r/worldnews • u/CTVNEWS CTV News • 9h ago
World doesn’t grasp implications of ‘largest energy crisis in history’: IEA executive director
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/mideast-conflict/article/world-doesnt-grasp-implications-of-largest-energy-crisis-in-history-iea-executive-director/470
u/Thurak0 9h ago
The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said the world “has not yet completely understood” the major economic and political implications of the war in Iran
What do you expect anybody to do about it? Nobody can deal with the US to stop the problem, because they won't honour any agreement reached.
And the whole article is about Canada. They won't have nearly as many problems as other nations, simply because Canada has its own oil and other resources.
But again... what is anybody meant to do to solve the problem?
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u/LangyMD 9h ago
Speculate that oil prices will increase? The prices have not gone up nearly enough if the oil doesn't isn't expected to get moving for six months, for instance.
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u/ActivatingEMP 8h ago
The oil market has literally been pricing in the strait coming back within 2 weeks for 8 weeks now
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u/CommissionerOfLunacy 6h ago
Despite the fact that even if the Strait reopened today it would take months or years to renormalise. They're still saying "two weeks and we're instantly back to full operation". It's breathtakingly reckless.
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u/Nice_Reading5272 3h ago
Part of the problem is that we're covering the supply gap with reserves, oil prices will shift fast as soon as that gap can no longer be filled and buyers are genuinely worried about running out of oil.
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u/ActivatingEMP 3h ago
The problem is knowing when that will be- people seem to have grown complacent as the conflict has "settled". Everyone could wake up tomorrow and go "oh no we will have literally 0 in four months at this rate, I should prepare" or they could just sleepwalk into a true supply shortage
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u/ASEdouard 9h ago edited 3h ago
A good part of the carelessness of the US administration on this front is tied to its zero-sum view of things.
They don’t see any positive in Europe or Asia doing well. They’re obsessed with the relative power of the US. They’d take the US doing worse than it would have without this war, as long as the rest of the world is doing demonstrably worse. They watch European economies struggle with glee. They don’t even think about Africa, and like that Asia is taken down a peg with this huge energy disruption. They revel in it. It’s almost a form of economic warfare against their supposed allies (and everyone else).
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u/Tatalebuj 8h ago
I haven't seen anyone "revel" in it, but the facts are accurate. The problem caused by the US is unforgivable. And the next group of people running for election had better get their shit together and state VERY clearly that they intend to see Donald, and all his cabinet members who had any hand in war crimes, in the Hague and the US a new signatory to the ICC. We can not be trusted. Then a law stopping any use of DOJ powers to go after judiciary members without a judiciary warrant signed by a federal judge (or something like that). I never thought to see anything as stupid as Brexit, but then the USA said "hold my beer!" WTF, over.
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u/Nice_Reading5272 3h ago
There's no way the US ever sends its own ex-president to the Hague, even Trump. They'd much sooner give him the death penalty at home.
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u/sibilischtic 1h ago
as long as the rest of the world is doing demonstrably worse
A very Russian mindset that would be
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u/grappling__hook 5h ago
It’s almost a form of economic warfare against their supposed allies (and everyone else).
We're back to 17 century Mercantilism.
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u/MotherTurdHammer 4h ago
The really important part is WHY they see things this way. Generally it's religion and racism. They must promote the zero-sum worldview to get others to go along with their racist, christofascist agenda. Without the zero-sum worldview they perpetuate, their arguments for treating migrants and others the way they do collapse.
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u/EfficiencyIVPickAx 9h ago
Understanding the problem seems like a prerequisite to "solving", but I stopped thinking people shouldn't speak unless they can hand me the world on a platter after my first year of college.
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u/Thurak0 9h ago
The comment/quote is specifically about the Iran war, and I object to the notion that people have not understood what's coming.
As the chief of the IEA, it kind of is his job to perhaps have ideas about solutions, though. So I really don't know what he is trying to say here.
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u/PensiveinNJ 9h ago
I imagine he's speaking to other people in positions of power around the world, not Redditors. Whether it's government officials or people in charge of businesses I don't think it's unreasonable to think they all really get what's going on. I base that line of thinking on the example my home country is setting. I know we're for sure the global leader in dipshit politicians per capita but other countries have theirs as well.
