There is no energy transition happening

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[00:00:58] Es gelten die allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen. Wenn Leute über Transition und Renewable Energie haben, denke ich, dass Renewable Energie eine große Rolle spielt. Mit additional solar, additional wind. Aber wegen der Intermittentzündung braucht man einen Backup, um eine sustainable Power zu haben,

[00:01:24] all day long, wenn die Sonne nicht schwingen oder wenn die Wind nicht blöden. Das ist die Debunking Economics Podcast mit Steve Keen und Phil Dobby. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? That's Saad Shereida Al-Kabi, President and CEO of Qatar Energy, also Qatar's Minister of State for Energy Affairs, talking about the need for fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. And he's not alone in that. All the big oil companies are back focusing on oil exploration.

[00:01:54] But hasn't that always been the case? I mean, for all the talk about renewables, we are not stepping down from fossil fuels. So is there really an energy transition going on? It doesn't sound like it. That's this week. So the question today is, is energy transition actually happening? And if it is, which it might be in the UK, are we shooting ourselves in the foot as a result of this?

[00:02:21] But actually, it seems like if we look perhaps less in the UK, but if we look on a global scale, and particularly if you look in the United States over the last 30 years, we are seeing more renewable energy, but it's just getting added on top of the fossil fuel base, which just keeps on increasing anyway. So that is hardly an energy transition. So let me give you some numbers, Steve. In the UK, in 1994, we consumed 220 m-tos, which is millions of tons of oil equivalent.

[00:02:50] 30 years later, in 2023, that had actually gone down by about 18% to 180 m-tos. Whereas in the US, over the same period, over the same 30 years, they've gone from 1,300 m-tos to 1,590. So they've gone up 22%. Meanwhile, here we are, all, you know, holier than now in the UK, moving towards green renewable energy.

[00:03:16] So in the US, though, last year, 83% of their energy was fossil fuels. We're down to 73%. So they're using more energy and more fossil fuels than we are. Over the last 30 years, UK GDP has grown by 70%. US GDP has grown by 90%. So are we paying the price for going greener in terms of economic growth? Oh, you know, it seems like it.

[00:03:45] And the US is just ignoring it and getting on with life. And then Donald Trump, obviously, now is really pushing that even further with, you know, abandoning the idea of renewables and looking at getting cheaper energy from whatever source. Yeah. Who needs to worry about that pesky bloody global warming, honestly? Yeah. This is the basic story of renewables. As you say, we're not substituting fossil fuels with renewables. We're adding renewables onto a fossil fuel base.

[00:04:14] And, of course, it's also onto a manufacturing system, which has shifted dramatically from national to globalized production. And if you look at the global level, yes, the UK's consumption of energy has fallen. But it's now buying a lot more goods. It's importing goods it used to produce domestically. And that's where most of the shift has occurred. So if you look at the global level. So the net effect, actually, in the UK, which is as bad as anybody else. But you look at the global level.

[00:04:43] I mean, there's been absolutely no slowdown in the consumption of energy. Most of that energy is fossil fuels. And we're adding renewable on top of it. The correlation between energy and GDP. I mean, this is the point that I saw Bjorn Lomborg, who I prefer to call the gullible environmentalist. He prefers to call himself sceptical. I think he's gullible, whether he enjoys being fooled or not. It's another story.

[00:05:10] But he made the case in a recent presentation in Britain, in fact, that GDP is all about energy. And if you want to grow, you've got to use more energy. And yes, global warming is a problem. But you trust the experts and people like William Nordhaus and an outstanding intellectual with brilliant research that showed that three degrees of global warming by 2100 will reduce global GDP by a mere 3.12 percent. So you don't need to worry about that.

[00:05:38] Somebody who believes that a roof will protect you from climate change has told you there's nothing to worry about. So we all just move indoors. That was just moving indoors. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. But the first part of the argument that GDP is related to energy is right on that, though, isn't he? I mean, you can't grow faster without using more energy. That's the dilemma we face. Because since we're using fossil fuels for that energy, we're pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

[00:06:02] Anybody who believes the scientists involved in a huge conspiracy to make mythical data about that had better go back and prove scientific research in the 1800s wrong about the way in which carbon dioxide traps heat and prove that that person is part of a conspiracy to get grants today. The sort of bullshit that, pardon the French, that I have to put up with when I read the people who trivialise global warming and have fallen for that ridiculous set of lines.

