October 26, 2025 • 27 mins
What would really happen if the world woke up tomorrow and every drop of oil was gone? In this episode of Beyond Infographics, we explore the global chaos and transformation that would follow the sudden disappearance of oil, the lifeblood of modern civilization. From collapsed economies and grounded airplanes to massive power outages and food shortages, this episode unpacks the domino effect on energy, transportation, and geopolitics. But it’s not all doom, we’ll also explore how humanity might adapt through renewables, innovation, and resilience in a post-oil world.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to beyond infographics, the deep dive where we pull
apart complex source material to really get at the core
insights shaping our world.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And today we're tackling something absolutely fundamental, our global dependence
on energy, specifically oil. We've got a stack of sources
here that really dig into the volatility of.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
The risks and the sheer, almost hidden complexity of trying
to move away from fossil fuels. It's not just about
swapping power plants, is it.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Not at all? Our mission today is to unpack just
how deeply modern life is anchored to oil, look hard
at the geopolitical leverage points, and then get into the
really tangled challenges of decarbonizing transport and crucially the global
food system.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Okay, let's unpack this then, because when we talk about
modern life, speed, convenience, prosperity, it all sits on this
invisible energy foundation.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Right, credible energy density of oil and gas fuels, basically everything.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
But the question our sources keep asking is what happens
if that foundation just disappears over night. It's not just
an economic blip, It's like the whole system grinds to a.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Halt, exactly. And that's why We need to be precise here.
It's vital to distinguish between stationary energy that's electricity, where
renewables are making huge strides.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Yeah, the solar and wind story is positive there, and.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Mobile energy transport industry. The sources are really clear. The
free market the invisible hand. It just can't manage this
kind of massive shift on its own.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
You need planning, long lead times.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Definitely. We're talking ten, maybe twenty years of lead time
for the kind of major governmental initiatives needed to build
the infrastructure to replace something as energy dense as oil, and.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
The physics really drives that home. I was looking at
the numbers on energy density. Get this, one standard barrel
of crude oil that's about one hundred and fifty nine
liters contains thirteen hundred kilowad hours of energy.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Just pause on that for a second. Thirteen hundred kilowatt hours. Yeah,
that single barrel holds enough raw energy to power everything
heating lights, appliances in a typical large detached house in
say Norway, a cold climate for an entire month. That's
the concentration we're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Or think of it this way, one lid of petrol,
just one leader it can heat eighty liters of water
from room temperature right up to boiling.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It's incredibly portable, dense power. That's why it became the
lifeblood of logistics rh energy ready to go anywhere you
have an engine.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So replacing that foundational physics, that's the real mountain to climb.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Okay, let's follow this hypothetical. The sources lay out, what
if oil just stopped tomorrow, maybe geopolitics, maybe supply disruption.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
What actually happens, Well, the economists cited our blunt modern society,
our wealth, the global economy communication. It all rests on
efficient fossil fuels in order, coal, oil, gas, So.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Losing number two oil would be catastrophic.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
They even calculated the cost for just one country. Norway,
a big producer back in twenty twenty, is shutting down
their petroleum industry meant an immediate hit of NOK one
hundred and forty billion in government revenue gone annually.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And the jobs around three hundred thousand jobs lost instantly.
That's direct drilling jobs and all the support industries. That's
just one wealthy nation's immediate pain.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And beyond the money and jobs, the most visible thing,
global transport, just stops dead right.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
No aviation, no shipping, no long distance trucks. The arteries
of global trade rely entirely on the internal combustion engine.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Every single distribution network we have for moving goods, it.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Breaks and the sources make a key point. Even things
like electric rail freight aren't immune, how so, because those
trains need trucks diesel trucks at the start and end
of the line, first mile, last mile delivery. Without the trucks,
the whole chain collapses.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
So global trade seizes up. Shop shelves empty out fast
within days.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
But the dependence goes way beyond just fuel. This is
where it gets really surprising for many people. Petrochemicals, right, exactly,
Only about four percent of global oil and gas output
goes into petrochemicals, but that four percent is critical.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
It sounds small, but it's responsible for well, a huge
list of everyday things that would.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Just vanish, things we take completely for granted. Forget just
air travel or new trainers. We're talking cosmetics, contact lenses, eyeglasses, sportswear, shampoo,
and crucially vital medical supplies key medicines, hypodermic syringes, ivy bags.
Almost all of it depends on petrochemicals. Modern healthcare just
couldn't function.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
That's a sobering thought. And then there's plastics. The sheer
scale immense.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Norway alone makes eight hundred thousand tons a year, often
using ethane from US fossil fuels, polyethylene for packaging, textiles,
lightweight parts and cars and planes to save fuel.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
PVC for construction is everywhere. Lose oil and you lose
the ability need to make these durable, sterile, lightweight materials
for basically every industry.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Okay, now let's look at food, the absolute foundation.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
If oil stops, the situation gets critical fast. Farm tractor stop, fishing,
boats stop, no diesel.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
But the real bottleneck, the civilizational choke point. The sources
identify artificial fertilizer h haberbosh.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, making synthetic nitrogen relies on hydrogen.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Which nearly always comes from natural gas reacting with nitrogen
from the air.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
No gas, no fertilizer, and without that continuous supply, industrial
food production faces immediate, irreversible problems.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
The consequence isn't gradual, it's immediate local food shortages, empty shelves.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
And adapting going back to local, smaller scale farming Without
that huge energy subsidy.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
The sources estimate a minimum of ten to twenty years
minimum even in developed countries.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Wow, okay, and what about just keeping warm and cooking?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Big problem, especially in Europe. Think about Norwegian gas exports.
Forty percent of that gas goes directly into homes in
places like the UK for cooking and heat.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
So a sudden stop means millions potentially unable to cook
food or heat their homes in winter.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, and if oil, gas and coal all vanished tomorrow,
renewables would face an impossible task. They'd suddenly need to
cover eighty percent of world energy demand.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Welse all the storage needed for that instantly.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
It's just not possible in the short term. No matter
how cheap solar panels get, the structural gap is enormous.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So this deep reliance makes importing economies incredibly vulnerable geopolitics
price shocks. Let's focus on the US situation, as the
sources do. Oil dependence is still their core energy security challenge.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
The numbers really show it. Oil is thirty five percent
of total primary energy use in the US, but transportation
it's a staggering ninety two percent petroleum fueled.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And that ninety two percent figure. It hasn't really changed
much since cars became common. The economy is fundamentally exposed
to the global oil market.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
We've seen the impact historically, right. The sources point to
the oil price spikes around the two thousand and eight
Great Session. They made things.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Much worse, amplified the damage. Yeah, and go back further,
the nineteen seventy three OPEC embargo prices triple nearly quadrupled.
