The Biggest Shock: Energy

“Oil, Butt-Head. It’s oil. We’ve struck oil.” – Beavis and Butt-Head

I caught my bread moving to the music on the counter the other night.  I guess it was a bun dance.

We’re 30 months past the start of the ‘Rona outbreak.  Sure, it doesn’t seem like that long, but in many ways it seems so much longer, like being forced to watch Amy Schumer talk to Chuck Schumer about cheese.  What happened, due to the reaction to the ‘Rona, was one of the biggest supply shocks that the world has ever seen.

When the ripples of that shock moved from country to country, things broke down.  The world, at that point just before the pandemic was an amazingly efficient machine.  It was wonderful at taking oil and turning it into important things, like Pringles®, hairspray, and cell phone cases.

But, I said that the economy was efficient – that means that all of the parts were needed – there were few wasted factories, and, few wasted workers.  We lived in the greatest abundance that the world had ever seen.  This abundance was so deep that world hunger was a solved problem.  For the first time ever, there were more people in the world that were overweight than hungry.

This was a brief moment in history.  In medieval France, for instance, the peasants would spend all winter in bed in a semi-hibernation to conserve food.  I guess I just described me at 2:30pm on Thanksgiving, except I’m sleeping off food.

I guess the most popular Christmas song at mental hospitals is, Do You See What I See.

But back to Thanksgiving, what were they giving thanks for?

Having food.  Even now as the events still unfold in slow-motion, the loss of abundance is looming.  Shortages begin to stack up.  A friend tried to buy a pickup, but was told it would be at least six months for it to arrive.  He bought a different one.

The price increases we’ve seen are a symptom of that lack of abundance – we had shortages because we were finally paying the price for the efficiency of the system – we had shortages of everything except for cash.  The powers that be decided to try to paper over the economic problems by flooding the world with that cash, which made people feel better, temporarily, but then led to the shortages we’re still seeing.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine?  It’s an example of yet another stress to the systems of the world.  Food.  Fertilizer.  Oil.  And a big one as far as Europe is considered?  Natural gas.  The folks in Europe might need to re-learn how to huddle together for warmth during winter.

I’d tell you how to make an oil well, but it’s really boring.

Abundance came from that finely tuned system.  What many don’t realize is that abundance comes mainly from abundant energy.  That energy is used everywhere.  It’s powering my computer and your computer (or phone) and the car that took me to work and the harvester that brought up the corn to feed the cow that became a steak on my plate last weekend.

Oddly, the Left thinks that by pretending that a new, renewable power will spring into existence, that it really will.  That hasn’t happened, or if it did, the power grid certainly isn’t showing it.  Widespread blackouts weren’t a feature of my youth – they’re an annual occurrence now, since the system is now overtaxed.  It’s gone from resilient, with a capacity that is sufficient for nearly any situation, to one that is regularly broken.

There was a blackout in New York City.  People were stuck on escalators for four hours.

Our history of abundance is dependent entirely on our mastery of energy.  There are 7.97 billion people on Earth today.  My estimate, based on history, is that without the current intensity of energy use, the Earth could support somewhere between 250 million and 500 million people, tops.

Energy is the key for all of that.

Oil is prone to, well, run out.  Frakking has provided a very significant way to expand reserves, but conventional oil peaked back in 2016.  The oil time, “drill it and pump it” is declining.  Frakking can provide a respite, but even those resources are limited.

The choices that lead to a real future, though, are few.  Of actual technology that exists and provides sufficient energy to power a civilization, nuclear energy is key.  I’d love to suggest fusion power, but sadly, the only version of fusion that we have on Earth exists in very short duration, high-energy pulses, often designed for delivery by intercontinental missiles.

But fission does exist.  It’s expensive to produce new fission power plants, but they last for decades.  Are there downsides?  Certainly.  Nuclear waste isn’t great, but I hear it’s still better for your than corn syrup.  And residents near Chernobyl can count on one hand the seven reasons why a nuclear meltdown is a bad idea.

But I never trust people from Chernobyl.  They’re two-faced.

We actually may be struggling to return to abundance for decades, and I don’t think we’ve fallen nearly as far as we will.  The supply disruptions started by the ‘VID and continuing through the Ukrainian War will continue, and will swing farther and farther out of control.  This will put pressures on people and increase conflicts, both inside countries and between countries.

Those could be huge, massive wars.  But as long as I don’t have to listen to Amy Schumer talk to Chuck Schumer, about cheese, it’ll be alright.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

22 thoughts on “The Biggest Shock: Energy”

  2. So few people are able to make that connection between energy and abundance.
    They blame suppliers for the lack of food or other items, and the increased prices. They cannot see that if objects need to be transported long distances, it will raise the price in a time of artificial energy shortage.
    Even the harvest disasters the are snowballing are the result of energy shortages. Modern fertilizers are made using petroleum products in the process. This won’t affect just THIS year; it will also reduce seed production for many years to come.

