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The oil apocalypse is here (www.youtube.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/collapse@slrpnk.net
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What began as one oil shock has now multiplied into three separate catastrophes – an oil shock, a shipping shock, and a refinery shock – each triggered by a different war in a different part of the world, culminating into a global catastrophe that’s already hitting. This video would not have been possible without reporting by Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Reuters, CNN, Defense Express, Marine Link, and others.

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[–] 15 points 1 month ago (13 children)

I have watched it. Electrification can't prevent this ongoing crisis, that's true, but it can, and will, prevent future crises. But, yeah, we're going to be in a world of hurt in the near term. Nothing can really stop that now.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (12 children)

    Electrification could but won't prevent future crises. The root of the problem is people think we can transition from fossil fuels to electricity and renewables and still have the "normal" that was built on fossil fuels.

    Not a single watt of renewable electricity has displaced any fossil fuels. We just added it to our energy mix. Fossil fuel use is at an all time high. The energy transition is not possible until displacement occurs. Displacement can't occur until growth stops. At my most optimistic, based on falling birth rates and aging populations, growth may end in 30 years or so, as a combination of consumption standards and population decline and some very handwavium that we don't keep inventing energy hungry new shit like AI and datacentres.

    By the time this could happen, we're already looking at +4°C global average temperature. Energy won't be our only problem.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    I have removed all direct fossil fuel usage from my life. It didn't even cost much, half of if I achieved by spending less money than the average person does.

    Seriously, I know people on similar or less than me (£29k) who are paying more per year on just their ICE SUV loan than my heat pump cost. For transport I cycle further than they drive and it takes less time because you can skip past most of the traffic.

    Can everyone electrify? Perhaps not. But too many people they are actively choosing not to, and even spending more to be dependent on fossil fuels. Diesel hit £2/litre? For private car use, I say it isn't expensive enough.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Great to see this 👍

    I'm also in the UK and in the process of doing the same.

    How are you finding your heat pump?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    The best part is the low flow temperature for the radiators so my cat finds it comfortable to sleep directly on top of them. On the day it was powered on they set it to like 26°c in the middle of december, partly to test it and also a benefit was that the house had been left empty and unheated for months so drying stuff out was helpful. It managed to get the house up to that temperature without any problems.

    Bonus: It blows cool air over my garden so in summer when using the BBQ I can sit in the cool breeze if someone uses enough hot water to get it to turn on. Gives a good reason to do some washing up.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Agree.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    Thanks, its something I sometimes struggle to put into words without coming across as "lol fuck the poors" when I am more aiming a message at those who do have money yet act like they don't.

    Difference between having no money because you truly don't earn much and having no money because you make a reasonable even if not massive amount yet they just spend it all.

    An example that annoyed me a lot was just before covid when cost of living became a talking point in the UK and someone on way above median income was crying about not being able to afford food. You can, you just don't want to stop eating steak all the time.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    The root of the problem is people think we can transition from fossil fuels to electricity and renewables and still have the "normal" that was built on fossil fuels.

    I agree, we can't maintain the normal fossil fuels built with clean electricity. But, we can't maintain this normal regardless. It's not sustainable. We need to transition to clean electricity even though that's going to mean a new normal. A lot of people don't want a new normal, and to those people I say: want in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up faster. We're getting a new normal one way or another.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    Do you think were currently at our absolute maximum renewable energy production/expansion right now?

    Cause why could we not just do something like take 100% of our fossil fuel money, put it into renewables, and use 50% of that growth to add new energy to the grid, then 50% to replace the old fossil grid.

    Obviously hypothetical, but we could easily not only hold our current power use, but actually increase it while transitioning to renewables.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    During covid, when the entire economy basically shut down, we still consumed 95% of the regular amount of fossil fuels. Basically that 95% is being constantly allocated into the background maintenance of our life support systems.

    The entire "discretionary" part of our economy that goes into the economy, growth and building new stuff is the other 5%.

    So, 50% of the "growth" sector is probably less than 2% of all resource and material flows.

    The only way we can make more rapid change is by cannibalizing the life maintenance functions of the economy. This is an important thing to recognize and to understand the limits.

    There have been many academic studies that have aimed to scope out the material costs of tens of billions of solar panels hundreds of millions of windmills and so on. (For example, Mark Jacobsen at Stanford.). The full elaboration of a sustainable, renewable energy system requires a MUCH higher amount of materials and industry than what currently exists on earth, possible 6 or 7X more industry would be required. This is mining, factories, transport and so on. Another way to put this is that you if you're building a direct replacement for the fossil fuel system and you fully cost the entire supply chain, you need massive and rapid expansion of industry. This isn't a 1:1 investment equality with oil infrastructure....

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Do you think were currently at our absolute maximum renewable energy production/expansion right now?

    Naturally no. We could transition to an entirely renewable electric economy. As my first post said, we aren't prepared to adopt the sociological and economic requirements to live under those conditions.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    No it can and it likely does to an extend right now. So far we had three events, which actually lowered oil consumption. One was the 2008 financial crisis and one was Covid. The third was the last time the Strait of Hormuz had serious issues, namely the Iran-Iraq War. That actually lowered oil consumption by enough to lower global primary energy consumption. That obviously picked up after that again, but today we actually have EVs, wind, solar, heat pumps and so forth. We also see attacks against Russia fossil fuel infrastructure. Also the global population grew a lot faster after 1979 then it does today.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I don't think what you said supports what you mean. Yes fossil fuel consumption goes down in crises. The problem is they are crises. Temporary until new energy comes online.

    I think I follow the population growthrate changes, but even aging out our populations with status quo is why I said by the time we get there to permanently shrink fossil fuel use, we'll be at +4°C and well have other factors affecting population and consumption. None of which are desirable.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    Temporary until new energy comes online.

    That is my point. The new energy does not need to be fossil fuels. We had similar oil prices in the early 2010s for years. That was without any major supply disruption. Since then inflation has been pretty high, so in real terms the oil prices back then were actually worse. We therefore very clearly have demand destruction not due to the oil price being too high, but demand destruction. That is without a major financial crisis or virus.

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