That triggered a long, nasty recession.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
That was the first big wake up call, wasn't it
led to fuel efficiency standards and things right?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And what's really fascinating is how deliberate the market manipulation
can be. Opek, particularly Saudi Arabia. Their power isn't just volume.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
It's the cost, right. Their production costs are incredibly low, dirt.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Cheap sources say four to six dollars per barrel for
some conventional Saudi fields. That gives them huge leverage. They
have spare capacity. They can flood the market or cut
supply whenever they chew, Like.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
The twenty fourteen twenty sixteen price war that was aims
squarely at US shale, wasn't it Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
US shale production was booming non an OPEC supply was
rising fast. Shale has much higher costs, so Saudi Arabia
deliberately cranked up production, let prices collapse, not.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
For short term profit, but to squeeze out competitors.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Exactly, drive out the higher cost producers clawback market share,
and it worked to extent.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
What were the consequences.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Over one hundred and fifty thousand job losses in the
US oil and gas sector in just eighteen months, and
globally investment in finding and developing new oil fields plummeted
by over two hundred and twenty five billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So that lack of investment, then it basically set the
stage for later supply shortages and price bikes.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Precisely it laid the groundwork for the volatility we see now.
And if you try to add up the total long
term cost of this manipulation, one study tried, would they
find astronomical numbers between nineteen seventy four and twenty thirteen
over a three point two trillion dollars transferred in wealth
to OPEC nations, plus one point four trillion dollars in
lost GDP potential for importers, and another two trillion dollars
(08:39):
in losses from just the disruption of sudden price shocks.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Trillions vaporized or shifted away from stable economies just because
of reliance on one vollicle commodity.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, which brings us to America's main defense against this,
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
SPR, the giant underground oil stash set up after that seventy.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Three embargo, right exactly. President Ford established it in nineteen
seventy five. The mission is clear, protect the US economy
from severe supply cuts and the international obligations holding ninety
days worth of net imports.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
You mentioned the caverns. How big are we talking. It's
hard to picture.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
It's genuinely hard to grasp the scale the oils stored
in sixty huge caverns hallowed out of underground salt domes
along the Texas and Louisiana coasts, sites like Brian Mound,
Big Hill. Each cavern is like a giant cylinder, about
two hundred feet across and twenty five hundred and fifty
feet deep.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So perspective, okay.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Picture the Willis Tower in Chicago, one of the tallest
buildings in the US. You could basically stand it up
inside one of these caverns and still have room left over.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Its incredible and the total capacity.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Authorized maximum is seven hundred and thirteen point five million barrels.
The actual amount varies, but early twenty twenty two is
just under five hundred and seventy million barres.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And they can get it out fast if needed.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
That's the key. It's always drawt on ready. Oil can
be physically moving into market within thirteen days of the
President giving the order. That includes time for sales and logistics.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
How is it released sales loans.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Both the president authorizes it. It can be a competitive
sale to the highest bidder or an exchange basically a
short term loan to a company who then has to
return the oil later plus a bit extra as interest.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And it gets to refineries quickly.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, there's a big pipeline network connecting the SPR sites
to twenty five Gulf Coast refineries and six Midwest ones.
It's designed to move large volumes fast. It's a crucial buffer.
Though it's worth remembering since the US lifted its crewede
export ban in twenty fifteen, the government can't dictate that
SPR oil stays domestic. Once it's sold or exchanged.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
It enters the global market fairpoint. Hey, just a quick
pause here. If you're finding these insights valuable and appreciate
us digging through these sources for you, please take a
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listeners find the show.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Okay, so we've established the scale of the problem, the reliance,
the risks. What about the solutions. What's in the transition toolbox.
Let's start with the non renewable alternatives, the potential bridge fuels.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
First up, natural gas often called the bridge fuel. But
its reserves are concentrated, aren't.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
They highly fifty four percent in just Russia, Iran, Katar.
That's a geopolitical risk right there. Plus North America's conventional
production has plateaued. They're importing more expensive LNG.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Can you turn gas into liquid fuel for cars?
Speaker 2 (11:24):
You can through gas to liquids GTL, but it's expensive.
Only really makes economic sense if oil states consistently above
forty dollars a barrel. And the bigger issue, if the
whole world switched from oil.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
To gas, we'd burn through the gas reserves much faster.
