#climateDiary
Drill
down
into
the
world’s
most
popular
soap
opera
DALLAS
where
geological
time
meets
the
short
term
economics
and
politics
of land,
religion,
family
and
oil
🛢
https://overcast.fm/+BAwtRvvc9M
The British coal age began in earnest about 1750, I think. That’s about 11 generations (of 25 years).
Trade in oil dates back to at least the same era in Yenangyaung in Burma https://allouryesterdays.info/2022/08/26/august-27-1859-the-oil-age-begins/
But crude oil extraction for European industry began in Romania in the 1850s. That’s about 7 generations ago.
https://www.rferl.org/a/romania-oil/31510946.html
(Although it’s fewer generations for me. My great great grandfather, and almost namesake John Schofield, was 31 in 1857. His son Benjamin would have been 9.)
…But oil really hit its stride after WW2, and it occurs to me that the modern oil industry will have flared and sputtered in a span of about two human lifetimes.
Somewhere there’ll be someone who was born in 1901, when Spindletop in Texas began gushing, whose child born after WW2 will go on to live to the mid 21st C, despite all that’s ahead of us, just long enough to see the oil industry sputter out.
…Oil extraction at scale won’t sputter out because we’ll have run out of oil, but because the burning of unimaginable quantities of it will have made it impossible to extract affordably.
We’ll have created climatic conditions where it will often be too environmentally volatile to extract oil (or gas), so there will be intermittency. And that will have extraordinary cascading effects.
We’ll have chosen an #energyTransition, but without really choosing.
Get ready
#climateDiary
Imagine how expensive things will become when the externalities of oil finally get priced IN.
We need a different economics before our own stupidity forces it on us.
Biden/Trump won’t bring it.
bin Abdulaziz Al Saud won’t bring it.
Kishida won’t bring it.
Macron won’t bring it.
Meloni won’t bring it.
Modi won’t bring it.
Scholz won’t bring it.
Sunak/Starmer won’t bring it.
Trudeau won’t bring it.
von der Leyen won’t bring it.
Putin won’t bring it.
Xi Jinping won’t bring it.
🤷🏼♂️
#degrowth
I grew up in the 70s watching the Generation Game.
This ☝
️generation game won’t be such a “good game, good game”
Can’t seem to face up to the facts
Tense and nervous and can’t relax
Can’t sleep, ’cause the bed’s on fire
Don’t touch oil, just add more live wires
Psycho killers, qu’est-ce que c’est?
Fa, fa, fa, faaa, fa, fa, fa, fa, far wetter (in places)
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run away… #climateCrisis
https://vis.social/@gka/111946360735864816
#startMakingSense instead
Jonathan Schofield