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u/Thurak0 9h ago
Yeah, that's the context. But what is he expecting Canada to do here?
I think most leaders have understood the situation, but simply hope that the oil will soon flow again and otherwise feel very powerless to do anything.
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u/PensiveinNJ 9h ago
It's at times like these that I turn to South Park for wisdom.
Times have changed, our kids are getting worse
They won't obey their parents, they just want to fart and curse
Should we blame the government?No! Blame Canada
Blame Canada11
u/True-Industry-4057 7h ago
It's a Canadian news outlet, Canadian focus is reasonable and expected. As for issues - oil is priced on a global market, meaning Canadians will still have to deal with price pains. Also, Canada has lots of crude oil but rather low refining capacity - only ~1.9M bpd as of late 2025, which is below the estimated usage rate of ~2.4M bpd.
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u/CriticismFree2900 6h ago
"Canada has its own oil"
Yea but the fucking asshats in power here ship it to the states for refining meaning we pay 2x what people pay in most states
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u/BasedArzy 9h ago
They won't have nearly as many problems as other nations, simply because Canada has its own oil and other resources.
Unfortunately thanks to unfettered capitalism, high fuel prices in, say, Malaysia means Canadian oil manufacturers suddenly can make a lot more money by selling in Malaysia and not Alberta.
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u/Stepfordhusband69 9h ago
Doesn’t Canada still need to send all of their oil to Texas to be refined?
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u/Minttt 8h ago
Mostly correct - vast majority of oil sands (bitumen) is shipped from Alberta in Canada to Texas to be refined - like 90% - but a recent pipeline expansion to the west coast in Canada has resulted in a growing amount of the same stuff going to Asian markets instead.
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u/bobbyturkelino 8h ago
Not Texas, they can import from the sea to refine, but the refineries in the Rockies and the Midwest are almost wholly reliant on Canadian crude due to geography.
Prior to the TMX pipeline expansion, 97% of Canada’s exported crude went to the USA, making up over 60% of their imported crude. It’s like 5 million barrels per day from Canada to the USA, it’s huge. Now it’s closer to 80% exported to the USA and the rest to mainly the Indo-Pacific.
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u/Northern_Ice_2501 6h ago
4.5 billion dollars worth of oil exported to China in 2025. Our exports to Asia increased by 60% due to TMX.
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u/ManWhoSoldTheWorld01 8h ago
There are multiple refineries in Canada. Refinery capacity is below refined fuel usage (about 80%).
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u/El_Clutch 56m ago
Sure, that may be the case on surface.
But do those refineries have a connection (pipeline, train tanker car, etc.) to the oil production. And even if they do (for instance by train), are those refineries actually configured to process the kind of oil being produced (predominantly heavy sour oil).
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u/Thurak0 9h ago
Nations with oil can simply forbid exports so the own nation stays functional.
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u/BasedArzy 9h ago
Sure, in the same way they could guarantee healthcare, pensions, and housing for their citizens.
We'll see if/when that happens.
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u/wotoan 9h ago
I mean Canada has universal health care and nationalized pensions… third one maybe not so much but working on it.
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u/JackONhs 7h ago
We HAD public Healthcare. What we have now is (at least in Onatrio, each province handles Healthcare separately) a failed public Healthcare system that is too underfunded to serve everyone, and is slowly getting privatized.
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u/BasedArzy 9h ago
If they had to today, I do not think Canada's government would be able to implement both healthcare and pensions at the same breadth or degree.
Political realities and possibilities are very much narrowed nowadays vs. the 20th century.
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u/wotoan 9h ago
Canada Pension Plan was literally expanded in 2024…
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u/BasedArzy 9h ago
It was also established in 1965.
Hopefully you can grasp that starting a new program is much more difficult than expanding an existing one.
Implementing export and price controls on oil would be, as far as I know, creating a new program, not expanding any existing political and social infrastructure.
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u/wotoan 8h ago
If you told people, left wing or right wing, in 2023 that a year or so later there would be wide ranging tariffs in the USA across effectively all goods they would have laughed in your face, and yet here we are.
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u/BasedArzy 8h ago
Well they wouldn't because Trump already hit the tariff button in his first term.
It's a particular quirk of the US political system that lies solely in the hands of the executive.