Kind of defeats the purpose of.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
A bridge exactly Okay. Next, coal reserves are massive, could
last over one hundred years, mostly the US, Russia, China, India, Australia, Germany.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But the huge elephant in the room is CO two emissions.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Massive, far more CO two per unit of energy than
anything else. The sources are blunt. If the world shifts
primarily to coal, global warming becomes a certainty debate.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Even converting coal to liquid fuel that doesn't help the
CO two.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Problem, not really. The Fisser Trosh process they use it
basically rearranges coals carbon atoms into liquid fuel, but the
CO two cost is astronomical. You're just shifting the pollution.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Okay, what about nuclear.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Uranium reserves could also last one hundred plus years, especially
with breeder reactors that recycle fuel. But the concerns are
significant safety thinking three Mile Island, chernobyl.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
And proliferation right, the risk of fuel being reprocessed into
weapons material.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
That's a major geopolitical concern if nuclear power becomes widespread globally.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
And then there's fusion, the holy grail.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
The one that's always frustratingly twenty years away. It uses
deuterium from water and lithium, both abundant. There's the big
international Eider project trying the TOCAMAC.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Design billions invest right, But.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Even if Eider works perfectly, you still need commercial prototypes
after that. The lead times are still decades. Realistically, it's
not a solution for the immediate transition challenge.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Usion isn't saving us in the next twenty years unlikely.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
The immediate focus has to be elsewhere on renewables, the
real growth engines we need to scale now.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Okay, So hydroelectric power mature, stable but limited sites right
about two point seven percent of world energy.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
YEP, biomass burning wood waste. Ethanol also mature about fourteen
percent of world energy, but it's not growing fast and
often needs fossil fuel inputs like fertilizer for ethanol crops, FEO,
thermal very site specific less than point one percent of
world energy not.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Growing fast, which leaves wind and solar the big ones.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
The rapid scalers, both growing around thirty percent a year,
which is huge. Wind is still less than one percent
of total world energy, but it adds more new capacity
each year than nuclear does.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Now needs subsidies, but getting close to market prices increasingly.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yes, Look at Denmark, already ten percent of their electricity
from wind Germany Spain around five percent.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Solar PV even less. Total production now less.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Than point zero one percent of world energy needs bigger subsidies,
but also growing fast.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
The big challenge for both, though, is intermittency, when the
wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You can't get to one hundred percent reliance easily. Once
you hit maybe fifty percent penetration on the grid, you
absolutely need massive energy storage solutions to balance supply and.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Demand, which brings us to storage itself. It doesn't make
new energy.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It just shifts it in time, saves energy when abundant,
releases it when needed. We've got pumped hydro using reservoirs
and water uphill mrging fuel cells, and critically for transport,
better batteries. Storage is the key to letting stationary renewables
like wind and solar replace mobile energy like gasoline.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Okay, so we've talked transport electricity, but there's this huge
blind spot the food system.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Absolutely critical and often overlooked in energy discussions. Agriculture uses
roughly twenty percent of all energy in the entire food
system farm to fork.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
And if you break that down, where does the energy go?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
In farming in Europe. The sources show the top two
uses are chemicals fertilizers, pesticides. That's fifty percent of the
energy input right there, and diesel fuel for tractors and
machinery and other thirty one percent.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Wow, So modern industrial farming it's incredibly energy intensive, hugely.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Especially systems relying on heavy fertilizer use lots of plowing,
processing and cold storage.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And that nitrogen fertilizer that's the core of the nitrogen
pollution crisis we hear about it is.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Remember it relies on natural gas. We actually breached the
safe planetary boundary for nitrogen way back in nineteen seventy
because of synthetic fertilizer use has more than doubled since then.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
And the environmental damage it's not just the energy used
to make it.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
No, over half the fertilizer applied isn't even used by
the crops. It runs off into water causing dead zones, or.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Goes into the air as nitrosoxide end to.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Oh right and end too is a greenhouse gas nearly
three hundred times more potent than CO two over one
hundred years. It's a huge climate impact beyond climate massive impacts.
Three billion people worldwide or at risk of water shortages
linked nightgen pollution and pesticides made from petrochemicals, remember, are
a top driver of global biodiversity.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Loss plus direct health impacts.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Dire pesticides linked to three hundred and eighty five million
unintentional poisonings a year globally around eleven thousand deaths. This
isn't just an energy issue, It's a systemic environmental and
health crisis driven by fossil fuel agriculture.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Then there's the energy needed just to keep food cold
a cold chain.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
It's enormous. Refrigeration uses fifteen percent of all global electricity.
In supermarkets it's like forty percent of their energy bill, and.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Simple things matter like fridge doors.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Hugely open refrigerated displays use five times more energy than
units with doors. The waste is unbelievable. Globally inefficient cold
chains emit more greenhouse gases than Canada does annually. And
despite all that energy, we still lose six hundred and
twenty million metric tons of food every year because it
wasn't refrigerated properly.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
All the energy fertilizer water used to grow that food
wasted co.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Cletely wasted, So immediate solutions shifting to efficient coal chains
is one cleaner cooking fuels or another.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Big one like electric cooking.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, electric is about ninety percent efficient versus thirty five
percent for gas. Induction stoves are even better, three times
more efficient than gas, and in developing countries, solar electric
cookers are emerging as a key way to leap frog
fossil fuels.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Okay, let's shift gears to policy. What levers can Governments,
especially in the US, pull to speed up the transport transition.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
The main goal is energy security through fuel diversity, get
away from just relying on oil.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
There's that fifty by forty target cut oil's share of
transport fuel to fifty percent by twenty forty. Does the
modeling show that helps dramatically?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
They modeled this severe oil shock losing five percent of
global production for eighteen months business as usual, seven straight
quarters of negative growth.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Ouch.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But if the US hit that fifty by forty target,
the damage was minimal. GDP growth tipped only slightly for
just two quarters, then recovered.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So reducing reliance dampens the shocks. Does it help growth
long term too? Yes?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
By reducing that volatile and uncertainty. The modeling suggested hitting
the fifty percent target could add on average eighteen point
four trillion dollars to US economic output over twenty seven years.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Wow. Okay, so how do we get there? Policy recommendations big.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Focus on reforming incentives for advanced fuel vehicles afees the
current US federal tax credit. It actually punishes the pioneers.
It caps the credit at two hundred thousand vehicles per manufacture,
so early leaders like GM Nissan hit the cap lose
the incentive while newcomers still get it. It distorts the market.
(18:35):
So the recommendation is lit the cap entirely, phase out
the credit based on vehicle price instead. Target helpboard is
needed for fifty five K cars and then end the
credit completely by say twenty twenty three, and crucially make
the credit fuel neutral, Extend it to natural gas vehicles, hydrogen,
advanced biofuels, let different technologies compete.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Makes sense? What about research needs.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
A big boost? Federal R and D funding needs to
double for electric vehicles, the big hurdles are still battery
cost and energy density. We need breakthroughs beyond current lithium.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Ion like lithium sulfur or zincare.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Things like that. Yeah, And for natural gas vehicles, it's
the cost and bulk of the high pressure storage tanks.
Need R and E for better lower pressure storage.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
How about actually getting these cars on the road.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Deployment recommendation for a national accelerator community program pick maybe
twenty communities competitively, give them resources to boost afv adoption locally.
Build on successes like Drive Electric Northern Colorado.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So local experiments scaled up nationally.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Exactly focused infrastructure marketing, getting stakeholders working together. And the
federal government needs to lead by example with its own
huge fleet over four hundred thousand vehicles.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Use more afees, but also smarter charging.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Right, most federal cars drive short distances daily, They don't
all need expensive fast chargers. Slower, cheaper overnight chargers often
make more sense.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Okay, Shifting to the big stuff. Heavy trucks. They use
a disproportionate amount of fuel huge amount.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Twenty two percent of US PATROLLINGUM use, but only four
percent of vehicles. The recommendation here is to ditch outdated
rules about truck length and.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Weight, the prescriptive standards.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, replace them with flexible performance based standards PBS, like
they use in Australia. Focus on safety outcomes, not arbitrary dimensions.
