DEBATENATE

Topics / Climate and energy

The challenge

“Oil companies are evil and fossil fuels should be banned”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

No. Ban fossil fuels and you hurt poor people long before you help the planet. Fossil fuels still supply roughly four fifths of America's energy, according to the Energy Information Administration. That's the tractor, the ambulance, the furnace and the truck that stocked your grocery store this morning. Natural gas is also the main feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer, and one estimate in Nature Geoscience says that fertilizer feeds about half the people on Earth. You'll say the companies have behaved badly. When one breaks the law, prosecute it, the way BP was prosecuted after Deepwater Horizon. That's a case against a company, not against energy. Let me ask you this. When energy gets scarce, who pays first, the professor with rooftop solar or the single mom driving forty minutes to work? Don't blow up the bridge the whole country is standing on.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. Modern life runs on fossil fuels. A ban means scarcity and soaring prices, and working families get hit first.

    The Energy Information Administration reports that petroleum, natural gas and coal together supply roughly four-fifths of U.S. primary energy consumption.

  2. Fossil fuels feed the world. Nitrogen fertilizer, made mainly from natural gas, stands behind a huge share of the food supply.

    Erisman and colleagues in Nature Geoscience in 2008 estimated that nitrogen fertilizer was responsible for feeding about forty-eight percent of the world's population.

  3. For the world's poorest, fossil fuels are a step up. Cooking with gas instead of wood and dung saves lives.

    The World Health Organization reports that household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels and kerosene causes millions of deaths each year, and it counts liquefied petroleum gas among the cleaner household fuels.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: These companies have caused real disasters and fought climate regulation for decades. Why should we trust them with the planet?

Nate: When a company breaks the law, hit it hard. That's what happened after Deepwater Horizon. But you don't punish a bad actor by banning the product every family runs on. Enforce the law and let better technology win customers.

What he grants the other side

BP pleaded guilty to criminal charges over the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed eleven workers in 2010.

The lines

Sources

  1. U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. Energy Facts Explained (2023)
  2. Erisman, J.W. et al., Nature Geoscience, How a century of ammonia synthesis changed the world (2008)
  3. World Health Organization, Household air pollution fact sheet (2022)
  4. U.S. Department of Justice, BP Exploration and Production Inc. Agrees to Plead Guilty to Felony Manslaughter, Environmental Crimes and Obstruction of Congress (2012)

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