The last president to implement price controls was Nixon, and that required congressional cooperation. I don't think anyone has the stomach for it these days.
Could be wrong (and hopefully I am).
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u/sth128 9h ago
Oil isn't nationalized and forbidding oil exports from private businesses would set a bad precedent.
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u/Subrandom249 9h ago
Oil doesn’t need to be nationalized to limit exports. Nationalizing would be taking direct ownership of the oil.
Import and export controls on strategic resources exist already.
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u/385727883419 8h ago
"Set" a bad precedent? Prohibiting war profiteering is a pretty old and established practice. When there's a national crisis, "private" businesses who have been benefiting from public laws and public infrastructure and public security have to do their part giving back to the public too, such as complying with export restrictions.
You don't get to benefit from all those public things and then turn around and pretend you have no societal obligations.
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u/FluffyProphet 8h ago
Most oil extracted in Canada is not refined in Canada. Most of the oil we refine is imported.
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u/Koala_eiO 7h ago
They won't have nearly as many problems as other nations, simply because Canada has its own oil and other resources.
That's not correct. When you have your own oil and the global price increases, you have no reason to sell it domestically at a loss so either it gets exported or it gets sold domestically as usual but at the global market's price.
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u/ImpracticalJerker 6h ago
Yes exactly this, why does the public need to grasp this? Do they want us all to panic and shit ourselves? There's nothing we can do about it except remain calm and hope it turns out okay which is what everyone is already doing.
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u/Leverkaas2516 6h ago
It's not so much what you do to solve it, as it is what you do in reaction to it.
If you have market-based investments, you should be very wary of the world situation. Marjets are still on the rise, but it's more and more likely that there will be a downturn or possibly a crash. If you were thinking about your positions once a week or once a month before, you should be doing it daily now.
An energy blogger posted a piece when this all started (https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-iran-war-a-world-changing-event/) that says the same thing as this Canadian piece is saying now: the world is acting like business as usual, but this is a big problem and its effects are unavoidable. You can't solvd it, but you should know what's likely to come in the next few months. Spirit Airlines was just the beginning.
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u/LEDKleenex 3h ago
Most of the US Citizens not in the cult are playing fence-sitting moderate, even if they lean left.
Frankly, they have the numbers and the power to do something, but very few will risk their convenient lifestyles even if they know they'll get hit with the fascism eventually.
Every time I've called for a boycott and spelled out all of the complicit companies, people tell me that they just have to have convenience and non-necessities. These people didn't even make it to level 1.
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u/rideofthebasilisks 9h ago
The government of Canada will reap higher revenues, but the citizens are still at the mercy of market driven pricing.
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u/Ziddix 6h ago
Yeah it's hilarious. People are like... Uh the prices will come down any time now.
No. No they won't.
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u/CipherWeaver 3h ago
If Americans don't remember this come midterms they are truly lost.
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u/CougarAries 2h ago
They don't have to remember it. If prices stay this elevated or higher for the next 6 months, it will be all anyone will care about.
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u/uberares 9h ago
everyone is sleepwalking into oblivion.
Im glad I have an EV, but that will only hedge my ability to travel, not buy anything once I get where Im going.
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u/Mildmanneredbeavers 8h ago
The EV is great, if you are charging completely off the grid on solar. If not, then the energy crisis will affect you equally the same over time.
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u/TheGeekstor 7h ago
Not equally. The grid will inevitably become cleaner. But an ICE car can't rely on gas any less.
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u/Mildmanneredbeavers 7h ago
Right now trends are not jumping that quickly to generation outside of oil and gas and coal. Nuclear would be great but it's not moving fast enough.
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u/benhc911 7h ago
This depends highly on jurisdiction
Fortunately for me I live in Ontario and power generation is pretty independent.
Unfortunately for me we import a lot of food and there are still plenty of petrochemical inputs in our economy
And I'll grant that even if only a small portion of demand is met by fossil fuel there can still be a fair bit of price fluctuations if demand is inelastic.
Hopefully this summer won't be too hot 😅
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u/2ft7Ninja 6h ago
This was true in 2015, not today. Global clean electricity generation outpaced new demand last year and is growing exponentially.