[00:06:29] But, yeah, if we're going to use energy and its fossil fuels, we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That means that sunlight comes in, passes through the carbon dioxide, no problem, hits the earth, gets transformed into infrared, hits carbon dioxide molecules on the way out, gets re-radiated everywhere, doesn't go back into outer space again, and it warms the planet. So we're going through that.

[00:06:54] And if you know what climate scientists say about it, then, now, rather than the three degrees of warming, meaning a 3.12% fall in future GDP, they're saying three degrees is catastrophic. So the problem we face is, yes, GDP is fundamentally energy.

[00:07:12] We have been experiencing growing GDP every year for pretty much the history of capitalism, booms and slumps involved, but still the trend has been about a 3% per annum increase in global GDP, and equally a 3% increase in energy consumption.

[00:07:32] So if we realise instead that we have to stop adding solar and renewables in general onto the fossil fuel base and instead substitute new renewables, nuclear, et cetera, for the fossil fuel base, then by that definition, GDP is going to flatline. And that's if we're lucky.

[00:07:55] And if renewables, if we take the line that renewables will ultimately be cheaper, then that just means energy consumption will increase all that more, doesn't it, really? If we have cheaper energy, we'll just consume more of it. Well, yeah, and that's the thing. I mean, if you look at the history of all the so-called energy transitions, and the best people on this, people like Vaclav Smil, by the way, has done a huge amount of work on the relationship between energy and human living standards.

[00:08:23] But, yeah, when we – they're all saying the stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones. Well, the wood age didn't end because we ran out of wood. There were issues about – whether you look back to in the 1700s and 1600s, you were – yes, you were cutting down the forests.

[00:08:44] But, in fact, at the same time, they were growing plantations of forests to fuel the industrial processes of the 1600s and 1700s, which tend to use wood and peat rather than using coal. But when coal was found to be a major source of energy for the steam engine, that's – you needed the more dense form of energy from coal and from wood to run steam engines. Then that didn't mean we stopped using wood, okay?

[00:09:14] The coal was added on top of the wood. Now, over time, yes, we use less wood now for fuel than we did back then. But every time there's been a new energy source, it's been added to existing energy rather than taking away. And it'll be – it'll take – this is what's actually known as the Jevons paradox. Take it – you've heard of that one? Yeah. You have to remind me again. I have heard the term. Okay. Yeah, Jevons was – he was one of the founders of neoclassical economics.

[00:09:42] However, he was also intelligent and he was one of those classic 19th century polymaths. And he wrote a brilliant book called The Coal Question. And literally the second word in the title was coal, okay? And then the opening – I think the second word in the book was coal. And he said the basis of our growth of wealth is coal. And that was something he was aware of.

[00:10:05] Now, you look at modern neoclassicals and I've just actually recently written a review of a book for the Open Society Foundation's Substack page. And the book was called Energy, Growth, A Reckoning by a UK economist called Daniel Susskind. And he's completely ignorant of the role of energy in enabling GDP to grow

[00:10:30] and argued that you could have infinite growth on a finite planet, quite literally in the bloody book. So economists – Without energy. Yeah. Well, you see, infinite growth in GDP with no growth in – I'm sorry. If your energy stops growing, so does GDP. Well, unless we're all – I mean, things that don't consume any energy whatsoever. So, I don't know. We're all cutting each other's toenails or – Yeah. Yeah, well, that's the thing. I mean – You know, doing stuff that's – it's just personal service industry.

[00:10:59] That's the only thing I can think of, which is, you know, you've got a light switch. That's all. That's pretty much. Yeah. You need lots of happy endings to make up for that growing amount of energy. But what a way to go. But – Yeah, I mean – I'm not going to go there. As you know the word I substituted. Yeah, it's just insane to believe you can have growing GDP without growing energy. Now, this is one of the dilemmas. Can we continue growing energy?

[00:11:24] If you believe morons like Bjorn Lomborg, advised by idiots like Nordhaus and Mendelssohn and Toll and Co., you don't even worry about it. Tough shit. The real world will wake you up before you hit – well, before we hit 3K. More likely than by the time we hit 2K, it'll be obvious the catastrophic impacts here. We've got to stop pumping this waste into the biosphere. And if that means a fall in GDP, so be it. The alternative is a fall of GDP or death.