  3. “support…between 250 & 500 million people…”

    500 million? Where have I seen that before? Yes! The Wilder Guidestones;-)!!!

    1. Hahahahaha! You saw what happened to the Georgia ones. I’m betting lightning???
      Hmmm, perhaps a post . . . ? Wilder Guidestones? It has a ring to it.

  4. John, modern society exists purely because of energy. Without energy we cannot manufacture, transport, manufacture PEZ, or (most blessedly of all) heat and cool ourselves (importance of either depends on your location). Without it, food is not grown or transported, hospitals do not operate for operations, water does not get pumped, and sewage…well, it just hangs around unprocessed.

    Can alternative energy do things? Yes, on a small scale. But (at least from evidence) not on the scale it takes to run the modern world.

    People will only put up with inconvenience and/or a declining lifestyle for a while. After that…well, stock up on PEZ now, before it becomes a black market item.

  6. The watermelons (Green on the outside, Red on the inside) demanding we use “renewables” have always had our extermination at heart. They know that solar and wind can’t provide enough power, and are inherently unreliable. Why do you think they are so insistent upon their adoption? Why do you think they hate, despise, and loathe nuclear energy?

  7. I was all set to counter your thoughts with,..”yeah but, subsistence farming, subsistence gardening, subsistence living…spit, sputter, gasp”…….
    As if society will “snap to” and begin to use our grandparents lifestyle.
    But then I looked at my 12 year old granddaughter frantically trying to get her mother to give her phone back.
    Yeap, they’re screwed.

    1. Lathechuck, thanks! I hadn’t seen JMG’s stuff in a long time, after he pulled away from the old site he had.

  9. Very few people truly understand how complex the worlds economy has become and how totally reliant it was on
    cheap readily available energy. And now that paradigm is changing. Nobody knows what the future will bring.
    Odds are however it won’t be as pleasant for most of us as the past half plus century has been. Hunger was becoming less of a problem, now it’s making a big comeback. Disease and hardship are right on it’s tail.

    We aren’t out of oil but it IS a finite resource. And it didn’t just provide energy. Literally THOUSANDS of items that all of us use every day were made from oil…..from tires, to plastic to pharmaceuticals. And those items are going to become either unavailable or very limited in supply. Wind and solar can replace some of the energy we use on a small scale local level. But it simply CANNOT replace the energy required for heavy industry, farming and mass transportation of material. Nuclear energy also can help….but you can’t put a reactor in a car…or even on a locomotive. We might get lucky and find some type of battery technology that is cheap, recharges super fast, has a long life and doesn’t use RARE ELEMENTS like Lithium. Don’t hold your breath though. That’s not likely to happen. Fusion happens in the sun…..or a warhead. Odds are very high that sustainable fusion requires a MASSIVE gravity field. So sustainable fusion is probably only going to work inside a star.

    Everyone always thinks the future is going to be better, tech will always improve, we will eventually end up with a Star Trek type of society. That’s FICTION. Odds are humanity has peaked and we are on the downward slide. There may not be any magic technology to bail us out. And oil may be the peak for any and all technological societies. Which is why we haven’t been visited by aliens. Their path followed ours. Peaking with oil and then devolving. Feasible interstellar travel is fiction. And may ALWAYS be fiction.

    The universe is cold, harsh and indifferent. It doesn’t care if we go the way of the dinosaurs. And odds are our exit will be of a different manner but will be just as assured.

    1. Great point – it requires running ever faster just to keep in the same place, but I’m stealing from Wednesday’s post.

  10. First thoughts:

    “I’d tell you how to make an oil well, but it’s really boring.”
    I’d tell you how to make an oil well, but but the pressure would get to you.

    “ It’s expensive to produce new fission power plants, but they last for decades.”
    When you make a mistake with one, the mistakes last for millenia.
    This why Mickey Mouse’s dog will probably still be around longer than Keith Richards will.

    Amy Schumer talking to Chuck Schumer about cheese would be just fine, providing they were both chatting in the tumbrel cart on the way to the gallows gibbet. That’s something I’d pay cash money to hear. And see.

    Otherwise?
    O, if only someone had told people (and told them, and told them) that the second-, third- and fourth-order effects of COVIDiocy would be orders of magnitude bigger problems for them than the worst effects of the relatively weak virus itself.

    Oh, wait…

  11. There is still amazing resistance to Dr. Bartlett’s assertions about human beings and the exponential function.

    It’s just math, yet it seems to nearly cut any group of globalism resisters in half to mention “resource collapse”.

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