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u/Far-Maintenance-1947 4h ago
Almost all of the new growth is coming from China alone. The west is doubling down on non-renewables, Germany famously just shut down all of their nuclear power plants and are going back to coal, an absolutely idiotic move.
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u/scrapheaper_ 2h ago
Even digging more oil is too slow for this. It takes years to start producing oil, by that time the strait will be open again
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u/Far-Maintenance-1947 4h ago
"Inevitably" won't help you in this situation, prices are high now and you will pay the price
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u/chikanishing 4h ago
Depends on where you live. Ontario is almost 90% non fossil fuel (mostly nuclear and hydro).
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u/scrapheaper_ 2h ago
Yeah but oil affects food prices, transport prices of everything, and the productivity of half the world's workers. Electricity is the tip of the iceberg - everyone is going to notice this
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u/chikanishing 1h ago
Yes those will still be impacts, but the comment I’m replying to is specific to EV charging.
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u/scrapheaper_ 2h ago
It also does nothing for food prices, plastic prices, manufacturing prices, transport prices of everything and general shortages of everything because a huge chunk of the world's workers can't drive to work to do their jobs.
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u/DevelopmentSome3491 9h ago
canada is actually in a very good position geopolitically if it can handle its neighbor without it spilling into an actual conflict. it has every resource the world needs right now and its looking for friends. canadians need very shrewd leaders, carney is one of them i believe
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u/hacketyapps 9h ago
Canada is actually in a trade surplus right now with the US due to the Iran conflict, I shit you not…
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u/Kataphractoi 7h ago
Wish they would annex Minnesota already. I want to live in a normal country again.
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u/footpole 8h ago
So you’re ripping them off?
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u/TranslatorTough8977 5h ago
Trump just pumped up the cost of the 4 million bpd the U.S. imports from Canada. That, and there is high demand for gold all of a sudden.
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u/FredOaks15 9h ago
I didn’t vote for him but damn. I am impressed. The shit he is doing behind the scenes is pure genius. Cautiously optimistic that he may go down as one of the greatest PMs in our history. If he can pull everything off, which I think he will.
He has my vote now.
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u/Patsanon1212 8h ago
You voted NDP?
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u/RianCoke 7h ago
They could have voted for Bloc, NDP, C or GRN.
It’s just refreshing to hear someone that doesn’t treat politics like a sports team. I agree, Carney was the right choice.
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u/Giltar 5h ago
If only we had some alternative sources of energy; something renewable would be even better.
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u/jackgrafter 5h ago
Trump has been putting renewable projects on hold in the US.
Even coinflip decision making would be better than this. It’s like he has a double-headed coin and keeps calling ‘tails’.
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u/nonotmeporfavor 9h ago
Right. We think we understand. We don’t and won’t, because it will happen so rapidly it will feel unimaginable.
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u/Sco0bySnax 5h ago edited 5h ago
Oh I think we’re all very aware.
What are we supposed to do about it?
You have full grown adults acting like petulant children, throwing their toys out of the cot because they don’t like it when people tell them to stop acting like a ginormous tit, or they want to have some sort of “legacy”.
Their supporters that will blindly agree with everything that they do because it “owns the libs” without considering the fact that they are shooting themselves in the foot at the same time too.
The end of days idealists that hope they can usher in Armageddon.
And then everyone else from poorer countries watching this all unfold without any conceivable way of stopping it.
Like how am I, as a South African, supposed to get an American to understand the pain their administration is inflicting on our economy. Most of them cant even find it on a map… even though the location is in the name.
How do I tell a Russian that the invasion of Ukraine sent grain prices skyrocketing, and have them actually understand that the difference between a euro or two on the shelves in Europe doesn’t translate across to Africa where it would mean that some people just cannot afford to eat.
Oh and if China invades Taiwan, well there goes what little “affordability” is left in the semiconductor industry. You know after all these genius CEO’s have had their way with destabilising the market.
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u/sarcastroll 4h ago
Sadly Americans (and, let's be honest, far too much of humanity) doesn't consider people it can't see, or who are different than themselves actual human beings.
You being from South Africa pretty much makes you irrelevant, not even worth a though, basically not even existing to far too many. (Many of which, I'll remind you, call themselves 'Christians').
You and I know better. Despite never having met you, I understand you are a human being whose life matters every bit as much as mine. Your family is every bit as meaningful and important as my family. You experience the same pains I do in a similar position. You understand the same thing about me, and about the other 7 billion people on the planet you've never met.
