I'm treading out of my usual waters here. But what must be said, must be said. And I feel like it's a necessity at this point.
Let's just imagine a town; a quiet, comfy, secluded town where there's enough resources and the residents are more or less well off. The only problem they have is a shortage of oxygen (welcome to the future). It's been centuries since the earth has started running low on oxygen. But since the people of our town are prosperous, almost all of them are able to afford the public oxygen concentration facilities. And there's this one guy, super rich, who finds joy in feeling the warmth of an open flame. So he has, in each of his rooms, a fireplace wth its own little oxygen supply. And he rallies the people to protest against the ever increasing price of such an essential commodity like oxygen.
Just think about how ludicrous it is; taxing oxygen, something you need every moment to just keep you alive, he said. And he was made leader. The richest person outlived the second richest by eight whole minutes (five of them unconscious)¹.
Where does your ethical and moral compasses lie in this story? What about if you were one of the protestors, fighting for your freedom of life? Well, I'm glad to inform you that you are; we all are. The sheep think it's their free will to follow the shepherd.
We are the criminals when we demand for the price reduction of fossil fuels. They are an intimate and inseparable part of our lives today, that we might as well consider them necessities. Necessities everyone should enjoy; that everyone is entitled to.
"Shouldn't the poor need development too?" "Are modern conveniences actively reserved only for the rich? Everyone cannot be Bill Gates." Who are you, you monster, that wants to see dead people prosper? Our best estimates² give us about fifty years before we exhaust the global oil reserves, and we're still bothered that the fuel prices are climbing. What right do we have to even think such things? We are faced with a situation where the very thing that literally fuels our economy is threatend of extinction within most of our lifetimes. And as an extravagantly intelligent species, what do we do? We try to make the resource reach more people cheaper so that when the day arrives (soon), instead of many of us, most of us can stop dead in our tracks and just stare blankly at the ceiling.
"But the prices have nothing to do with availability, it's just taxes; always more taxes." But the point, people, is not where the extra money goes, but to bring the fuel prices high enough so that people would stop thinking that seventy percent of earth's surface is covered in crude oil. The best thing that you could do is to press for policies that reroute the tax revenue from oil to the development of alternate, sustainable energy sources.
We cry out loud to shut down nuclear power plants, while in reality, to produce 1 terawatt hour (1000000000 kWh/units) of energy per annum, coal causes³ 25 deaths per year, and oil causes³ 18. While nuclear alternatives cause³ a single death every 14 years. Fossil fuel burning is the single largest threat that we currently pose to both ourselves, and to the climate of this planet.
In total, outside air pollution (almost entirely fuelled by fossil fuel burning) causes forty lakh deaths every year⁴; and you are responsible. If I say we are responsible, each of us conveniently assumes the blame on the we excluding themselves. But no, you are responsible.
Now to address the only fair counter argument on the matter; even though more people needing access to better transportation is not at all an affordable concern, isn't it still a concern? Yes, it can be, broadly, considered one. And you can rally for lowering fuel prices only once you've future-prooferd. That is, as long as you travel alone in a four seater sedan, and love F1 cars burning oil for the pristine cause of entertainment, the only right you have is to keep it zipped, cause you are talking about the necessity of oxygen to the public while your blanket is warmed by the flame on the hearth. Just cause we feel like we need something doesn't mean we're entitled to it.
To close the arc, when someone considers switching to electric transportation so as to reduce their carbon footprint⁵, there is a large section who tries to convince them why they 'shouldn't bother' since 'they make most of the electricity by burning coal and oil anyways'. Let me ask you this one thing, whose fault is it that the ingenious human race still produce 84% of their electrical energy, I repeat, electrical energy, by burning⁴ a resource with half a century worth of reserve left, and which kills millions of people every year³? For another fact, even with most of the electricity coming from fossil fuels, an internal combustion car shuld give more than double the average milage to catch up with an average electric car⁶. Furthermore, even if one hundred percent of electric power were to be generated from fossil fuels, an electric car would still be the better choice since a large scale power plant is much more efficient at burning the fuel than a tiny car engine cylinder.
So it comes full circle. The problem is not the lack of alternatives, or the lack of incriminating evidence against our current system, but our lack of ability to be bothered to do anything. We pull down a satin curtain over the most hideous and life threatening monster ever, and ask ourselves 'if it ain't broke, why fix it?'. It is broke, buddy; it has been, for an unnerving amount of time. Just that we don't accept consequences till they stare at us in the face. The price to pay for this indifference will be dire suffering and death. And the payday is coming soon.
When you call for bringing down fuel prices, remember that through the filters of science and ethics, it comes out as "I'm a psychopath! I wanna kill myself and everybody else".
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