How would you write a modern setting where water is more expensive than oil?

We’ll have the free market to thank- as coal and oil die off, renewable energy will pick up the slack. We’re already seeing it in China and the EU.

We'd be there basically already if we had a pigovian emission tax, but that's get dangerously close to being off-topic.

On-topic, one interesting twist could be to (either justified or handwaved) state that certain renewable energy sources are more water-intensive than just using oil, so while water is strictly rationed everybody's still use gas guzzlers and it's no big deal. Or just in general researching the water consumption of different industries to find winners and losers (+/- a margin of error for "they'd find ways to use less water if it was that expensive"). You'd get a nice little twist, kinda like cyberpunk settings, where different industries are more or less emphasized in the setting.

Everybody only drinks those fancy alkaline waters that cost twenty bucks for 50 fl oz.

It's a truly bizarre theory that coal will ever be so useless as to be left in the ground. If you invent an energy source better for power generation than coal, that makes coal extraction cheaper, driving the two energy sources towards price equilibrium.

It's kind of already happening, though?

In that case it would require a concious decision to either reduce coal usage to a minimum or cease using it entirely. Not using it entirely would be ideal, but probably not feasible. At the very least I would expect any society that values the natural environment to at least stop using coal for electricity production, given how absolutely filthy coal mines are and the sheer scale of pollution coal plants generate. Wait, what if somehow every major coal deposit in a nation was ignited like the one in Centralia, Pennsylvania? Then coal mining on any kind of large scale would be effectively impossible, due to all substantial sources of coal now being underground fires that will be burning for several thousand years.

Dude the coal industry is dying despite the government trying to subsidize it.

I’m pretty sure that creates more problems that it solves.

>what if somehow every major coal deposit in a nation was ignited like the one in Centralia, Pennsylvania

All the pollution, none of the value!

Id probably set it in a modern time. Id also be inclined to specifically state that water is more expensive than oil....

I mean in regarss to this “water is more expensive than oil” setting. Water would technically be more expensive than some fossil fuels, but only because there are none left.

They just opened a gigantic new mine a few miles from me. Our coal isnt used here, its shipped to other nations or refined into fuel oil or diesel

Capetown in another year?

Dune

We are alreasy heading that direction, more due to scarcity of clean water increasing.
Because republicans are propping up the coal industry to keep w Virginia, and make it look like they care about jobs.

I dont live in wva, and polotics isnt the case here, its supply and demand. There was a demand for hi quality coal and a private company stepped in and filled the need.
Also, the same could be said for wind farms and solar farms for democrats

>what if somehow every major coal deposit in a nation was ignited like the one in Centralia, Pennsylvania

I remember reading a lot about coal deposit fires because I found (and still do) the occurrence so absolutely fucking fascinating, but it's amazing how a coal fire just completely ruins everything in the most horrifying and destructive ways.

-They produce enormous amounts of pollution for one. A number of China's largest coal deposits in their northern section of their country have caught on fire and I'm paraphrasing, but they estimate a lot of the pollution China produces isn't even purposeful, but on accident due to these massive fires. I remember that Pennsylvania town wot got it's coal mine set ablaze is just a smoggy, snowy, wasteland- it inspired silent hill.

-They cause structural integrity issues since as the coal burns it leaves behind large empty pockets underground that lead to cave ins, oxygen swelling in to further stoke fires, and basically lead in to more pockets of coal and just feed into the problem. You can't build on land with coal fires because the ground will collapse underneath you into billowing pits of flame and hot chocking soot.

It's happening over here in Canada too.
Trudeau is giving lip service to this environmental friendly horse shit, but he's still supporting this large coal industry that isn't being used for domestic energy, but entirely being shipped out to foreign markets like China... Which he awkwardly and embarassingly tries to use as a humanitarian mission- as if China gives a shit about what he thinks.

>Also, the same could be said for wind farms and solar farms for democrats
Not that user, but "They do it too" isn't an argument. The coal industry is being propped up by the US government.

Garbage fires are super interesting in the same way. The bottom layer of garbage just... smolders, forever, and you can't put it out and meanwhile the air is filling with chemicals you shouldn't breath.

Earth in 50 years or so.

Fun fact- that pennsylvania coal fire is where the inspiration for silent hill came from.

And hey, least your government isn't putting tarriffs on solar, which is the fastest growing jobs market in the world.

It's that Coal is at a net loss for jobs, and renewable energy is the fastest growing jobs market in the world.

Hence if our politicians actually cared about jobs they'd let coal die out, and go all in on renewable energy.