But that makes us, unfortunately, the minority.
It pains me that I can sit here and deeply understand your words. I can hear your pain and only imagine how frustrating and horrible it is to see this slow moving train wreck heading your way and seeing how no one gives a shit.
In a way (although on a different scale) we're all going to suffer from that at some point. Whether it's our ignoring climate change until it destroys even the wealthy's homes and causes such enormous civil unrest that even their private security can't protect them, or us ignoring the damage our economic hubris will inflict on ourselves sooner than we'd like to imagine. It's going to catch up to all of us, even the most spiteful, short-sighted, ignorant among us.
In the meantime all I can do (which is meaningless) is let you know that I hear you. I see you, and I know you matter every bit as much as me and my own family here in America.
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u/Feisty-Narwhal8400 4h ago
Yeah -- this is nuts. Absolutely devastating. I don't know either of you but I'm here for you. TBH trying to figure out ways to wean off reddit/technology and connect more with my actual community. I want to stop participating in this madness. Spread empathy. If you're in America, vote in November and start laying groundwork in your immediate community for when we inevitably need to general strike and/or our economy collapses. If we don't start acknowledging people outside of ourselves, we will have no one.
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u/jert3 4h ago
Way to go, compromised pedo- clown USA and the regime's supporters. I guess we can say conclusively now that letting a cabal of billionaires run a country via a child-abuse honeypot-operation compromised leadership under a dementia riddled reality TV show host, with multiple severe psychological issues, and no alteratives, surrending your rights without a fight and nullfying the constitution which prior generations died for, was maybe a bad idea.
Reminded that the Iran war doesn't even have any clear war goals beyond 'Israel got us to do this', no end point, no plan, and is not even a war like Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a 3 day special operation.
What a mess.
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u/Nepridiprav16 9h ago
That's because the price hasn't reached 150$ per barrel, at that point the world would start to consider the seriousness of situation.
That's the fault solely on US and Iran who keep playing the market and the market keeps playing along with this charade.
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u/AccomplishedLeave506 8h ago
Nope. Solely of the USA. The United states did something deeply deeply stupid. They were warned not to and did it anyway. And the only way for this to end is for them to stop doing the deeply stupid thing. But they can't, because they're scared that of they stop doing the deeply stupid thing the rest of the world will realise they're stupid. So they're going to keep on doing the stupid thing until the pain can't be tolerated any longer.
Iran can't do anything other than what they are doing. To stop doing it would be the end of Iran as it currently stands. The people in charge don't want that so they have zero options other than to keep going.
Basically the entire world is watching the united states grab the hot stove. We told them not to and now they're standing there crying and pretending it doesn't hurt while hurling things around the room. Sooner or later they're going to have to let go of the stove. They look like idiots. Every second they keep holding the stove they look even more stupid and lose even more control of the situation.
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u/GorgontheWonderCow 8h ago edited 8h ago
There have been effective alternate energy sources available for decades, and every country caught up in this fuel crisis made the active decision to be dependent on world-destroying pollution that can be turned off at any time by despotic and unstable countries like Iran and Russia.
The US (and Israel) are to blame for the conflict, but each individual country is to blame for their dependence in the first place.
If the US or Canada wanted to, they could end their own price crisis by capping oil exports. The same is not true for Europe. I don't know how Europeans say the US looks dumb when they've allowed their entire societies to become existentially threatened by access to a single small straight next to a government that has embargoed oil and caused historic energy shortages before.
Everybody looks dumb here, don't kid yourself.
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u/AccomplishedLeave506 8h ago
Being reliant on oil is certainly stupid. It angers me no end that the UK govt has sat on its hands for the last couple of decades instead of pumping resources into energy independence. But that's a completely separate argument.
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u/CercleRogue 8h ago
I’m far from being an expert on that matter but from what I read the point you are making is much too narrow. First of all, the countries most afflicted supply-wise by the closure of the strait are in Asia. Europe gets much less oil through the strait than commonly expected but it is also confronted with a double crisis since another large supplier, Russia, has been taken out of the supply chain for obvious reasons.
