In 2018, the Earth had about 1,730 billion barrels in crude oil reserves, with oil companies pumping out about 94.7 million barrels each day. The Wall Street Journal estimates that ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total pocketed about $84 billion dollars that same year).
These corporations are making a pretty penny on burning oil and releasing carbon into the atmosphere, but each one of us and the planet are paying a very high price for it.
Throughout the years, society has had a love/hate relationship with oil. On one hand, it’s used to create a lot of products we use everyday. And no, I’m not just talking about filling up our gas tanks.
This didn’t just happen out of nowhere. Oil companies have worked hard for years to make sure people depend on their products, while misleading the public about the climate damage they were causing.
According to Richard Heede from the Climate Accountability Institute, nearly two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions between 1751 and 2010 came from only 90 carbon producers. Another study led by the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that carbon and methane emissions from the 90 largest carbon producers contributed to nearly 50% of the rise in global average temperature between 1880-2010.
Increasingly hotter temperatures, and more droughts, lead to lower corn and wheat crop yields. Having less food available causes prices to spike, and food shortages.
So what would be a good replacement for oil? Any other fossil fuels, such as coal or gas, would cause a lot of the same problems. And replacing everything we use oil for, by turning to renewable energy, would be too expensive, right?
Well, in reality, replacing oil and even fossil fuels in general with renewable energy would actually save us money. And we already have a strategy we can use.
In the U.S., it would start with an investment of $7.8 trillion, some of which would be used to build 288,000 five-megawatt wind turbines, and 16,000 100-megawatt solar farms. And this investment would quickly pay for itself.
It might sound a little too good to be true, but we’re already seeing strides towards making it a reality.
This all sounds great, but do we really have the luxury of continuing to burn oil? Not exactly.
You see, if corporations keep extracting the reserves of oil and other fossil fuels we know about, there will be almost another 942 billion tonnes (1 trillion tons) of carbon dioxide released into our atmosphere.
That would result in global warming of 3 degrees, 4 degrees (7.2°F) or even higher, which is way beyond the limit of 1.5°C (2.7°F) that experts agree is the point of no-return for our planet.
So instead of playing the waiting game, it’s time to get up and actually do something about all the environmental problems we see in the media.
Instead of feeling overwhelmed, and thinking of climate change as only your responsibility, start putting it on the real culprits: the corporations that produce the most carbon emissions, and the governments that let them get away with it.
Get out there and vote, whenever you can, for government leaders who will push for enforceable social and environmental laws, and won’t be captured by corporate interests.
