spill a lot which is worse than burning it."
Both parts are not correct.
First, they spill very little in the grand scheme of things.
Second, an 'oil spill' unless it's quite large, is not a hugely damaging thing for the environment. Oil is a plentiful, organic material, found everywhere in nature. It's just not concentrated enough in most places to be extracted.
The soil in northern Alberta (an area the size of Florida) is literally oozing with hydrocarbons - same for Venezuela and many other places. Nobody considers those parts of the world 'toxic' - they are otherwise normal places.
I guess it's arguable whether it's worse or not, but CO2 doesn't typically kill any wildlife whereas oil spills do.
There is a certain percentage that is leaked from every pipeline in addition to the large leaks that occur during tanker and drilling accidents. Even a small percentage of the large volume they extract is a large volume to pour on the ground.
I'm not sure why you think the concentrations of oil in the soil occurring naturally approach even the smallest pipeline leak; would love to see some sources though if you have them.
Crudely (haha) crunching some numbers, if we consider the oil spilled in the US in 2011 (incl. Deepwater Horizon) of 4.95e6 bbl compared to the total oil consumption in 2015 of 7.09e9 bbl, the oil spilled is less than 0.07% of the oil consumed. This, mind you, is considering a massive outlier year for spilled oil. In a more typical year it's an order of magnitude less.
Not to minimize the damage from spilled oil or suggest that it's no problem, but let's keep "spill a lot" in perspective.
4.95e6 bbl ( 41 L/bbl) = 203 million liters. Your only reference for scale can't be just net product, absolute numbers seem to more accurately approximate the scale of damage.
Do your numbers include pipeline and other small but continuous sources of loss?
That includes spills from vessels, facilities, pipelines, and other unknown sources. Regardless, the spill due to Deepwater Horizon was so massive compared to more typical years.
Also, it's 786,987,110 liters (there are ~159 liters in an oil barrel).
You emit the CO2 when you use your car (almost 50% of CO2 emissions are from autos).
And a bunch of other industries are responsible for most of the rest of CO2 emissions.