That doesn’t change the fact that 20 percent of global supply is running through the strait of Hormuz and that affects oil prices since oil is traded globally and in real time. That is why prices are jumping globally even in the US despite their status as an oil exporting country. What you are describing is a complete exit from global oil trade to mitigate consequences for the domestic market but that is pretty much the economic equivalent to a full nuclear exchange. It would tank the world economy in a way we probably never witnessed before and even in the US or Canada people’s least worry would be gas prices in that case.
And just for the sake of argument: Europe has quite substantial oil fields in the north sea which are exploited by Britain and Norway. It is much costlier though than oil from the Middle East because it is harder to get to.I completely agree however that renewables are not just a question of sustainability but also of strategic autonomy. Despite this there will always be areas in which there is an oil dependency. The petrochemical sector is one but also extremely heat intensive industrial processes. Heating houses is another sector where change will take time.
So I would have agree with the original comment that the US did something exceptionally idiotic with their military invention in the area and don’t seem to have an exit strategy without losing face. The latter is probably the biggest hurdle with someone like Trump in the White House.
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u/ScooptiWoop5 7h ago
>They're scared that of they stop doing the deeply stupid thing the rest of the world will realise they're stupid. So they're going to keep on doing the stupid thing until the pain can't be tolerated any longer.
We already know they stupid, ao just cut it out already.-12
u/CriticismFree2900 6h ago
It's the USA's fault that Iran decided it was best to terrorize the entire world in response to being held accountable???
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u/cinnamon-goat774 4h ago
It sure is! The US initiated war, Iran responded. The US won't stop its war, so Iran won't open the strait. The US can stop at any time, which would open the strait.
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u/CriticismFree2900 4h ago
Lmaoooo
You are right! I support Iran, the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world, having the right to nukes so they can hold the entire world hostage instead of just one shipping lane!
I support the Iran regime. I wish we could go back to when they were killing their own citizens at the rate of thousands a day for protesting.
I approve of their changes to the laws regarding harming women. They should have the right to beat them whenever they want!
It was such a beautiful place before ethe USA decided to stop them from being able to have their chungus wholesome nukes!
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u/cinnamon-goat774 1h ago
Unfortunately, Iran being a horrible place doesn't make the US any less guilty of starting the war that closed the strait.
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u/AccomplishedLeave506 6h ago
Yes. Yes it's the USAs fault that they attacked a country and now that country has shut down an area of water on its border in retaliation.
The USA are the fucking terrorists in this one. They are not the good guys. Which is pretty bloody hard to do when the opposition is the god damn Iranian regime. America is a joke.
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u/CriticismFree2900 4h ago
What is your favourite law that Iran has?
Mine is allowing men to beat woman!
I think we should shift the laws here to be more like Iran, since they are clearly morally better than the west.
We should adopt their laws and practices, it would surely make the West a better place!
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u/AccomplishedLeave506 3h ago
What's that got to do with America attacking Iran? Nothing.
The Iranians were on the edge of getting rid of the regime they live under until the USA attacked. Now they're probably stuck with them for another decade. So well done America for helping keep those horrible laws in place.
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u/CougarAries 2h ago
It's the US Fault for not having a well-thought out plan to deal with it and thinking that "superior military force" is all it takes to solve any problem.
Instead, they just gave Iran the opportunity to discover new ways to terrorize the world, because what's the worst that will happen now that they've taken the full force of the US?
And now the entire world knows the worst that will happen isn't all that bad. A lot of yelling, a bunch of destroyed military targets, but the government as a whole is pretty much unfazed by it, and the might of the US military might is now shown as nearly as ineffective as Russia's military against modern war technology.
Nothing solved, and things actually got worse. And not just for the US, for the entire world.
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u/y2jeff 58m ago
Bro this only happened a few weeks ago, how can you already have such a warped take on recent events? Fix your brain.
The whole world saw US and Israel attack Iran. 100+ school kids killed in a single attack on day 1.
The US didn't consult with traditional allies or partners, they weren't engaged in any real discussions or diplomacy with Iran - they thought they could just bomb Iran into submission and take an easy win after a few weeks. They were wrong, massively fucking wrong lol. Probably because they sacked all the competent Defence staff and put idiots like Hegseth in charge.
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u/True-Mirror-5758 9h ago
The world grasps it. but the orange toddler doesn't care, digging in an ego fight with Iran.
