You’re arguing the oil ON THE MARKET will cause the end of the human civilization and is a greater threat to us presently and I am arguing oil OFF THE MARKET will cause the end of civilization and is a greater threat to us presently.
I’ll give you my top 3 opinions on why OFF THE MARKET is a greater threat:
-Without Oil On The Market we will simply be unable to transition to other forms sustainable energy. This is because sustainable energy needs oil and money in order to be built. An oil shock will cause oil and therefore product supply chain disruption. It will also cause economies to collapse. Leading to money supply issues and less investment on sustainable projects.
-WOOTM we will not be able to maintain quality of life ACROSS THE ENTIRE WORLD. That means individuals already struggling will be pushed to the breaking point/death.
-China is demonstrating how important oil is by utilizing their petroleum reserves to literally KEEP THE WORLD ECONOMY AFLOAT. China understands that without oil there is no world economy and there is no sustainable energy transition. The economy is to be protected from a Marxist point of view! The idea being that if we do anything to hurt the economy we hurt the material conditions of the common man.
Now, in the long term we MUST transition off of oil and into sustainable energy. I agree with you that human civilization is in grave danger. However, the only way we survive the future is by utilizing oil to transition to sustainable energy as China is demonstrating.
I am not pro oil! I am in favor of utilizing it for a more sustainable future which is possible, hopefully!
We did WFH during the pandemic and civilization didn’t end. People commuting to work represents a significant amount of oil usage.
The Middle East does not supply 100% of the oil in the world. It’s a large chunk to be sure, but there’s some simple measures we can do to make significant reductions in oil usage. We’ve done it before during the pandemic, and those policies weren’t actually focused on reducing oil consumption still but managed to cut oil consumption by ~20%.
The 20% oil consumption cut during the pandemic was not only from WFH policies. That included many people losing their jobs, remember the generous unemployment benefits during that time? WFH policies will help, but most people can’t WFH and they will be hurt by this if it comes to pass. We are still draining the SPR so time is ticking.
Sure it was rough, but it wasn’t exactly the end of civilization either. And remember that wasn’t policies meant to reduce oil consumption, that was just a side effect. What would happen if we actually put a similar amount of effort specifically targeted at reducing oil consumption?
Unlike the pandemic, we wouldn’t be avoiding public transit, we wouldn’t need to close restaurants and public gatherings. And we wouldn’t need to drop it by 20% in a day. Also unemployment wouldn’t be a problem if people were working on installing heat pumps, building EVs and solar and wind generation.
Nobody starved to death because of the pandemic, civilization didn’t end. It proved that a significant percentage of oil consumption is not required to provide necessities. So we know that we are heading towards a climate change catastrophe (which could end civilization) because we don’t want to give up burning oil as a luxury.
Well hold on, how much money did we pump into the economic system to keep it afloat? Do you remember the stimulus checks and the insane loans handed out that were forgiven? Let’s not pretend that 20% drop didn’t involve governments giving handouts to almost everyone.
That was a demand side shock, where a supply side shock of 20%, hell even 10% is a different beast. From my macroeconomics understanding the economy may need to contract relative to the oil supply that has been cut off. If USA loses 8% of oil, it’s economy may contract by just as much which would be a serious issue. Burning oil is not a luxury, it’s how everything in modern life exists and this is the inconvenient truth. Without it we don’t have heat pumps, EVs or even alternative energy sources.
Oh and please don’t think I’m being argumentative. I’m enjoying this dialogue and welcome feedback on my thinking. I do understand where you’re coming from and you do have good points. I think China has taken the lead building a sustainable energy society, and I think we should emulate it worldwide. The Chinese government is trying to prevent the present Oil shock to the best of their ability because they know that an economic contraction will hurt them and their future as much as any other country. This means even with all the sustainable energy projects China has, they are still dependent on a world where the oil flows.
Well hold on, how much money did we pump into the economic system to keep it afloat? Do you remember the stimulus checks and the insane loans handed out that were forgiven? Let’s not pretend that 20% drop didn’t involve governments giving handouts to almost everyone.
Drop in the bucket compared to bailouts to banks in 2008, and the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy. Isn’t it odd how people obsess over a stimulus check to people, but don’t care at all about tax cuts and subsidies for the wealthy?
I think China has taken the lead building a sustainable energy society, and I think we should emulate it worldwide.