[00:11:53] Well, I guess the point is as well that the more we see renewables happening – I mean, we had this crazy idea, didn't we, I think, that oil companies would be part of this transition. I think, you know, even subsidizing oil companies – Oh, yeah, they're such principled people. I know. Exactly. So what were we thinking? And yet, of course, you know, we're seeing that all turning around now. So BP is saying, well, look, you know, our share price isn't doing too well. We need to get back into fossil fuels. So we're going to lower our investment in renewables.

[00:12:23] And all the other oil companies are doing the same as well. You know, we've been hit by the truth at long last. And of course, I mean, that just adds to this additionality argument, doesn't it? That if someone's creating renewables over here, the oil companies – I mean, they may have been paying lip service to it. But the reality is they're going to say, we've got all this infrastructure. What do we do? Check it away. We can still get stuff out of the ground. So obviously, we're going to keep on doing that. Yeah.

[00:12:46] There's no way that profit-oriented organizations are going to stop doing something when there's a profit to be made. But at the same time, I mean, they're pushing towards all sorts of cliffs. Some decades ago, you may have heard of a guy called King Hubert. And he had really got Hubert's Peak and the idea that if there's – given the assumption – and there's all sorts of discussions about how oil is actually formed. Is it biological processes?

[00:13:15] Is it something geological? So like when you – one of the reasons to say there might be a geological process is that when we're seeing so many meteors that it is full of hydrocarbons. Now, how did they get there? It certainly wasn't life processes being crushed by gravity. So there are open questions as to whether there is a fixed amount of oil. But King Hubert was making that call back in the 1950s, wasn't he? And he was right about conventional oil. But his timing was a bit out because he sort of said we were going to hit peak oil in the 1970s.

[00:13:44] You know, it was quite young in the 1970s. But I remember all the talk was about we're going to run out of oil. We're going to run out of oil. But then I look at numbers now. Yeah. And we are, what, about 68 million barrels a day we're taking out of the ground at the moment. I think we've got enough oil, they reckon, that is exploitable at a reasonable cost to last us about another 30 years. So we're – I mean, we're – I guess maybe our peak oil because it will get progressively more expensive. That's the argument. But in 30 years, we will have used it all up.

[00:14:14] Well, oil companies are going to go, okay, 30 years. And I think that's generally the way, isn't it, we think, well, okay, we can transition to other stuff. We've got 30 years to move to nuclear energy, for example. And obviously a lot of this is markets driven because they're worried about their share price. So they'll go, well, okay, we've got a 30-year transition plan. It seems to be less trendy these days to concern yourself about renewables.

[00:14:38] What we've really got to look at is this question about peak oil and how are we going to replace it, which, as you said, Hubbard was talking about in the 1950s. Yeah, well, I mean, his – I think he – his original predictions may have peaked in the 70s, but people who did later said a peak peak about 2000. In terms of conventional oil, that was correct. But, of course, the techno-optimists dump in and say, hey, we invented fracking, you know, and that involves, you know, oil which is locked in shale.

[00:15:05] And then you put enormous pressure and various interesting chemicals into the shale to break it. And the oil gets pressured out and you then suck that up. And then you start drilling horizontally to be able to make up for the problem that it's like sucking a sponge. Once you suck out one region of the sponge, it's dry. Well, you move to another part of the sponge and keep on doing it. So that's drastically increased America's oil output in particular.

[00:15:31] And America is now the world's largest oil exporter, including unconventional oil sources. So the argument of the techno-optimists is we'll always continue doing that sort of stuff. We'll always find ways to, you know, find new resources. And look, you know, when Antarctica melts, we can go and mine Antarctica. There's got to be a lot of oil below those 4,000 and 5,000 metres of ice on top of the continent, you know. And we might lose some of it to rising 70 metres of – aha!

[00:16:00] We can drill through 70 metres of extra water. Who cares about that? And think of all the submersible taxis we can sell in London. Yeah, so the intention – Elon will be doing those submersible taxis. Oh, yeah, for sure. So that figure about 30 years, by the way. So I asked an artificial intelligence engine. So it's feasible. This could be wrong.

[00:16:22] But they reckon 1,200 barrels – billion barrels, I should say – are likely to be economically viable at an average price of $50 per barrel. So that's where we're taking about 102 million barrels a day. So that's 30 years' worth, basically, of oil, which – at $50 per barrel, which is, you know, lower than the price of oil now by a long shot. And like the other side of things is coal. I mean, the amount of coal we've got – you know, it's rather hard to get coal into your petrol tank.

