We see the banners, protests, and activist stunts everywhere, with the same message: Just Stop Oil.
At a certain level, I agree with that sentiment. I consider myself an environmentalist. In fact, I consider myself a ‘deep green’ environmentalist – someone who advocates some pretty extreme measures in order to save the planet.
But the people promoting some of these ideas really need to consider what they’re saying. For anybody who might just blindly accept the ‘Just Stop Oil’ slogan as a valid short-term goal, below is a (admittedly crude) description of what the world would be like if we ‘Stopped’ oil.
By stopping oil, I’m assuming they mean stop producing it, or using it or any of its by-products. Below is a list of the most important underpinnings of civilization that would be affected if oil was ‘stopped’:
INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING
Immediate Consequences
- International shipping would plunge to zero. ALL ocean-going freighters use petroleum-based products to power their engines. There may be a few highly experimental large-scale ‘Green’ ships, but they are inconsequential.
Longer Term Consequences
- If you think the supply chain issues are bad now – our current woes would look like a tiny blip in comparison. There would be virtually ZERO shipping between North America and Europe, China, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. Kiss your TVs, cars, iPhones, and cheap clothing, virtually anything produced by those countries, goodbye.
OVERLAND TRANSPORT
Immediate consequences
- Transport by land would virtually cease. ALL semi-trucks and trains are powered by petroleum-based products. Again, there are experimental electric versions that may SOMEDAY be viable, but not for a long time.
Longer Term Consequences
- What the halting of ships did to international shipping, the halting of land-based transport would do to local shipping. The supply-chains would truly be dealt a death blow. Materials and parts for manufactured products would be either completely unavailable or so expensive as to be unprofitable, so all manufacturing would grind to a halt. Millions would lose their jobs. And since a lot of food and medicine is hauled by train or truck, supplies of both would be completely choked off.
FOOD PRODUCTION
Immediate Consequences
- Food production would plummet – world-wide. ALL farm machinery: tractors, combines, utility trucks, and delivery trucks, run on petroleum-based products. Farmers would be forced to return to the use of horses or oxen to plow and harvest their fields. As with everything else, there may eventually be electric replacements, but at the moment, there are none.
- Petroleum-based products are a vital component of fertilizers. Without those fertilizers, the yield of crops will be a fraction of what it is now. It’s estimated that something like half of the world would starve without them.
Longer Term Consequences
- The drastic reduction in crop yields, the difficulties in plowing, planting, and harvesting, combined with the shutdown of international and local transportation, would quickly lead to world-wide famine. Millions, possibly billions, would die.
AIR TRANSPORT
Immediate Consequences
- Air travel would plunge to zero. ALL large airplanes currently run on petroleum-based products. Again, the tiny number of experimental electric versions currently available are inadequate and inconsequential.
Longer Term Consequences
- There would be no air travel, no visiting other countries. Nations dependent on tourism would go bankrupt. Millions of airline workers would be unemployed. And the one avenue of shipping not choked off by the halting of ships, trucks, and trains, would also cease. Nothing would be shipped anywhere. Note that this would include life-saving supplies such as medicine.
PERSONAL TRANSPORTATION
Immediate Consequences
- More than 90% of personal automobiles would have to be parked. Since a large percentage of the electricity for many areas of the world comes from petroleum based products, many (possibly all) electric ones would have to be parked as well. Since petroleum products are still used to mine the material used in electric vehicles, and the transportation system is used to ship them to factories, electric vehicle production – in fact all vehicle production, would cease.
Longer Term Consequences
- Commuters would be forced to depend entirely on walking, bicycles, or electric public transit. Again, if the electricity supply is generated by petroleum products, even public transit would be unavailable. Asphalt is made from petroleum, so the very roads that vehicles travel on, from semis to bicycles, would fade away.
FISHING
Immediate Consequences
- Large scale fishing would virtually cease. ALL fishing boats run on petroleum-based products. All products taken from the sea are shipped to plants and stores in the usual way, using petroleum-based machines.
Longer Term Consequences
- The availability of fish and other seafood would plunge almost to zero. The curtailment of all shipping and the drastic cut in the productivity of farms have already cut off the vast majority of the world’s food supplies. Now you can add seafood into that mix.
INDIVIDUAL LIVES
The consequences would be highly dependent on the location where you live. Those lucky enough to have electricity not produced by petroleum products (hydro, solar, wind), might get along. Note that even those methods are highly dependent on diesel-powered trucks, cranes, bulldozers, etc. for installation and maintenance, so while they might run for a while, eventually they would have to be abandoned.
- Paradoxically, some of the poorest people on Earth, those who still plow the fields with oxen and produce their own food, might experience little change.
- Billions of others would die, of a combination of starvation, heat, cold (much heating and cooling is done using petroleum products), or war for the tiny set of resources that are left.
In short, if we were to ‘stop’ oil, our current human civilization would quickly cease. We would enter a true dark age, plagued by war, famine, death and destruction. It’s not a scenario any sane person would wish to pursue.
THE ALTERNATIVE
So, am I saying we should blindly continue using oil until we destroy the planet? Not at all. But we need a concrete long-term plan if we’re going to salvage some kind of soft landing as we discontinue its use. So-called ‘green’ energy sources will undoubtedly be part of that solution. But they are completely inadequate to power the monstrous behemoth that our civilization has become. What we really need is for that structure to be dismantled and rebuilt at a far smaller scale, probably together with severe limits on population growth.
- If we drastically curtail our demand for ‘stuff’, we will no longer require oil to manufacture it, store it, and ship it.
- If we grow our own food locally, we will no longer require that food to be transported from elsewhere.
- If we walk, ride a bicycle, or take public transportation to where we’re going, we will eliminate the need for cars, and therefore:
- the oil and gas they require to run
- the oil required to mine the materials to build them
- the oil required to ship those materials to the factory
- the oil required to actually manufacture them
- the oil required to ship the finished product to the end user
- the oil required to build and maintain the massive infrastructure (multi-lane highways, cloverleafs, parking lots and parkades, and on and on) required to support their use
- the oil required to create spare parts to repair them
- the oil required to cart them to the dump at the end of their lives
- The same applies to thousands of other personal and household goods that we now take for granted, but that we could easily do without. They all depend on the massive, complex infrastructure that is destroying the planet.
Yes, we need to stop oil, but in order to stop oil, we first need to stop a way of life that depends completely on oil – the two are intimately intertwined. That way of life is so entrenched that stopping it will be exceedingly difficult, and there are many powerful vested interests that will fight tooth and nail against it. It will be difficult, but not impossible. I believe it can be done, if we have the will. It must be done – the planet is literally at stake.
But, of course, nobody’s fighting for that to happen. It’s easier to take the simplistic approach and blame oil. Then we can pretend that somehow our current over-consuming lifestyle can continue unabated, with pixie-dust providing the energy and materials to keep it going.
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