It boosts efficiency, cuts unnecessary trips, saving businesses money over
twenty seven billion dollars a year. The sources estimate even
an interim step like allowing slightly longer twin trailers thirty
(20:29):
three feet instead of twenty eight saves over two hundred
million gallons of diesel annually.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
What about tech like truck platooning needs clear rules.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Platooning uses vehicle to vehicle communication for trucks to follow
each other closely, saving fuel through aerodynamics. Lead truck saves
five percent, trailing trucks saves nearly ten percent.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And aviation. What's the alternative to jet fuel?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Near term? Advanced biofuels are basically the only option, but
it's tough. Certificational loan costs maybe thirty million dollars and
takes years per fuel.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Type, so more R and D needed there too.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Definitely double the funding, defind cheaper ways to make these
biofuels from non food sources like waste or algae.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Finally, autonomous vehicles avs? How do they fit in?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
They could be huge for displacing oil, not just because
they'll likely be electric, especially shared avs.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Which could make travel much cheaper like seventeen teen of
smile versus seventy six cents today, right.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
But also because they increase VMT per barrel vehicle miles
traveled per barrel of oil, even if people travel more overall,
because it's cheaper. If those miles are electric.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
You displace oil demand. The modeling predicts by twenty forty
all sales to shared av fleets will be electric or
plug in hybrid.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So the policy need is flexible regulations, not rules that stifle.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
The tech exactly, performance based standards like the FAA uses
for small aircraft, not prescriptive rules that get outdated instantly.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Okay, But even with all these policies, there are deeper
structural barriers, aren't there Issues of power and flawed solutions.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yeah, the source is worn against relying solely on technofixes.
Many just shift the problem or deep in dependency.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Like green or blue hydrogen ammonia.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
They sound clean, but they still need massive infrastructure. And
even green ammonia made with renewables, once you spread it
on a field, it still causes nitrogen pollution. Solves carbon,
not nitrogen.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Or think about precision agriculture digital farming AI platforms from
Bayer John Deere.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
They claim efficiency gains, maybe using slightly less herbicide, But.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
The core business model the algorithms are they really designed
to drastically reduce total fertilizer use or just optimize profit
within the existing high input.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
System maximize ROI, maybe not minimize environmental impact overall.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And this ties into the huge concentration of power. Just
a few giant corporations dominate seeds and chemicals globally. Bayer
and Corteva control forty percent of the world's seed market.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Their business model is selling those inputs. They have a
vested interest in maintaining that system.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
And they have immense political clout to protect it. Get
this US agribusiness lobbying spending. It's higher than oil and
gas lobbying, higher than defense lobbying.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Wow, that's staggering political influence shaping food policy.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
It makes it incredibly hard for alternatives to get traction
funding support.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
So if technofixes within the current system aren't the whole answer,
what's the alternative paradigm?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
The sources point strongly to agrocology, applying ecological principles to farming.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So working with nature, not against it exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Rebuilding soil health, recycling nutrients on the farm, diversifying crops
instead of just pouring on.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Chemicals, using things like legumes to fix nitrogen naturally, reducing tillage, composting.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
All of that, ecological pest control instead of just spraying pesticides.
It's a whole system.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Approach and does it work? Are there examples plenty?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Cubas Campusina to Campusino, a movement doubled small farmer productivity
over twenty years using agroecology after Soviet supplies collapsed, and
in India, the Andra pradeshon Issue I aims to get
six million farmers using zero budget natural farming. It's scalable
and shows huge benefits, but.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
The policy and subsidies are skewed right, they still favor
the old industrial model massively.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Governments poured money into spreading the fossil fuel intents of
green revolution. Now they need to redirect that investment into
renewables and agroecology.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
This transition challenge is global, though, and even wealthy countries
that could lead, like the.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
US, Canada and Norway UK, they're still expanding fossil fuel extraction.
They issued a record eight hundred and twenty five new
oil and gas licenses just last year.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Talking green while drilling more a deep conflict, and.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
The shift to renewables brings its own problems. Mining transition minerals, lithium, cobalt,
rare earths.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Environmental damage, human rights issues in mining new dependencies.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
All of the above, we risk swapping dependence on oil
states for dependence on mineral states, and the sources highlight
a critical justice issue, which is over half the minerals
needed for this transition are on or near the lands
of indigenous peoples and peasant communities worldwide. The transition must
not become another wave of colonial extraction and exploitation.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
An equitable transition. That's a huge political.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Challenge, especially when you see who's influencing the policy. At
the Big Climate Talks COP twenty nine, over seventeen hundred
fossil fuel lobbyists were officially accredited.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
More than almost any country's delegation.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
YEP, plus hundreds of agribusiness lobbyists too. Their influence in
shaping and often delaying necessary change is profound.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Okay, let's trampull the threads together. Key takeaways from this
deep dive.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
First, modern life absolutely hinges on the incredible energy density
of oil and gas. Losing it suddenly would be a
civilizational shock. Transport, products, food, everything stops decades to rebuild
basic functions.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Second, oil price volatility isn't just an inconvenience. It's driven
by deliberate manipulation and imposes massive measurable costs on economies,
trillions lost or transferred over decades.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
And finally, a secure transition needs more than just renewables.
It needs rapid scaling, yes, but also deep policy changes
in transport, and crucially, a fundamental shift in agriculture away
from fossil fuel intensity towards ecological approaches like agrorocology.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
So we've seen that adapting society even gradually to live
without oil likely takes ten to twenty years of intense effort.
But our entire goods transport system, our industrial food production,
it's all built on fossil fuels now.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Which leads to the final provocative thought. Is the current
political focus on incremental efficiency gains slightly better tractors, cleaner cookstoves,
precision agg optimizing the current system, is this actually delaying
the much harder, more radical systemic changes we truly need
to decouple ourselves from hydrocarbons.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Are we just tweaking a fragile system or are we
ready to fundamentally change its foundations? Something for you to
think about.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Thank you for joining us for this deep dive on
beyond infographics.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
If you found this valuable, please do consider giving us
that five star our rating and maybe share this dive
with someone else who likes to get beyond the headlines.