You might be right. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter, because everyone who lives in a city of

I think the Republicans will lose W. Virginia hard actually. Largely because nobody in their right mind actually wants to be a coal miner. Democratic Candidates there are on running on clean drinking water, jobs besides being in a mine all day and dieing of black lung, and proper healthcare to take care of people with black lung. And thus far it's an effective strategy.

Doesn't matter what the voters want, the coal mining supports large companies and the large companies support the government.

As for actual topic, it's bloody difficult if on actual earth considering how common water is, and how easy it is to purify if energy is cheap, which it would be if oil is cheap. Whether that's due to other power sources driving down oil or just plentiful oil energy is still cheap.

A very comic book level science disaster could be scientists develop some bacteria or algae that uses water and co2 (along with heat or sunlight or something) to produce some form of oil. Pretty much photosynthesis but oil instead of sugar. Now DISASTER, the stuff escapes into the environment, converting any water it encounters into oil. Soon it reaches the oceans and it's discovered that the oil it produces allows it to thrive in saltwater, as it rapidly converts the oceans to light crude.

Other carry-on effects would be all boats sinking as oil is lighter than water so boats are less buoyant, far less co2 in atmosphere leading to massive plant death. Assuming it can't grow inside other living things it doesn't just kill things directly but you'll still end up with a very max maxian world of desert.

At the end of the day it’s votes that matter, and plenty of candidates have been winning campaigns on small donations.

Anyway, who says oil is cheap? Water just has to be more expensive- which you can get through pollution and various water sources drying up.

Even if water is relatively easy to purify, you still get into problems of all the infrasturcture surrounding it, such as distribution (I mean Flint Michigan still doesn’t have clean water).

It’s also a problem that doesn’t have to effect the world equally.

Isn't oil also used a lot in manufacturing? I remember chemics class where they're mostly used for plastics. I suppose you could have ethanol from biological sources and handwave your way from there, but still.

>Coal mines opening
Meanwhile here in Germany we're flooding old daylight mining sites. Should make for some interesting landscapes for a post-post apocalypse setting.

Oil won’t stop being a market of renewable energy takes off. But it will lose a shitload of money.

Only a small fraction of oil is used manufacturing. We could reach peak oil and then some and still maintain our modern plastic production with only a minor increase in costs.

I thought Germany was opening a whole bunch more coal mines what with the old ones running out and needing way more with the (imo) stupid nuclear phase out.

As for plastics they're mostly made using regular oil because they can be made with the oil components unwanted for fuel. Basically the waste from refining. Making something from an unwanted byproduct is pretty cheap.
Pretty much any plant oil or animal fat can be made into a plastic though. It's all about how much energy you put in to making it happen.

As the water to oil user, if the point is more to just make water expensive, then it's really up to you how hard you go at it. Could be as simple as corporations have bought the right to all the aquifers in your setting country, and harvesting rainwater is illegal. You can rely on pollution to some extent, but even then it works better as an in setting excuse but not the actual reason. Where people are allowed to digging for water or collecting rainwater are not difficult and neither is cleaning it. Enough to make it a more expensive commodity than oil maybe, but not to a ridiculous level. I can see it working very well for a -punk kinda game.
Going further than that will require jumping through a lot more hoops or bad science to justify. Even in a salted nuke apocalypse clean water would be available, because charcoal filter then boil and condense will leave only h2o molecules which cannot be dangerously radioactive. You'd die from everything else being radioactive though.

>I thought Germany was opening a whole bunch more coal mines what with the old ones running out and needing way more with the (imo) stupid nuclear phase out.

Phasing out nuclear power in exchange for coal seems like the most unintuitive, pants-on-head, anti-intellectual, maximum grognar, thing you could do energy wise.

I would agree with you, especially the brown coal lignite shit Germany has.

Icecubes are used for money.!

>I thought Germany was opening a whole bunch more coal mines what with the old ones running out and needing way more with the (imo) stupid nuclear phase out.
You’d probably be surprised how much you can thank The Simpsons for that:

If water was literally more expensive than oil, you could burn the oil to produce water, either through desalinisation (assuming we're talking about fresh water here and there's plenty of salt water nearby) or extraction from the atmosphere. I think you can crack water out of oil chemically too, only no one does because what's the point.

There are some parts of the world today where that’s actually starting to become an issue thanks to private corporations owning exclusive rights to the few sources of clean water in those areas. It’s kind of nuts, but look it up.

oil is not only usable as a fuel. It is very important in pharmaceutical production, synthetic materials and many other branches of production, so I highly doubt it could became worthless, but I get your point