A Lawyer in Oregon Thinks They Won't Need Diesel in 2028

Several states and jurisdictions within the USA are setting pretty arbitrary dates and deadlines for banning sale of fossil fuels. It seems insane. There's really no viable replacement available. I believe the people who push these rules and regulations are completely detached from reality.

Take California as an example. The state plans to ban sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035, presumably for electric vehicles, but at the same time, every year they have problems with their electric distribution and production grid. It takes several years to plan and build a new power plant. It takes several years to build new power lines. While that state has lots of resources and apparently has a high income, it's also already got significant debts and liabilities.

Some jurisdictions think they can ban sale of diesel fuel and force replacement with biodiesel in just a few years. Biodiesel is a tiny fraction of overall fuel production at the moment. There's no infrastructure that can produce biodiesel on the needed scale. Most heavy machinery and farm equipment requires diesel. Battery power isn't close to being a viable option for many of those applications. A cold reality of "renewable" resources is they're really not able to bootstrap their own production and really implicitly rely on existing fossil fuel infrastructure.

There's no guarantee that batteries will be a viable substitute for liquid fuels. They're too heavy/low energy density. It is very possible that packing electrons into some type of storage unit has hard physical limits. Adding more and more batteries to a vehicle to extend range is a game of rapidly diminishing returns.

Companies like Toyota don't think batteries are a viable option. Fuel cells seem like an equivalent type of replacement for fossil fuels, but that technology has its own problems, mainly there's no viable system to store hydrogen and there's no infrastructure for it.

The cult of "progress" believes that if you throw enough money at a problem, you'll certainly come up with a solution. They think that the dictates of some bureaucrats and lawyers will force technological breakthroughs. However, I am guessing the most likely outcome is a huge amount of resources are going to be squandered on dead end ideas, boondoggles and nepotism. There won't be much to show for it.

What happens if there's regulatory strangling of essential elements of the economy, e.g. energy production, and there's zero viable technological alternatives? I suppose they'll keep extending and moving deadlines, but will stifle investment in vital infrastructure for energy production, for example, or for energy distribution. I think the attempt to manage the economy for "innovation" will have the exact opposite effect.

That tech-topian dream is probably a mirage. It's not even such a great dream if it could really come to pass. That "Jetson's" life seems pretty stupid. People will be even dumber and weaker than they are today.