In the case of SUVs, it’s not primarily the oil lobby, it’s car manufacturers. Put simply, they get to charge way more than the extra materials costs, for a “premium” vehicle. They’re making bank out of this shit.

Like a red and white “Santa Claus”? Giving diamonds upon engagement for marriage? Chocolate eggs at Easter?

Mate, it’s universal.

In what language, Russian? Because that’s not how it’s done in English.

Pumped Hydro or simple hot sand (I shit you not) are good ways of storing excess energy without resorting to direct electrical storage solutions (which are improving year on year at a swift pace too).

There are a lot of other ways being explored too. To name but a couple; pumped geothermal storage using everything from old mines to aquifers (a few degrees C in a lot of water is a lot of energy and deep mines will add it for free), and underwater pressure energy storage (I like this one for it’s simplicity and sustainability).

But you’re totally correct. The oil industry has almost infinite money and power, and thus an almost unassailable influence on politics and policy.

The hope lies in the almost. With a bit of luck, things will get bad enough that the populous at large start to question whether being so dependent on other countries for the ability to move shit around is such a cracking idea when the alternative is right there, today, not in a decade when any local oil begins to flow, if there is any to be had.

A smart politician would spin a wholehearted policy shift to renewables as “ensuring the sovereignty of our nation’s energy supply, the backbone of our economy, which should never be beholden to foreign governments or corporations”. Done right, it could be used to rally the “rabid far right” and the “loony left” of any country to the same greater good for all of humanity.

It could be argued though, that for the time and money taken to explore, map, develop, then extract that dinosaur juice, you could have built an entire country’s worth of renewable energy sources.

Especially when you factor in that all that oil will be sold at “global market price”, so none of it will result in cheaper energy for anyone.

I have no idea who you are, aside from what you’ve stated in these comments, but you clearly have a great passion for the core concept of what stories are capable of.

Just wanted to make it known I respect that passion, and am uplifted by knowing it exists out there somewhere. Cheers for that. 💛

There are not “plenty”. I will concede that there are, in theory, a few.

Those that join the police force with such positive things in heart and mind either get ground down and quit, a burned out cynical husk of a person, or get corrupted.

Very few have the diplomatic skills as well as the temerity to be able to stick it out. Those very few that can and do are working within a system that is at best so obsessed with measurable statistics there is no leeway for officer discretion, and at worst actively designed to incarcerate as many as possible.

Which version of the system you get exposed to is mostly a matter of one’s skin colour and apparent wealth, which strongly suggests the number of “good ones” is so vanishingly small as to be statistically insignificant.