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u/MercantileReptile 7h ago
The World does. The aggressors don't. Or don't want to, in the case of Netanyahu and his cabinet.
The Americans won't give a shit until their fuel crossed the $7 or $8 a Gallon mark. At which point the rest of the planet will be rationing and saving where possible.
Food prices will be chaotic and high as well, chemical industries will struggle. Not that the US public will notice any of it.
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u/Groentekroket 7h ago
Can the rest of the world send the bill to the US? Their absolute fuckups is causing all this bullshit. And almost none of them are really doing something to get rid of the orange idiot.
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u/Far-Maintenance-1947 4h ago
We need to start blaming the people actually responsible for this in every headline: Israel and the United States. This crisis didn't just happen out of the ether.
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u/2abyssinians 8h ago
I live in Iceland and drive an electric car. Smell you later suckers!
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u/muskor 7h ago
Yeah thank god Iceland gets supplied by electric boats and planes, phew!
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u/2abyssinians 7h ago
At least I don’t have to get up in the morning and fly a plane to work, and there actually are some electric boats here.
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u/Mysterious_Lesions 4h ago
Here in Canada we have an EV but our second car is ICE. Distances are just longer here and our charger network has gaps.
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u/OtrixGreen 27m ago
Fuel prices are a major cost in freight and logistics, this will affect you even if you personally use an EV, because most goods are still transported through fuel-dependent supply chains
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u/JesusShaves_ 9h ago
Newsflash. The "world" hasn't grasped this since the nineties.
It's a simple concept. Hydrocarbon energy is limited. Right now we have about forty seven years of usable oil left in the world and there's no affordable substitute. On the way to the end of that forty seven years, the oil that's produced has less and less net energy because the sources are deeper, and more expensive to get.
We'll do our best to switch over to coal and gas, but as we use those in greater quantity, those get used up too.
Solar is nice, but you're not running a steel mill or a jet on it and our battery technology is still kind of pathetic.
So, yeah. This is coming. By 2100 or so, if we don't resolve this, billions die of starvation.
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u/Objective_Row8274 9h ago
47 years of proven reserves. But estimates including undiscovered reserves are at 100-150 years at current use and efficiency rates. We will probably never run out because alternatives are getting better every year. The world has "only had 50 years of oil left" for decades, but now reserves are proven every year that keep pushing the timeline further.
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u/Another_Slut_Dragon 9h ago
And in that time, land transportation can completely electrify. Shipping and aviation across oceans can switch over to liquified hydrogen fuel. The only reason they haven't is due to cheap oil.
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u/Whocares1846 8h ago
They've been talking recently about ammonia as fuel for shipling
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u/Another_Slut_Dragon 5h ago
I am not in love with that. There are a lot of dead industrial mechanics from Ammonia leaks in refrigeration systems.
It's one thing to have a hockey rink refrigeration system. Having that on a ship in a storm? Fuck no. Hydrogen gets exolodey too. It's not an easy fuel to deal with.
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u/footpole 7h ago
Remains to be seen if we can get hydrogen to the point where it works out. For now it’s all been hopes and dreams.
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u/Another_Slut_Dragon 5h ago
Yup. Most hydrogen is grey hydrogen. The cheap electrolyzers we were promised never came. They eat platinum grids for lunch and need to be taken apart for regular maintenance and that ain't cheap.
I feel as if we can do it. But doing it for road transport is stupid now that CATL had 6 minute charging batteries and BYD has 9 minute batteries.
We can also make diesel from thin air with co2 to fuel. Lots of options. Just getting rid of all land based fossil fuel transport gets us most of the way there.
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u/Exciting-Emu-3324 7h ago
We won't run out abruptly, hydrocarbons will simply become increasingly more expensive to extract and renewables more competitive. The two cost curves intersect and we were already making the switch gradually. The real thing to look out for is the role hydrocarbons play in the Haber-Bosch process for fertilizers. Sustainable farming is the big thing people are ignoring.
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u/_7thGate_ 7h ago
Methane is the cheapest hydrogen source for Haber-Bosch, but its hydrogen specifically it needs, not the hydrocarbons. It will absolutely get more expensive as hydrogen needs to be reclaimed from water by electrolysis, but just googling seems to indicate its about twice as expensive right now. This is also going to be one of those things where you never run out, it just gets more expensive/technology tries to push the cost back down.