[00:16:52] But people are saying, well, if it gets so expensive to get the oil out of the ground – and this is the other issue. It's what's called the energy return on energy invested. The days of – was his name from the Beverly Hill brothers? Jeb? I can't think of his last name. You know, firing a shotgun at a rabbit and bang, up comes oil out of the ground. Those days are over. Now you've got to drill, you know, several kilometres down in the ocean. Incredible the amount of energy input to get the oil out of the ground.

[00:17:22] And there are strong arguments I'm seeing from various people I know in these areas that North Sioux oil is already – it takes more energy to get the oil out than you get out of the oil. So you get this unproductiveness. And then that's a bit of a dead end matter. Well, that is a total dead end. The only reason you do it in future is because you need energy in the form of oil to be able to drive your car.

[00:17:43] So it becomes not an energy source but a sort of a way of converting energy from one form into another that you can actually use it in our current technology. But like coal, there's 250 years worth, even at the current rate of growth of consumption of energy, but at least another two centuries of that. So if you wanted to completely ignore the possibility we're going to drive ourselves extinct, then you can continue down this track.

[00:18:09] And then what's been happening with solar and wind and so on is a bit of window dressing over this trend of ever-increasing energy consumption. So we are going to do that, aren't we? We are going to drive ourselves into – literally drive ourselves into oblivion. We're going to take a break on that cheery note and come back in a second. I'll tell you why we're talking about this this week as well. So stay with us on the Debunking Economics Podcast. As my colleague suddenly announced, I had to quickly add something to the meetings to continue to carry out without further ado.

[00:18:39] I had to find a solution immediately. There came Indeed in the sense. If it's about setting, it's all you need. With sponsored sites, your offer for relevant candidates is placed on the page, so that you can reach the desired people faster. Before I knew of Indeed, the candidates were often not optimal. Mal, mal zu langsam oder unterqualifiziert. Dann fing ich wieder von vorne an mit einer neuen Stellenausschreibung. Das kostet Zeit und Geld. Wie schnell ist Indeed?

[00:19:07] In der Minute, in der ich mit dir gesprochen habe, wurden weltweit 23 Einstellungen über Indeed vorgenommen, laut Indeed-Daten. Es gibt keinen Grund zu warten. Beschleunige dein Recruiting jetzt mit Indeed. Und Hörerinnen dieser Sendung erhalten ein Guthaben von 75 Euro für eine gesponserte Stelle, damit dein Stellenangebot mäßigbarkeit erhält auf indeed.de-podcast.de. Es gelten die allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen.

[00:19:33] This is the Debunking Economics Podcast with Steve Keen and Phil Dobby. So, Steve, the reason why we are talking about energy displacement not happening, that in fact we're just adding renewables on top of an ever-increasing thirst for fossil fuels. Hugh Ferguson is a listener, another one of those people. They're all over the place, aren't they?

[00:19:57] He wrote to say, have you read Jean-Baptiste Frazor's book called More, More, More? An All-Consuming History of Energy, which is making the point that we're exactly what we're talking about, that we are just consuming more and more energy, more and more oil, doesn't matter about renewables. And then there's a bit of a, you know, let's wait and see type attitude, which certainly, if we think that financial markets drive everything, I mean, the whole attitude, obviously, the financial markets aren't too concerned about the planet.

[00:20:26] All they're concerned about is what the markets are doing today and what they're going to do tomorrow. And obviously their whole attitude is, well, let's wait and see, you know, which then becomes the way that the companies, which are slaves to the financial markets, behave. So BP obviously says, well, you know, now we've got a chance. We can just go back to fossil fuels. That'll push up our share price. We're not going to get in trouble for that because our shareholders are going to love us. That's the fundamental problem we've got about the way society is structured, isn't it?

[00:20:55] We're slaves to the financial markets, basically. Yeah, absolutely. And that's going to be slaves that are in a slave ship that's about to hit an iceberg and sink. And that's the real tragedy of all this because the only way we can avoid this consequence is to decide not to continue behaving like a virus. A virus always finds a new host to move into, takes over the host. If the host dies, I've got to be contagious to move to another host.