China hasn’t done so well on this in the last few years. They’ve built a lot of coal power plants in the last few years and are currently running them at max right now to make up for a lack of oil imports. What they’re doing to reduce oil dependency has a lot of strategic rationale to it, not so much trying to save the world. They were worried about the US doing to the Strait of Malacca what Iran is currently doing to the Strait of Hormuz. So they’re just employing their Malacca contingency now. It’s basically the only reason global oil prices haven’t tripled.
China is building a lot of EVs and Solar panels not out of altruism, but because EVs have made ICE obsolete, and Solar is the cheapest form of power. Once sodium-ion batteries are mass produced there just won’t be much reason for other forms of electricity generation.
So in short, China isn’t altruistic, they just aren’t being stupid about this. I guess they don’t have massive oil companies putting their thumbs on the scale saying EVs are bad, heat pumps are bad, solar is bad.
The oil dependency is a strategic weakness. It’s a national security concern. China understands this. The oil companies understand this too, just they benefit from continued oil dependency, and they have big pockets for lobbying and running internet influence campaigns.
That was a demand side shock, where a supply side shock of 20%, hell even 10% is a different beast. From my macroeconomics understanding the economy may need to contract relative to the oil supply that has been cut off.
We know that we can reduce a lot of oil usage by just having office workers WFH. Companies around the world put into place all of the infrastructure and software needed to accomplish this, used it for a while and then… just threw it away, I guess?
Burning oil is not a luxury, it’s how everything in modern life exists and this is the inconvenient truth.
I take public transit into work once per week. HR has sent out emails saying the policy is that people have to be in the office three times per week, going onto four times per week… this week I think? Whatever, I just don’t do it. Best I can do is once per week. Anyway. when I’m riding the bus into work, there’s very few people on the bus and I see the roads filled with cars. Most of the cars I see are fairly large SUVs and there’s usually only one person in each of them.
Given the fact that we haven’t gone back to WFH, and most vehicles have only one person in them and are much larger than necessary to transport a single person, I always think to myself “well I guess gas must still be really cheap.”
I’m not saying 100% of oil consumption is a luxury, but a significant percentage of it is definitely a luxury. I take the bus into work, my co-workers could be taking that same bus too. Probably about a hundred people where I work could be 100% WFH, but they aren’t because lazy managers just want their jobs basically like a homeroom teacher.
Are you really saying that driving by yourself in an SUV instead of taking the bus isn’t a luxury?
Drop in the bucket compared to bailouts to banks in 2008, and the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy. Isn’t it odd how people obsess over a stimulus check to people, but don’t care at all about tax cuts and subsidies for the wealthy?
These “bailouts” were repaired by the entities the survived the crisis. General Motors may have been the only one that had something forgiven but I think it had to do with unions
I agree with your China assessment for the most part.
Are you really saying that driving by yourself in an SUV instead of taking the bus isn’t a luxury?
That is not at all what I’m saying. Modern economics and civilization is based on oil. The best way to visualize it is by zooming out from your bus, from your city and see everything is interconnected because of oil. Oil economics directly correlates to macroeconomics.
Totally agree with you assertion that steady oil is still needed for a transition. That is if the transition will happen quick enough.
A couple things on China. They are not saying anything about what they are doing. Attributing them goodwill in this situation is misplaced. They are covering for the US President and preventing him from destabilizing the dollar.
China is indeed building a lot of solar which is good, but they are also building a lot of coal. If any country is currently pushing our planet to the brink, there is no question it is China.
I am increasingly suspicious of the US, China, and Russia relationship. It really feels like there is a unspoken alliance between the three superpowers. Everyone is helping everyone and it appears fascism reigns.
Hmm you may be right about China’s motives and a possible uneasy alliance between the 3. I would like to think that China thinks in long term consequences instead of short term gain that USA tends to display. However, we may never know what the true relationship there is.
As for the China’s reliance on coal; we must not forget this country is trying to provide an additional 1.4 billion people a middle class lifestyle. Who are we to deny them the material conditions many in the west enjoy? From what I understand coal is China’s response to the failings of renewable/sustainable energy. Coal is still only 1% of Chinese energy grid(corrected by Doomsider below), they just need so much power and coal can be mined domestically. Unfortunately, modern human life may not be compatible with a healthy planet?
I am far more hopeful of China than I am of the US. I would like to agree with you that China is engaging in long term thinking only because it is a counter balance to the epic short-sightedness that the US displays.
You bring up a good point of China’s population and the concept of them increasing the quality of life of so many people. It does make you wonder about the sustainability of large human populations.
I think you got your numbers crossed as it was a 1% reduction of coal usage not coal only making up 1% of their power grid. That would be extremely impressive. Here is an article that talks about their actual percentage of coal usage for power.
