[roenxi]

https://ourworldindata.org/energy -> Chart per capita primary energy use -> pick the US -> observe steadily dropping per capita energy use per person since 2000.

Down ~20% from peak. That is not a country drowning in cheap energy, that is a coming under a lot of pressure. Not a time to be going "eh, long term trends take a while to kick in". The long term trends have been around for a while, we're well in to the part where we start reaching tipping points and step changes.

What is going to happen? Who knows. But it could happen quite quickly.

[lolinder]

So your argument in support of the claim that the US isn't secure in its energy supplies is that we're using our energy more efficiently than we were before?

I can imagine how that could be a second order effect of energy insecurity, but there are other explanations that seem more likely, like:

* The move from incandescent to LED lighting

* Improved insulation and heating technology

* Energy efficient appliances

* Removal of inefficient vehicles in favor of more efficient vehicles

You're going to have to do better than "per capita energy use is dropping" to convince me there's a looming threat to US energy supplies.

[roenxi]

The US political situation isn't remotely consistent with it being a country that has just freed up 20% of its energy for alternative uses. It is acting like a country that is being squeezed and has an increasingly desperate underclass that has gotten quite disgruntled.

20% is like having no energy on half of Saturday and all of Sunday. The improvements you listed are not comparable.

[JumpCrisscross]

> is not a country drowning in cheap energy

On average, we have cheap power [1]. If you're power hungry, we have some of the cheapest power on the planet [2].

The fact that coal-burning China pays more for power [3] than American industry should drive home our massive geostrategic advantage.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/end-use.php

[3] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/

[roenxi]

You seem to be referencing electricity. That is missing the energy which comes from oil. The energy from oil is the important stuff here, because it is the one that links into the US dollar and its performance.

And the US having access cheap oil is a good argument for why there might be a sudden step change in their economy - there are a lot of people with a serious interest in breaking the US dollar oil trade. Now including Russia and possibly China if they can read the writing on the wall. The US can't fight them both at once so China is in a pretty good position to get away with stuff right now if their regime survives COVID.

[nonethewiser]

You dont think the largest oil producer in the world has cheap oil? Even compared to a country which is completely dependent on oil imports from the middle east and Russia?

[roenxi]

If they had cheap oil, we'd be seeing people using more energy, a stable and improving political climate and rapid improvements in the quality of life of individual people. Like we see in China (or the rest of Asia) as they gain more access to energy. None of those things are evident in the US - it is a country that is seeing reduced access to energy.

Cheap oil in the US has been extinct for more than a decade.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they had cheap oil, we'd be seeing people using more energy

America produces more oil than ever [1]. (We also produce more energy than we consume [2].)

Your argument that waste equals production is flawed because energy doesn’t turn into production at a fixed rate [3]. The fact that per capita energy intensity falls while per capita real production rises means the economy is becoming more efficient.

> cheap oil in the US has been extinct for more than a decade

American crude is among the cheapest in the world [4]. (Bonus: look at Canadian and Mexican crude prices. Cheaper still.) Production costs aren’t Arab, but it’s way cheaper than what China pays, even before transport [5].

What makes this fantasy particularly stupid, beyond being trivially fact checkable, is that it mistakes China’s strategic weakness for America’s. The weakness that pushed Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor: their energy comes in from abroad, mostly by sea. The United States can strangle their economy from thousands of miles away by interfering with their shipments of seaborne coal and crude.

This is why the South China Sea is militarising. This is where Belt & Road comes from. The Russia dependency. It makes sense. It’s a weakness Beijing is working to buttress. One which America doesn’t suffer from on account of its geography and geology.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/crude-oil-product...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity

[4] https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/

[5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/748207/breakeven-prices-...

[roenxi]

Now join the dots together - the largest oil producer and one of the relative cheapest has run out of legitimately cheap oil. Domestic consumption of energy showing signs of serious stress. There isn't any external provider of cheap oil that they can import from - in fact, the global market is in such a state that the US is exporting!

It is hard to say exactly what that entails. Maybe the world gets lucky with a fission/fusion breakthrough of some sort - maybe even a political breakthrough to let us use proven-good nuclear tech. But in the interim it isn't easy to say that the US stock market will mirror its performance in an era where it had unchallenged dominance of a global network of easily available oil shipments. And it certainly isn't safe to say things will happen slowly. Things could start breaking and move quickly.

[int_19h]

I would hope that our energy consumption per capita is lower than it was 20+ years ago, given how much of it is from burning fossil fuels that we've been struggling to reduce.

Energy security is not about how much energy we do spend, but rather about how much energy we could spend, if we wanted. On this count, OP is right and the situation is still better than it used to be.

[gumby]

The energy intensity of the USA (Kcal/$GDP) has been falling for decades. You don't understand the figure you are quoting.