[00:21:24] You know, growth of Borealis is the driving principle of viruses. The trouble is we've only got one. We're doing it on the body we're inhabiting. They're doing that on is called Earth. And if we make it unlivable for us, then we die out as well. And that is the great tragedy of this hard, hard link between energy and GDP. Can we do it with democracy is the other question as well. So it's interesting because Donald Trump, obviously, democratically appointed.

[00:21:53] A great Democrat. I was not part of a Republican. A democratically appointed Republican of sorts. True. True. We won't argue with that. But, I mean, he is all... So I was... I mean, whether he would have... Wasn't a bloke called Adolf, Luke? Same idea. Pardon me. Same principle. Absolutely. But then, sort of like I said, well, okay, we've been through the democracy part. I've done that now. I don't have to worry about that for four years. So let's behave a bit like an autocrat. And so he's actually now saying, you know, we're going to go through this transition period in America.

[00:22:23] Not talking about energy, just talking about generally. So shares are well down. The dollar's becoming worth less and less. This is all part of the transition because we've been in a period where we've spent too much government money. So it's going to be tough for a while. But don't you worry about it because, you know, the sunny uplands are coming. So that's almost like an autocratic approach in that he is ignoring the markets. And maybe... Well, they're ignoring the markets. We're doing what the markets want at the same time.

[00:22:49] As he's saying, all these oil companies and financial markets want us to continue in drill, baby, drill. And I think that's one of his slogans. I just wonder whether sort of like a more autocratic... I know I'm not, you know, saying that this is ideal, but a more autocratic approach is the only way we are going to reach a situation where we can save the planet. Because the markets and democracy are not going to get us there. Yeah. I mean, given the extent to which people have fallen for the bullshit of the fossil fuels industry, pardon me using a technical term there,

[00:23:18] voters, 40% of them and more are going to vote for somebody like Trump who reckons it's not happening. He's actually apparently banning the use of the word climate change in government documents and sacking meteorologists. What have meteorologists ever done for us, really? So, yeah, we're going to find out. We're not even going to know until after it happens that maybe it wasn't a good idea. But, yeah, democracy... And this is what we mean. We all benefit from the level of energy consumption we have these days. And this is...

[00:23:48] We've got so used to what we don't want to do without it. And it's, you know, obviously attractive to be able to consume that energy and have a lifestyle based on it. Most of us, you know, we will complain about our relative income compared to others. And some people are in absolute poverty given today's distribution of income. But if you're one of the middle class type of people who'll be listening to this podcast,

[00:24:11] the fact that you have a hot shower every day, you know, makes you wealthier in the sense of energy consumption than anybody except aristocrats 150 years ago. And go back 200 years ago and then aristocrats are going to be looking at envy and you hopping into a lift to go to your apartment block. Certainly, you know, Napoleon would have liked to have a 747 to get to Russia a bit faster.

[00:24:37] However, the energy consumption is what makes our lives attractive these days. And the thought to do without it is just appalling for most people. So they're going to vote against anything that says that way. And so, yeah, I think in a sense, autocracy is going to be the only way we survive this. And of course, that plays right into the hands of people, climate change deniers, who argue this is all being done by the World Economic Federation. It's all a takeover by the elite.

[00:25:06] It's thank God we're being saved by Donald Trump, who's not elite at all, really. What's the endgame of the elite? I never quite got that. What are the elite trying to do? Well, the elite, it's an interesting theory. It must be, they're trying to eliminate all the humans. I think that's the basic idea. The elites must be lizards. I think that's the theory. So the lizard class of Meeks and Davos. Shape-shifting lizards, that's right. So it's all a conspiracy. And of course, they're doing it for the grant money. Oh my God, the shit I've got to read on Twitter these days, honestly.

[00:25:38] But economists think that price is going to drive all of this, don't they? It's all about relative prices, yeah. So at some point, renewable energy will be cheaper than fossil fuels. So that's when all the fossil fuel companies say, well, we've got to get into green energy because that's cheaper than doing oil. But it's not like that, is it? It's interesting how, because oil obviously has gone up in price. I'll give you some numbers on this. So in 2024, it's talking about how energy consumption, oil energy consumption has increased.

[00:26:04] So yeah, global oil production in 1994 was 68 million barrels a day. Now it's 90, well, in 2023, it was 92 million barrels a day, which is the highest level of production so far. So we're at more and more, we're producing more and more. And from 68 to 92, that is quite an increase, isn't it? That's per day in millions of barrels. The cost over that time has gone from eight, this is inflation adjusted to today's prices, in 1994, $18 a barrel.

