"Should" doing a lot of heavy lifting here
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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actually its been the reverse, since it trump has lifted russian oil sanctions they are selling in record numbers again.
Point is: As prices remain high more people will switch, reducing consumption in the long run.
The Iran war - or rather: this war of aggression waged by the U.S. and Israel in violation of international law - should in and of itself serve as a catalyst for the creation of a new international community that no longer grants imperialist powers a veto right or permanent membership in the "Security Council" - you know, an institution that actually punishes violations of international law and genocide.
I wish I saw a clear path to that from here. But that would be fantastic, yes.
Yeah, they all said the same thing when Russia attacked Ukraine. It didn't happen.
The EU sharply cut their fossil methane use in response to that
How many billions dead people is that worth to you?
Conservative estimates are at 250k dead due to climate change each year starting 2030 and that is going to happen even if we go to zero emissions right now. The more we emit, the worse it is going to get. So far the war is at less then 10,000 deaths total. Obviously it is impossible to predict, but it could well net save lifes if you include climate deaths.
Obviously this should have been done without the war.
The carrying capacity of this planet without fossil fuels is less than half a billion people. You do not want a fast exit from fossil fuels.
We're already running out of middle destillates right now, so there's your exit willy-nilly.
The world population was at about a billion in 1804 and we do have better technologies today, which should increase the carrying capacity quite a lot. Also a lot of countries have falling populations already and fertility rates are below replacement on all continents but Africa today.
Can you name a few better technologies, which don't depend on fossil fuels (renewable energy sources do, as do fertilizers, industrial agriculture, transport and others).
I don't know whether you're right about inevitable dependencies, but surely reducing fossil fuel use to the essentials would still be a huge and worthwhile improvement? It feels like your argument is needlessly suggesting an all-or-nothing approach.
My argument is that we're not abandoning fossil fuels, but rather that fossil fuels are abandoning us. We have no degrees of freedom, no agency in the matter. And that void won't be substituted by anything else but classical biofuels and a small fraction of legacy wind, hydro and geothermal. Running a small population at roughly Edo period Japan technology level.
I was sold years ago and rising gasoline costs caused by the attacks on Iran actually don't affect me very much.
Driving an EV is a no brainer so the next step is to get our businesses to use EV delivery trucks.