We appreciate you listening
Welcome to beyond infographics, the deep dive where we pull
apart complex source material to really get at the core
insights shaping our world.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And today we're tackling something absolutely fundamental, our global dependence
on energy, specifically oil. We've got a stack of sources
here that really dig into the volatility of.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
The risks and the sheer, almost hidden complexity of trying
to move away from fossil fuels. It's not just about
swapping power plants, is it.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Not at all? Our mission today is to unpack just
how deeply modern life is anchored to oil, look hard
at the geopolitical leverage points, and then get into the
really tangled challenges of decarbonizing transport and crucially the global
food system.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Okay, let's unpack this then, because when we talk about
modern life, speed, convenience, prosperity, it all sits on this
invisible energy foundation.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Right, credible energy density of oil and gas fuels, basically everything.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
But the question our sources keep asking is what happens
if that foundation just disappears over night. It's not just
an economic blip, It's like the whole system grinds to a.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Halt, exactly. And that's why We need to be precise here.
It's vital to distinguish between stationary energy that's electricity, where
renewables are making huge strides.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Yeah, the solar and wind story is positive there, and.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Mobile energy transport industry. The sources are really clear. The
free market the invisible hand. It just can't manage this
kind of massive shift on its own.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
You need planning, long lead times.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Definitely. We're talking ten, maybe twenty years of lead time
for the kind of major governmental initiatives needed to build
the infrastructure to replace something as energy dense as oil, and.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
The physics really drives that home. I was looking at
the numbers on energy density. Get this, one standard barrel
of crude oil that's about one hundred and fifty nine
liters contains thirteen hundred kilowad hours of energy.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Just pause on that for a second. Thirteen hundred kilowatt hours. Yeah,
that single barrel holds enough raw energy to power everything
heating lights, appliances in a typical large detached house in
say Norway, a cold climate for an entire month. That's
the concentration we're dealing with.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Or think of it this way, one lid of petrol,
just one leader it can heat eighty liters of water
from room temperature right up to boiling.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It's incredibly portable, dense power. That's why it became the
lifeblood of logistics rh energy ready to go anywhere you
have an engine.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So replacing that foundational physics, that's the real mountain to climb.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Okay, let's follow this hypothetical. The sources lay out, what
if oil just stopped tomorrow, maybe geopolitics, maybe supply disruption.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
What actually happens, Well, the economists cited our blunt modern society,
our wealth, the global economy communication. It all rests on
efficient fossil fuels in order, coal, oil, gas, So.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Losing number two oil would be catastrophic.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
They even calculated the cost for just one country. Norway,
a big producer back in twenty twenty, is shutting down
their petroleum industry meant an immediate hit of NOK one
hundred and forty billion in government revenue gone annually.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And the jobs around three hundred thousand jobs lost instantly.
That's direct drilling jobs and all the support industries. That's
just one wealthy nation's immediate pain.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And beyond the money and jobs, the most visible thing,
global transport, just stops dead right.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
No aviation, no shipping, no long distance trucks. The arteries
of global trade rely entirely on the internal combustion engine.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Every single distribution network we have for moving goods, it.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Breaks and the sources make a key point. Even things
like electric rail freight aren't immune, how so, because those
trains need trucks diesel trucks at the start and end
of the line, first mile, last mile delivery. Without the trucks,
the whole chain collapses.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
So global trade seizes up. Shop shelves empty out fast
within days.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
But the dependence goes way beyond just fuel. This is
where it gets really surprising for many people. Petrochemicals, right, exactly,
Only about four percent of global oil and gas output
goes into petrochemicals, but that four percent is critical.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
It sounds small, but it's responsible for well, a huge
list of everyday things that would.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Just vanish, things we take completely for granted. Forget just
air travel or new trainers. We're talking cosmetics, contact lenses, eyeglasses, sportswear, shampoo,
and crucially vital medical supplies key medicines, hypodermic syringes, ivy bags.
Almost all of it depends on petrochemicals. Modern healthcare just
couldn't function.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
That's a sobering thought. And then there's plastics. The sheer
scale immense.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Norway alone makes eight hundred thousand tons a year, often
using ethane from US fossil fuels, polyethylene for packaging, textiles,
lightweight parts and cars and planes to save fuel.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
PVC for construction is everywhere. Lose oil and you lose
the ability need to make these durable, sterile, lightweight materials
for basically every industry.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Okay, now let's look at food, the absolute foundation.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
If oil stops, the situation gets critical fast. Farm tractor stop, fishing,
boats stop, no diesel.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
But the real bottleneck, the civilizational choke point. The sources
identify artificial fertilizer h haberbosh.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, making synthetic nitrogen relies on hydrogen.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Which nearly always comes from natural gas reacting with nitrogen
from the air.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
No gas, no fertilizer, and without that continuous supply, industrial
food production faces immediate, irreversible problems.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
The consequence isn't gradual, it's immediate local food shortages, empty shelves.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
And adapting going back to local, smaller scale farming Without
that huge energy subsidy.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
The sources estimate a minimum of ten to twenty years
minimum even in developed countries.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Wow, okay, and what about just keeping warm and cooking?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Big problem, especially in Europe. Think about Norwegian gas exports.
Forty percent of that gas goes directly into homes in
places like the UK for cooking and heat.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
So a sudden stop means millions potentially unable to cook
food or heat their homes in winter.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Yeah, and if oil, gas and coal all vanished tomorrow,
renewables would face an impossible task. They'd suddenly need to
cover eighty percent of world energy demand.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Welse all the storage needed for that instantly.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
It's just not possible in the short term. No matter
how cheap solar panels get, the structural gap is enormous.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
So this deep reliance makes importing economies incredibly vulnerable geopolitics
price shocks. Let's focus on the US situation, as the
sources do. Oil dependence is still their core energy security challenge.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
The numbers really show it. Oil is thirty five percent
of total primary energy use in the US, but transportation
it's a staggering ninety two percent petroleum fueled.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And that ninety two percent figure. It hasn't really changed
much since cars became common. The economy is fundamentally exposed
to the global oil market.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
We've seen the impact historically, right. The sources point to
the oil price spikes around the two thousand and eight
Great Session. They made things.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Much worse, amplified the damage. Yeah, and go back further,
the nineteen seventy three OPEC embargo prices triple nearly quadrupled.