[00:26:35] Today, $72 a barrel. So even though the price has skyrocketed, we are still consuming more and more. So obviously, the benefit we're deriving from it is that many times more than the cost. So it's a price we're prepared to pay. Well, this is the other thing I've been, economists, I mean, I've realised I spent most of my life being far too polite to me a classical economist. Well, not lately. So let's not be too impolite to them. I mean, they're misinformed human beings, as far as you're concerned.

[00:27:04] Completely blind to the role of energy in production. And this is where my little one-liner quip came in. And labour without energy is a corpse. Capital without energy is a sculpture. So you can't have an increase in production without using energy. The efficiency, we're already at the limits of efficiency in many, many areas of our consumption. LED lights are far more efficient than incandescent, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:27:33] There are no energy returns to be had out of it. If you want more GDP, you need more energy. And that is what the fossil fuel companies want as well. So the whole idea that we're going to save ourselves by switching over from fossil fuels, when there's all the industrial technology you mentioned earlier, already set up there. No, we're not. We'd have to make a deliberate decision not to do it.

[00:28:00] And we won't make a deliberate decision until it becomes obvious that the choice is between making a deliberate decision or being exterminated by the impacts of climate change. So we'll keep on doing it until we hit the wall. And, yeah, and the economics of it all. So a company says, well, my goodness, you know, the price of oil has gone up so much. So our energy costs have gone up so much. Thank goodness we are more efficient at how we process or use that energy within our business. So we've got energy saving measures. So we are more efficient at our production.

[00:28:29] That means we can output more. So we're getting more revenue in. So that helps cover the cost of the increased energy. I mean, that's the dynamic that's at play here, isn't it? So companies aren't feeling it because they're getting more efficient at what they produce, which means they're bringing in more revenue. And so we will keep on paying more for oil so long as industrial processes become more efficient. Well, there's a limit to the efficiency. I mean, this is where the second law of thermodynamics comes in.

[00:28:55] And waste is an essential part of exploiting energy. You can't use energy to do work unless you also generate waste at the same time. And I'm no expert. I'm aware of it. I'm aware of its importance. Most economists haven't got a clue about it. So they are not aware of this dilemma that there's a limit to the efficiency. And I've said many, many processes are already hitting those limits.

[00:29:23] So there isn't any gains to be had from energy efficiency at the aggregate level. There are some cases where you'll get better returns for some industries. And I hate to go back to a Musk example again. But if you find that you can use a rocket to move people from one place on the planet to another far faster,

[00:29:46] then you get a form of efficiency compared to using an intercontinental airline to get from one point to another. But you won't see like a tenfold increase in the efficiency of oil usage so that we can use 10% of the amount of oil and get the same amount of GDP. That simply isn't possible. The only way to continue getting more GDP is to use more energy. Yeah. And human behavior isn't going to change either. Yeah.

[00:30:14] I like my hot showers. That is everybody else. Yeah. And I like going to see the rallies in Australia. We do that every couple of years. And goodness knows how much energy we consume on that flight over. And as far as that flight is concerned, there's no choice. You've got to use oil because planes can't fly that far. And then there's all the other stuff as well, you know, that we need fossil fuels for. All those byproducts, you know, the bitumen, the plastics, the cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, you know, all of these things rely on oil. We can't do it without them. Yeah.

[00:30:43] And I think we have to make a deliberate decision that we can't continue doing that. And we haven't done that yet. And we won't do it until such time as it becomes bleedingly obvious that the consequences of continuing to consume energy at the rate we do now, let alone increasing it over time, which we're doing at the rate of about 3% per year. Yeah. Then, you know, it's, it's, it's, then we go extinct and, you know, food, food systems collapse, et cetera, et cetera, horrific elements like that.

[00:31:13] And with the time we realize it, the forces we're going to unleash in terms of the impact of a completely scrambled climate compared to what our civilizations establish themselves in. It's quite feasible. We will not be able to turn those forces around. So it's, it's one of that's, again, it's another thing about a virus. A virus, if it's killing the host and there ain't no other host nearby to move to, the viruses don't stop. Okay. They just keep on doing what they do.

