Why Clean Energy Is Good For Oil Companies

Probably the most powerful opponent to clean energy has been the oil industry. They believe that clean energy will result in them losing their income. They are wrong.

Oil is a resource with a vast amount of uses. Oil is used in making plastics, styrofoam, pharmaceuticals and any number of other higher-end goods. The less oil is burned as gasoline, the more oil is available to make these more profitable products.

The longer the oil lasts, and the more money it makes for the oil companies.

Burning oil as gasoline is one of the stupidest things that a person can do. A resource with a vast amount of uses is used to power processes that can be managed a lot more efficiently with solar or hydrogen energy. The air is fouled up, the oceans are fouled up, and people leave for their children a worse world than they had found.

Meanwhile less of this resource is available for making much more profitable products, such as plastics and styrofoams, and the oil companies as a result of this make much less money in the long run than they otherwise would.

Clean energy is good all around. It replaces less efficient technologies with more efficient technologies. It reduces the burden on the atmosphere and the oceans. It uses brain-intensive practices in place of resource-intensive practices. It creates a vast number of both white-collar and blue-collar jobs.

Do oil companies stand to lose out in this? They think that they do, but they don't. They will have a much longer use of their resource, and they will use it to make much more profitable products.

Ultimately even the oil industry will benefit from clean energy.

I believe that time for this argument to be made in public debate has come.