I have found several conflicting articles on this and this one is the most generous for China. It sets total energy produced by coal at just barely less than 50%. Coal is expected to continue to increase until 2030 according to Chinese planners although the total percentage may shrink if it continues to be outpaced by solar/wind/hydro.
You’re arguing the oil ON THE MARKET will cause the end of the human civilization and is a greater threat to us presently and I am arguing oil OFF THE MARKET will cause the end of civilization and is a greater threat to us presently.
I’ll give you my top 3 opinions on why OFF THE MARKET is a greater threat:
-Without Oil On The Market we will simply be unable to transition to other forms sustainable energy. This is because sustainable energy needs oil and money in order to be built. An oil shock will cause oil and therefore product supply chain disruption. It will also cause economies to collapse. Leading to money supply issues and less investment on sustainable projects.
-WOOTM we will not be able to maintain quality of life ACROSS THE ENTIRE WORLD. That means individuals already struggling will be pushed to the breaking point/death.
-China is demonstrating how important oil is by utilizing their petroleum reserves to literally KEEP THE WORLD ECONOMY AFLOAT. China understands that without oil there is no world economy and there is no sustainable energy transition. The economy is to be protected from a Marxist point of view! The idea being that if we do anything to hurt the economy we hurt the material conditions of the common man.
Now, in the long term we MUST transition off of oil and into sustainable energy. I agree with you that human civilization is in grave danger. However, the only way we survive the future is by utilizing oil to transition to sustainable energy as China is demonstrating.
I am not pro oil! I am in favor of utilizing it for a more sustainable future which is possible, hopefully!
We did WFH during the pandemic and civilization didn’t end. People commuting to work represents a significant amount of oil usage.
The Middle East does not supply 100% of the oil in the world. It’s a large chunk to be sure, but there’s some simple measures we can do to make significant reductions in oil usage. We’ve done it before during the pandemic, and those policies weren’t actually focused on reducing oil consumption still but managed to cut oil consumption by ~20%.
The 20% oil consumption cut during the pandemic was not only from WFH policies. That included many people losing their jobs, remember the generous unemployment benefits during that time? WFH policies will help, but most people can’t WFH and they will be hurt by this if it comes to pass. We are still draining the SPR so time is ticking.
Sure it was rough, but it wasn’t exactly the end of civilization either. And remember that wasn’t policies meant to reduce oil consumption, that was just a side effect. What would happen if we actually put a similar amount of effort specifically targeted at reducing oil consumption?
Unlike the pandemic, we wouldn’t be avoiding public transit, we wouldn’t need to close restaurants and public gatherings. And we wouldn’t need to drop it by 20% in a day. Also unemployment wouldn’t be a problem if people were working on installing heat pumps, building EVs and solar and wind generation.
Nobody starved to death because of the pandemic, civilization didn’t end. It proved that a significant percentage of oil consumption is not required to provide necessities. So we know that we are heading towards a climate change catastrophe (which could end civilization) because we don’t want to give up burning oil as a luxury.
Well hold on, how much money did we pump into the economic system to keep it afloat? Do you remember the stimulus checks and the insane loans handed out that were forgiven? Let’s not pretend that 20% drop didn’t involve governments giving handouts to almost everyone.
That was a demand side shock, where a supply side shock of 20%, hell even 10% is a different beast. From my macroeconomics understanding the economy may need to contract relative to the oil supply that has been cut off. If USA loses 8% of oil, it’s economy may contract by just as much which would be a serious issue. Burning oil is not a luxury, it’s how everything in modern life exists and this is the inconvenient truth. Without it we don’t have heat pumps, EVs or even alternative energy sources.
Oh and please don’t think I’m being argumentative. I’m enjoying this dialogue and welcome feedback on my thinking. I do understand where you’re coming from and you do have good points. I think China has taken the lead building a sustainable energy society, and I think we should emulate it worldwide. The Chinese government is trying to prevent the present Oil shock to the best of their ability because they know that an economic contraction will hurt them and their future as much as any other country. This means even with all the sustainable energy projects China has, they are still dependent on a world where the oil flows.
Drop in the bucket compared to bailouts to banks in 2008, and the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy. Isn’t it odd how people obsess over a stimulus check to people, but don’t care at all about tax cuts and subsidies for the wealthy?