[00:31:41] They can't evolve within one host not to take out that host. So we, and the thing is there's, you know, billions of humans for the viruses. There's only one planet for us. So I think in the UK, I think the figures about 40% of our energy consumption is renewable. Now there'll be days when it's 100%. Actually some days when it's 110%, which is a problem in itself, but it averages out at 40%. Obviously there's other days when maybe it's only 20% when the wind's not blowing and, you know, we rely on fossil fuels.

[00:32:11] So that whole, you know, peak and trough demand thing as well, which makes it more difficult. So do you think that, I mean, we're fooling ourselves with that number because maybe it won't go any higher than 40% because we are reliant on that, that base load or we will just consume more energy. Sort of like, you know, that whole point that we started with, we're just adding to it. So we'll just, so 40% might be it. And, you know, Britain's peaked. We're at peak renewable rather than peak oil.

[00:32:42] Yeah. And, or maybe not, but there's, I mean, there's issues about, you know, how renewables are irrenewable. Simon Marchow's work on that front. There's, I've got a conflict with other researchers on the same front, but he argues that it's not a renewable industry. It's a minerals-based industry. So we go from fossil fuels to minerals as the way we extract energy.

[00:33:04] Fossil fuels, we're using machines to extract oil and coal and then put those in our processing systems and finally use them for production. With fossil fuels, we're using minerals to make, you know, towers to make the photovoltaic cells, et cetera, et cetera, and the batteries. And we may, the minerals are not renewable. So we have a, you know, a huge issue in making that transition anyway.

[00:33:34] But the, if we really took the situation we're in seriously, which we're not, then we'd have to drastically reduce energy consumption, deliberately deciding not to use energy. And the only way to go to achieve that is to focus upon redistribution because you can't keep society together. If you say, oh, well, the bottom 50% have to starve to death then because they can't afford food and they can't afford fuel, let them die.

[00:34:01] They'll take your society out with them, thanks very much, which is what's happened historically as well. When localized civilizations have collapsed there. One of my favorite examples there was going to Tahuacan in Mexico. And in, you know, that was one of the advanced civilizations well before the Aztecs in Mexico.

[00:34:21] And the archaeologists are finding that they were just, when they look at the homes of the elites in those times, they were burnt, quite possibly burnt alive. Because they continued leading you down a track, which meant that ultimately you exhausted the local food production systems. The poor started to starve.

[00:34:44] They took it out on the rich because the rich were ones who maintained all the rituals and said, you know, that's what we have to continue doing to maintain our civilization. The civilization collapsed. And as it goes down, the people on the bottom rise up and slaughter the ones on the top. So they've got the energy to do that? Well, you know, maybe not necessarily the pitchforks who come in. Remember that little discussion we had with Nick Honeur?

[00:35:07] So that is the sort of world we face if we continue down this track of continuing to add energy sources rather than replacing the fossil fuels. So that means legal changes. That means... Again, back to your point about authoritarian. Yeah. It's not going to happen through a democracy, sadly. Well, the only countries that are going to have a chance of doing it in any collective sense are going to be places like China.

[00:35:33] Because you've got a history of accepting, you know, high power, the top of the society. You know, they went from feudalism to capitalism by passing through socialism, which was another form of feudalism. So there's an extent to which the Chinese... And also a huge part of Chinese culture was built by needing agricultural irrigation systems to be done by the ruling classes to enable the food production levels that they have.

[00:36:03] So there's several thousand years of history of that, the Great Wall, keeping out the barbarians, et cetera, et cetera. So the extent to which there's an awareness of a collective society behaving, an individual being... Having their needs met within the constraints of maintaining a collective system. China's got that ideology in place. They may well be able to make those decisions. But America, Europe, England, Australia, forget it.

[00:36:33] The democracy is always going to vote for, you know, throwing another broiler into the oven rather than realising we've got to turn the oven off. It's always going to be voting for more, more, more. Yeah, absolutely. So on that cheery note, thanks very much for putting us... Taking us down that direction, Hugh. I knew this wasn't going to end well because there is... It seems like there is no answer until we realise it's too late.

[00:37:00] By which time, it's too late, sadly. We'll leave it there for now. Good to talk, Steve. Catch you next time. Okay, man. Bye. The Debunking Economics Podcast. If you've enjoyed listening to Debunking Economics, even if you haven't, you might also enjoy the Y Curve. Each week, Roger Hearing and I talk to a guest about a topic that is very much in the news. It's lively, it's fun, it's informative. What more could you want?

[00:37:30] So search the Y Curve in your favourite podcast app or go to ycurve.com to listen.