Don't Stop Oil

You are probably wondering what the heck is "Don't Stop Oil" and why do I have it on my website? No I am not some deranged person screaming at the top of my lungs that we must all live, eat, and drink the mantra of oil. I am also not an extreme activist calling to kill all oil production and revert humanity back to the stone age. So what am I? A realist with a strange sense of humor.

My personal opinion on oil is that it shouldn't be eliminated even if it contributes to climate change as it is still very essential to manufacturing so many goods from plastics, fertilizers, to asphalt. Trying to kill all-out production is a suicide plan for humanity's future. I do support replacing oil with nuclear as an energy source. But I don't necessarily support replacing it with massive fields of solar panels or wind turbines.

I have nothing against them and I think there are some applications where you can justify them, for example putting solar on the roof of your house. But I hate to see massive areas of desert being covered in solar arrays on land that could have been used for something else. I think it destroys a lot of natural scenery and still won't provide 24/7 power generation. Again, if someone puts solar on their roof I'm fine with that because that land was already in use, but I hate seeing massive areas of desert covered in the arrays.

Now I think there are some applications where solar and wind can make sense in remote areas but they most certainly should not be used to power cities. To me the best source to power cities is nuclear power, it's stable and will run 24/7 cleanly. I wish the US would lift the nuclear reprocessing ban so we could reuse a substantial quantity of our spent nuclear fuel like other countries do.

But I think it is also absurd to ask developing countries to switch from oil as an energy source to solar and wind as there is a major opportunity cost here. You are asking a country already in poverty to allocate their resources towards a more expensive source of energy all in the name of climate change. Their opportunity cost is sacrificing actually moving the country out of poverty. I think the best plan for oil should be to switch to nuclear and then let the market decide the need for oil.

There are plenty of people willing to buy EVs without the tax write off, but if they are too expensive the government shouldn't be subsidizing the more expensive product. Rather people should start buying once the cost of EVs falls below the cost of a gasoline vehicle. There are plenty of people who would gladly get an EV if it means they never have to go to a gas station, but there are a lot of people who may drive long distances and don't want to wait for their vehicle to charge. It shouldn't be the government's job to decide what is best, they should let the market decide.

I think if climate change is unavoidable humanity will find a way to survive as life always finds a way. We would most certainly protect our cities with floodwalls. The Netherlands was about to reclaim 2,700 square miles of land back from the sea using dikes. Humanity will find a way to engineer solutions but it is unreasonable to ask humanity to halt all production and to reduce the population as a solution. I would rather live in a world with sea level rise and climate change than live back in the stone age.

This is my perspective on oil, so why did I start "Don't Stop Oil"? Well one day in class I was talking to my friend about the extreme anti-oil activist group "Just Stop Oil" and then I thought for a moment and said wouldn't it be funny if someone made the opposite "Don't Stop Oil". Then I said "What if I made it?" They told me I was crazy. So the next day I made dontstopoil.com. I made a parody of the Just Stop Oil logo, switched the color by taking orange's complementary color on the wheel (blue), replaced their skull with an oil rig I drew in Illustrator, slapped it on merchandise, and opened an online store.

I got a really good laugh out of it and even got a few sales of merchandise. I showed up to school with my merchandise to the absolute horror of my teachers and rather extreme classmates. Mind you I was a student in California in the San Francisco Bay Area. One teacher was in such shock that they said, "We are going to have a class debate with Alexander." I was up in front of class getting questions like "Why do you want to kill the planet!" and I would just respond with "I would prefer nuclear as an energy source to oil any day, however it is unreasonable to completely eliminate it as it is still needed for manufacturing."