That triggered a long, nasty recession.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
That was the first big wake up call, wasn't it
led to fuel efficiency standards and things right?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And what's really fascinating is how deliberate the market manipulation
can be. Opek, particularly Saudi Arabia. Their power isn't just volume.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
It's the cost, right. Their production costs are incredibly low, dirt.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Cheap sources say four to six dollars per barrel for
some conventional Saudi fields. That gives them huge leverage. They
have spare capacity. They can flood the market or cut
supply whenever they chew, Like.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
The twenty fourteen twenty sixteen price war that was aims
squarely at US shale, wasn't it Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (07:41):
US shale production was booming non an OPEC supply was
rising fast. Shale has much higher costs, so Saudi Arabia
deliberately cranked up production, let prices collapse, not.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
For short term profit, but to squeeze out competitors.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Exactly, drive out the higher cost producers clawback market share,
and it worked to extent.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
What were the consequences.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Over one hundred and fifty thousand job losses in the
US oil and gas sector in just eighteen months, and
globally investment in finding and developing new oil fields plummeted
by over two hundred and twenty five billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So that lack of investment, then it basically set the
stage for later supply shortages and price bikes.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Precisely it laid the groundwork for the volatility we see now.
And if you try to add up the total long
term cost of this manipulation, one study tried, would they
find astronomical numbers between nineteen seventy four and twenty thirteen
over a three point two trillion dollars transferred in wealth
to OPEC nations, plus one point four trillion dollars in
lost GDP potential for importers, and another two trillion dollars
(08:39):
in losses from just the disruption of sudden price shocks.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Trillions vaporized or shifted away from stable economies just because
of reliance on one vollicle commodity.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, which brings us to America's main defense against this,
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
SPR, the giant underground oil stash set up after that seventy.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Three embargo, right exactly. President Ford established it in nineteen
seventy five. The mission is clear, protect the US economy
from severe supply cuts and the international obligations holding ninety
days worth of net imports.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
You mentioned the caverns. How big are we talking. It's
hard to picture.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
It's genuinely hard to grasp the scale the oils stored
in sixty huge caverns hallowed out of underground salt domes
along the Texas and Louisiana coasts, sites like Brian Mound,
Big Hill. Each cavern is like a giant cylinder, about
two hundred feet across and twenty five hundred and fifty
feet deep.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So perspective, okay.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Picture the Willis Tower in Chicago, one of the tallest
buildings in the US. You could basically stand it up
inside one of these caverns and still have room left over.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Its incredible and the total capacity.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Authorized maximum is seven hundred and thirteen point five million barrels.
The actual amount varies, but early twenty twenty two is
just under five hundred and seventy million barres.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
And they can get it out fast if needed.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
That's the key. It's always drawt on ready. Oil can
be physically moving into market within thirteen days of the
President giving the order. That includes time for sales and logistics.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
How is it released sales loans.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Both the president authorizes it. It can be a competitive
sale to the highest bidder or an exchange basically a
short term loan to a company who then has to
return the oil later plus a bit extra as interest.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And it gets to refineries quickly.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, there's a big pipeline network connecting the SPR sites
to twenty five Gulf Coast refineries and six Midwest ones.
It's designed to move large volumes fast. It's a crucial buffer.
Though it's worth remembering since the US lifted its crewede
export ban in twenty fifteen, the government can't dictate that
SPR oil stays domestic. Once it's sold or exchanged.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
It enters the global market fairpoint. Hey, just a quick
pause here. If you're finding these insights valuable and appreciate
us digging through these sources for you, please take a
moment to give Beyond Infographics a five star rating on
whatever platform you use to listen. It really helps new
listeners find the show.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Okay, so we've established the scale of the problem, the reliance,
the risks. What about the solutions. What's in the transition toolbox.
Let's start with the non renewable alternatives, the potential bridge fuels.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
First up, natural gas often called the bridge fuel. But
its reserves are concentrated, aren't.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
They highly fifty four percent in just Russia, Iran, Katar.
That's a geopolitical risk right there. Plus North America's conventional
production has plateaued. They're importing more expensive LNG.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Can you turn gas into liquid fuel for cars?
Speaker 2 (11:24):
You can through gas to liquids GTL, but it's expensive.
Only really makes economic sense if oil states consistently above
forty dollars a barrel. And the bigger issue, if the
whole world switched from oil.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
To gas, we'd burn through the gas reserves much faster.
Kind of defeats the purpose of.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
A bridge exactly Okay. Next, coal reserves are massive, could
last over one hundred years, mostly the US, Russia, China, India, Australia, Germany.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But the huge elephant in the room is CO two emissions.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Massive, far more CO two per unit of energy than
anything else. The sources are blunt. If the world shifts
primarily to coal, global warming becomes a certainty debate.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Even converting coal to liquid fuel that doesn't help the
CO two.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Problem, not really. The Fisser Trosh process they use it
basically rearranges coals carbon atoms into liquid fuel, but the
CO two cost is astronomical. You're just shifting the pollution.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Okay, what about nuclear.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
Uranium reserves could also last one hundred plus years, especially
with breeder reactors that recycle fuel. But the concerns are
significant safety thinking three Mile Island, chernobyl.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
And proliferation right, the risk of fuel being reprocessed into
weapons material.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
That's a major geopolitical concern if nuclear power becomes widespread globally.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
And then there's fusion, the holy grail.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
The one that's always frustratingly twenty years away. It uses
deuterium from water and lithium, both abundant. There's the big
international Eider project trying the TOCAMAC.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Design billions invest right, But.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Even if Eider works perfectly, you still need commercial prototypes
after that. The lead times are still decades. Realistically, it's
not a solution for the immediate transition challenge.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Usion isn't saving us in the next twenty years unlikely.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
The immediate focus has to be elsewhere on renewables, the
real growth engines we need to scale now.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Okay, So hydroelectric power mature, stable but limited sites right
about two point seven percent of world energy.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
YEP, biomass burning wood waste. Ethanol also mature about fourteen
percent of world energy, but it's not growing fast and
often needs fossil fuel inputs like fertilizer for ethanol crops, FEO,
thermal very site specific less than point one percent of
world energy not.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Growing fast, which leaves wind and solar the big ones.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
The rapid scalers, both growing around thirty percent a year,
which is huge. Wind is still less than one percent
of total world energy, but it adds more new capacity
each year than nuclear does.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Now needs subsidies, but getting close to market prices increasingly.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yes, Look at Denmark, already ten percent of their electricity
from wind Germany Spain around five percent.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Solar PV even less. Total production now less.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Than point zero one percent of world energy needs bigger subsidies,
but also growing fast.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
The big challenge for both, though, is intermittency, when the
wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine exactly.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
You can't get to one hundred percent reliance easily. Once
you hit maybe fifty percent penetration on the grid, you
absolutely need massive energy storage solutions to balance supply and.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Demand, which brings us to storage itself. It doesn't make
new energy.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It just shifts it in time, saves energy when abundant,
releases it when needed. We've got pumped hydro using reservoirs
and water uphill mrging fuel cells, and critically for transport,
better batteries. Storage is the key to letting stationary renewables
like wind and solar replace mobile energy like gasoline.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Okay, so we've talked transport electricity, but there's this huge
blind spot the food system.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Absolutely critical and often overlooked in energy discussions. Agriculture uses
roughly twenty percent of all energy in the entire food
system farm to fork.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
And if you break that down, where does the energy go?
