Oil can be used for so much more than a fuel. It creates the feedstocks for all the synthetic materials which we use everyday. While we have oil reserves around the world to support civilization for a long time, this versatile starting material will eventually be gone. (It is human nature to undervalue a finite resource that seems plentiful.). If we wish to encourage alternative sources of electricity, then we have to level the playing field on tax breaks for each energy source.
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“There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks.”
— Joan Robinson, “Contributions to Modern Economics” (1978)
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