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by Johanx64 72 days ago
Familiarize yourself with this: https://www.worldometers.info/oil/

Top reserves by country, historical data on consumption (including by country).

These basic data points explain US foreign policy better than anything.

There is no data or trends that supports the notion that oil is becoming irrelevant, much less quickly.

US with it's current reserves and oil consumption rate would last roughly 12 years, btw.

3 comments

I always find this chart really insightful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_oil#/media/File:US_Whale...

Let me show you this figure in response: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/United-States-Farm-based...

US farm horse population over time. Looked like it was gonna grow endlessly in the 1920s. It didn't because the whole thing became obsolete.

That doesn't mean it won't happen.
I mean something undeniably WILL happen as the world has roughly 47 years left at current consumption rate of oil.

Whether what's going to happen will be whatever it is you're imagining is completely different story entirely.

Needless to say, If you have a largely deindustrialized country you can't really make any sort of transition happen yourself anyway, not at the grand scale and speed necessary for this endeavour.

Expect fireworks.

> There is no data or trends that supports the notion that oil is becoming irrelevant

> the world has roughly 47 years left at current consumption rate of oil.

This is contradictory?

Lets say, you have 47 years left to live.

Does that make those 47 years irrelevant - just because they will end?

There's no contradiction there. It just makes these last-remaining fossil fuels even more valuable.

Moreover oil use hasn't ramped down, nor is it getting replaced in any substantial way. I suspect people have no slightest clue just how reliant the modern world is on fossil fuels outside of it's use in cars.