Speaker 2 (14:56):
In farming in Europe. The sources show the top two
uses are chemicals fertilizers, pesticides. That's fifty percent of the
energy input right there, and diesel fuel for tractors and
machinery and other thirty one percent.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Wow, So modern industrial farming it's incredibly energy intensive, hugely.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Especially systems relying on heavy fertilizer use lots of plowing,
processing and cold storage.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
And that nitrogen fertilizer that's the core of the nitrogen
pollution crisis we hear about it is.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Remember it relies on natural gas. We actually breached the
safe planetary boundary for nitrogen way back in nineteen seventy
because of synthetic fertilizer use has more than doubled since then.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
And the environmental damage it's not just the energy used
to make it.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
No, over half the fertilizer applied isn't even used by
the crops. It runs off into water causing dead zones, or.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Goes into the air as nitrosoxide end to.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Oh right and end too is a greenhouse gas nearly
three hundred times more potent than CO two over one
hundred years. It's a huge climate impact beyond climate massive impacts.
Three billion people worldwide or at risk of water shortages
linked nightgen pollution and pesticides made from petrochemicals, remember, are
a top driver of global biodiversity.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Loss plus direct health impacts.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
Dire pesticides linked to three hundred and eighty five million
unintentional poisonings a year globally around eleven thousand deaths. This
isn't just an energy issue, It's a systemic environmental and
health crisis driven by fossil fuel agriculture.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Then there's the energy needed just to keep food cold
a cold chain.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
It's enormous. Refrigeration uses fifteen percent of all global electricity.
In supermarkets it's like forty percent of their energy bill, and.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Simple things matter like fridge doors.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Hugely open refrigerated displays use five times more energy than
units with doors. The waste is unbelievable. Globally inefficient cold
chains emit more greenhouse gases than Canada does annually. And
despite all that energy, we still lose six hundred and
twenty million metric tons of food every year because it
wasn't refrigerated properly.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
All the energy fertilizer water used to grow that food
wasted co.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Cletely wasted, So immediate solutions shifting to efficient coal chains
is one cleaner cooking fuels or another.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Big one like electric cooking.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah, electric is about ninety percent efficient versus thirty five
percent for gas. Induction stoves are even better, three times
more efficient than gas, and in developing countries, solar electric
cookers are emerging as a key way to leap frog
fossil fuels.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Okay, let's shift gears to policy. What levers can Governments,
especially in the US, pull to speed up the transport transition.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
The main goal is energy security through fuel diversity, get
away from just relying on oil.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
There's that fifty by forty target cut oil's share of
transport fuel to fifty percent by twenty forty. Does the
modeling show that helps dramatically?
Speaker 2 (17:39):
They modeled this severe oil shock losing five percent of
global production for eighteen months business as usual, seven straight
quarters of negative growth.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Ouch.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But if the US hit that fifty by forty target,
the damage was minimal. GDP growth tipped only slightly for
just two quarters, then recovered.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
So reducing reliance dampens the shocks. Does it help growth
long term too? Yes?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
By reducing that volatile and uncertainty. The modeling suggested hitting
the fifty percent target could add on average eighteen point
four trillion dollars to US economic output over twenty seven years.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Wow. Okay, so how do we get there? Policy recommendations big.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Focus on reforming incentives for advanced fuel vehicles afees the
current US federal tax credit. It actually punishes the pioneers.
It caps the credit at two hundred thousand vehicles per manufacture,
so early leaders like GM Nissan hit the cap lose
the incentive while newcomers still get it. It distorts the market.
(18:35):
So the recommendation is lit the cap entirely, phase out
the credit based on vehicle price instead. Target helpboard is
needed for fifty five K cars and then end the
credit completely by say twenty twenty three, and crucially make
the credit fuel neutral, Extend it to natural gas vehicles, hydrogen,
advanced biofuels, let different technologies compete.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Makes sense? What about research needs.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
A big boost? Federal R and D funding needs to
double for electric vehicles, the big hurdles are still battery
cost and energy density. We need breakthroughs beyond current lithium.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Ion like lithium sulfur or zincare.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Things like that. Yeah, And for natural gas vehicles, it's
the cost and bulk of the high pressure storage tanks.
Need R and E for better lower pressure storage.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
How about actually getting these cars on the road.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Deployment recommendation for a national accelerator community program pick maybe
twenty communities competitively, give them resources to boost afv adoption locally.
Build on successes like Drive Electric Northern Colorado.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
So local experiments scaled up nationally.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Exactly focused infrastructure marketing, getting stakeholders working together. And the
federal government needs to lead by example with its own
huge fleet over four hundred thousand vehicles.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Use more afees, but also smarter charging.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Right, most federal cars drive short distances daily, They don't
all need expensive fast chargers. Slower, cheaper overnight chargers often
make more sense.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Okay, Shifting to the big stuff. Heavy trucks. They use
a disproportionate amount of fuel huge amount.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Twenty two percent of US PATROLLINGUM use, but only four
percent of vehicles. The recommendation here is to ditch outdated
rules about truck length and.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Weight, the prescriptive standards.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah, replace them with flexible performance based standards PBS, like
they use in Australia. Focus on safety outcomes, not arbitrary dimensions.