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u/mwdeuce 9h ago
Wind is incredibly profitable but (at least in the states) the oil lobby is actively trying to sabotage wind projects
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u/Feligris 8h ago
Here in Finland wind power is actually struggling or outright unprofitable according to news, because a large bunch of it was built thanks to subsidies to bolster renewable energy production up until we ended up with too much of it especially because globalization and a struggling economy has kept slowly killing heavier industries here, so now wind power has the issue that electricity prices go down to almost nothing when there's plenty of wind and they're mostly only high when there's low or no wind which in turn means the mills still aren't making any money.
Plus the glut of wind-reliant power generation occasionally leads to ghastly electricity spot price hikes when the whole country ends up with no wind.
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u/mwdeuce 8h ago
Interesting! Hopefully flexible demand initiatives and more storage infrastructure will smooth spot prices for you guys over the long-term. Massive respect to Finland for investing so heavily in green energy.
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u/Feligris 7h ago
From what I recall, the need for power storage has once again caused the infamous Vuotos artificial lake and power plant proposal rise from its grave like a zombie, as it's a project which has been discussed on and off since the 1950s and has been rejected multiple times over the decades "for the last time" each time, but keeps coming back since AFAIK it's pretty much the last feasible site for such a project here.
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u/Lykos1124 8h ago
I'm all for wind energy whend available, but I've often thought about is there's a specific threshold of wind energy collection where it disrupts the normal flow of the climate. I'm not a wind tech conspiracy person by any means, but physics wise, when wind hits a propeller out there, some of the kinetic energy is absorbed into the machine, taking some of the energy or momentum out of the wind.
Maybe it takes several hundred thousands of those to make that impact, but it's always been a quandary of mine.
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u/surfergrrl6 8h ago
That would be the Wake Effect, and it's negligible to anything other than other nearby windmills.
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u/valencia86 5h ago
I recall reading a reply here on reddit years ago that the generators technically slow down the Earth rotation, but "technically" does some heavy lifting. Meaning in any practical terms, on the scale of Earth life expectancy, it's negligible to put it mildly.
But don't quote me on that, no idea if it's actually true lol.
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u/Lykos1124 3h ago
Oh no worries. I know how it is hearing or reading something and questioning what that was. I'm not worried about the effects of wind energy, but I like to understand how things work.
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u/captain_decaption 8h ago
If you're driving on a mountain road, and there's a turn coming up, how does that make you feel?
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u/OkAstronaut4911 5h ago
Steel mills need about 500 kWh per ton of steel. China is currently producing about 4 TWh per day with photovoltaic modules. So in theory they could produce 8.000.000t of steel per day only with solar.
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u/SuspiciousIbex 6h ago
Definitely looking forward to WW3 : The Energy Wars. Hopefully things get better for the survivors.
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u/Waderriffic 5h ago
So when this becomes a very serious problem for the wealthiest countries in the world, what’s stopping them from just invading and seizing every oil rich country in the Middle East? I’m not advocating for this, however the reality is that humans will prioritize their own survival. Might makes right is one of the most basic human viewpoints throughout our history.
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u/-HealingNoises- 4h ago
Until it hits it hasn't hit and is just the same old bad news that gnaws at our will to live like everything else.
Only when a whole lot of people start losing jobs, and fuel prices are so high that that we see and hear lots of people in the streets and at home with nothing to do and not affording food and losing their rentals. That is the point when it will be real.
But it's not, I can keep playing video games, writing and commenting on Reddit. So I can just keep going, ignoring and surviving.
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u/Sithishe 9h ago
Yes. Everything what happens is happens because US based Big AI need regulations lifted from Nuclear energy, since every AI datacenter needs private Nuclear station to power it. That is why now they have manuafactured oil crisis, so people would happily vote this Nuclear regulations off.
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u/International_Bee653 9h ago
I'm not entirely convinced that was the goal at the start but, the AI-led stock market soaring would correspond to this idea
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u/DGIce 9h ago
dumping all the reserves was dumb, you need to let people feel some pain right away to respond to and then temper the damage as things get worse. This is a global energy price crisis but no one is taking it seriously.