China hasn’t done so well on this in the last few years. They’ve built a lot of coal power plants in the last few years and are currently running them at max right now to make up for a lack of oil imports. What they’re doing to reduce oil dependency has a lot of strategic rationale to it, not so much trying to save the world. They were worried about the US doing to the Strait of Malacca what Iran is currently doing to the Strait of Hormuz. So they’re just employing their Malacca contingency now. It’s basically the only reason global oil prices haven’t tripled.
China is building a lot of EVs and Solar panels not out of altruism, but because EVs have made ICE obsolete, and Solar is the cheapest form of power. Once sodium-ion batteries are mass produced there just won’t be much reason for other forms of electricity generation.
So in short, China isn’t altruistic, they just aren’t being stupid about this. I guess they don’t have massive oil companies putting their thumbs on the scale saying EVs are bad, heat pumps are bad, solar is bad.
The oil dependency is a strategic weakness. It’s a national security concern. China understands this. The oil companies understand this too, just they benefit from continued oil dependency, and they have big pockets for lobbying and running internet influence campaigns.
We know that we can reduce a lot of oil usage by just having office workers WFH. Companies around the world put into place all of the infrastructure and software needed to accomplish this, used it for a while and then… just threw it away, I guess?
I take public transit into work once per week. HR has sent out emails saying the policy is that people have to be in the office three times per week, going onto four times per week… this week I think? Whatever, I just don’t do it. Best I can do is once per week. Anyway. when I’m riding the bus into work, there’s very few people on the bus and I see the roads filled with cars. Most of the cars I see are fairly large SUVs and there’s usually only one person in each of them.
Given the fact that we haven’t gone back to WFH, and most vehicles have only one person in them and are much larger than necessary to transport a single person, I always think to myself “well I guess gas must still be really cheap.”
I’m not saying 100% of oil consumption is a luxury, but a significant percentage of it is definitely a luxury. I take the bus into work, my co-workers could be taking that same bus too. Probably about a hundred people where I work could be 100% WFH, but they aren’t because lazy managers just want their jobs basically like a homeroom teacher.
Are you really saying that driving by yourself in an SUV instead of taking the bus isn’t a luxury?
These “bailouts” were repaired by the entities the survived the crisis. General Motors may have been the only one that had something forgiven but I think it had to do with unions
I agree with your China assessment for the most part.
That is not at all what I’m saying. Modern economics and civilization is based on oil. The best way to visualize it is by zooming out from your bus, from your city and see everything is interconnected because of oil. Oil economics directly correlates to macroeconomics.
Totally agree with you assertion that steady oil is still needed for a transition. That is if the transition will happen quick enough.
A couple things on China. They are not saying anything about what they are doing. Attributing them goodwill in this situation is misplaced. They are covering for the US President and preventing him from destabilizing the dollar.
China is indeed building a lot of solar which is good, but they are also building a lot of coal. If any country is currently pushing our planet to the brink, there is no question it is China.
I am increasingly suspicious of the US, China, and Russia relationship. It really feels like there is a unspoken alliance between the three superpowers. Everyone is helping everyone and it appears fascism reigns.
Hmm you may be right about China’s motives and a possible uneasy alliance between the 3. I would like to think that China thinks in long term consequences instead of short term gain that USA tends to display. However, we may never know what the true relationship there is.
As for the China’s reliance on coal; we must not forget this country is trying to provide an additional 1.4 billion people a middle class lifestyle. Who are we to deny them the material conditions many in the west enjoy? From what I understand coal is China’s response to the failings of renewable/sustainable energy.
Coal is still only 1% of Chinese energy grid(corrected by Doomsider below), they just need so much power and coal can be mined domestically. Unfortunately, modern human life may not be compatible with a healthy planet?https://apnews.com/article/china-coal-solar-climate-carbon-emissions-242abe76eb69f5a362e977de74ff3254
I am far more hopeful of China than I am of the US. I would like to agree with you that China is engaging in long term thinking only because it is a counter balance to the epic short-sightedness that the US displays.
You bring up a good point of China’s population and the concept of them increasing the quality of life of so many people. It does make you wonder about the sustainability of large human populations.
I think you got your numbers crossed as it was a 1% reduction of coal usage not coal only making up 1% of their power grid. That would be extremely impressive. Here is an article that talks about their actual percentage of coal usage for power.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-generates-less-than-half-its-electricity-coal-first-time-2026-07-30/
I have found several conflicting articles on this and this one is the most generous for China. It sets total energy produced by coal at just barely less than 50%. Coal is expected to continue to increase until 2030 according to Chinese planners although the total percentage may shrink if it continues to be outpaced by solar/wind/hydro.
Whoops that was a dumb mistake by me. Thanks for the correction and the discussion!