It boosts efficiency, cuts unnecessary trips, saving businesses money over
twenty seven billion dollars a year. The sources estimate even
an interim step like allowing slightly longer twin trailers thirty
(20:29):
three feet instead of twenty eight saves over two hundred
million gallons of diesel annually.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
What about tech like truck platooning needs clear rules.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
Platooning uses vehicle to vehicle communication for trucks to follow
each other closely, saving fuel through aerodynamics. Lead truck saves
five percent, trailing trucks saves nearly ten percent.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And aviation. What's the alternative to jet fuel?
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Near term? Advanced biofuels are basically the only option, but
it's tough. Certificational loan costs maybe thirty million dollars and
takes years per fuel.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Type, so more R and D needed there too.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Definitely double the funding, defind cheaper ways to make these
biofuels from non food sources like waste or algae.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Finally, autonomous vehicles avs? How do they fit in?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
They could be huge for displacing oil, not just because
they'll likely be electric, especially shared avs.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Which could make travel much cheaper like seventeen teen of
smile versus seventy six cents today, right.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
But also because they increase VMT per barrel vehicle miles
traveled per barrel of oil, even if people travel more overall,
because it's cheaper. If those miles are electric.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
You displace oil demand. The modeling predicts by twenty forty
all sales to shared av fleets will be electric or
plug in hybrid.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
So the policy need is flexible regulations, not rules that stifle.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
The tech exactly, performance based standards like the FAA uses
for small aircraft, not prescriptive rules that get outdated instantly.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Okay, But even with all these policies, there are deeper
structural barriers, aren't there Issues of power and flawed solutions.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yeah, the source is worn against relying solely on technofixes.
Many just shift the problem or deep in dependency.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Like green or blue hydrogen ammonia.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
They sound clean, but they still need massive infrastructure. And
even green ammonia made with renewables, once you spread it
on a field, it still causes nitrogen pollution. Solves carbon,
not nitrogen.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Or think about precision agriculture digital farming AI platforms from
Bayer John Deere.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
They claim efficiency gains, maybe using slightly less herbicide, But.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
The core business model the algorithms are they really designed
to drastically reduce total fertilizer use or just optimize profit
within the existing high input.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
System maximize ROI, maybe not minimize environmental impact overall.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And this ties into the huge concentration of power. Just
a few giant corporations dominate seeds and chemicals globally. Bayer
and Corteva control forty percent of the world's seed market.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
Their business model is selling those inputs. They have a
vested interest in maintaining that system.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
And they have immense political clout to protect it. Get
this US agribusiness lobbying spending. It's higher than oil and
gas lobbying, higher than defense lobbying.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Wow, that's staggering political influence shaping food policy.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
It makes it incredibly hard for alternatives to get traction
funding support.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
So if technofixes within the current system aren't the whole answer,
what's the alternative paradigm?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
The sources point strongly to agrocology, applying ecological principles to farming.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
So working with nature, not against it exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Rebuilding soil health, recycling nutrients on the farm, diversifying crops
instead of just pouring on.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Chemicals, using things like legumes to fix nitrogen naturally, reducing tillage, composting.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
All of that, ecological pest control instead of just spraying pesticides.
It's a whole system.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Approach and does it work? Are there examples plenty?
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Cubas Campusina to Campusino, a movement doubled small farmer productivity
over twenty years using agroecology after Soviet supplies collapsed, and
in India, the Andra pradeshon Issue I aims to get
six million farmers using zero budget natural farming. It's scalable
and shows huge benefits, but.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
The policy and subsidies are skewed right, they still favor
the old industrial model massively.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Governments poured money into spreading the fossil fuel intents of
green revolution. Now they need to redirect that investment into
renewables and agroecology.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
This transition challenge is global, though, and even wealthy countries
that could lead, like the.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
US, Canada and Norway UK, they're still expanding fossil fuel extraction.
They issued a record eight hundred and twenty five new
oil and gas licenses just last year.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Talking green while drilling more a deep conflict, and.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
The shift to renewables brings its own problems. Mining transition minerals, lithium, cobalt,
rare earths.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Environmental damage, human rights issues in mining new dependencies.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
All of the above, we risk swapping dependence on oil
states for dependence on mineral states, and the sources highlight
a critical justice issue, which is over half the minerals
needed for this transition are on or near the lands
of indigenous peoples and peasant communities worldwide. The transition must
not become another wave of colonial extraction and exploitation.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
An equitable transition. That's a huge political.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
Challenge, especially when you see who's influencing the policy. At
the Big Climate Talks COP twenty nine, over seventeen hundred
fossil fuel lobbyists were officially accredited.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
More than almost any country's delegation.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
YEP, plus hundreds of agribusiness lobbyists too. Their influence in
shaping and often delaying necessary change is profound.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Okay, let's trampull the threads together. Key takeaways from this
deep dive.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
First, modern life absolutely hinges on the incredible energy density
of oil and gas. Losing it suddenly would be a
civilizational shock. Transport, products, food, everything stops decades to rebuild
basic functions.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Second, oil price volatility isn't just an inconvenience. It's driven
by deliberate manipulation and imposes massive measurable costs on economies,
trillions lost or transferred over decades.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
And finally, a secure transition needs more than just renewables.
It needs rapid scaling, yes, but also deep policy changes
in transport, and crucially, a fundamental shift in agriculture away
from fossil fuel intensity towards ecological approaches like agrorocology.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
So we've seen that adapting society even gradually to live
without oil likely takes ten to twenty years of intense effort.
But our entire goods transport system, our industrial food production,
it's all built on fossil fuels now.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Which leads to the final provocative thought. Is the current
political focus on incremental efficiency gains slightly better tractors, cleaner cookstoves,
precision agg optimizing the current system, is this actually delaying
the much harder, more radical systemic changes we truly need
to decouple ourselves from hydrocarbons.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Are we just tweaking a fragile system or are we
ready to fundamentally change its foundations? Something for you to
think about.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Thank you for joining us for this deep dive on
beyond infographics.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
If you found this valuable, please do consider giving us
that five star our rating and maybe share this dive
with someone else who likes to get beyond the headlines.
We appreciate you listening
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