@alex_p_roe there is an enormous contingent of people in the west who say they want change, who still fly and drive and eat meat with abandon. I don’t do those things, but I do do differently delusional things.
It’s a collective predicament which we meet as atomised individuals deluged by advertising telling us to consume
@ChrisMayLA6 the UK exports 85% of the oil it produces because it doesn’t have the refinery capacity to meet its own demands, so it buys more than it exports at higher cost. Oil underpins everything we take for granted. And globally, oil EROI has slid from 1:100 to 1:15 in the past 80 years. It becomes loss making at about 1:10.
No amount of political wishful thinking or strategic shift in monetary policy is going to change material reality or magic up economic dynamism
@urlyman @ChrisMayLA6 reducing oil miles is a good thing, but trade and specialisation should help with the wealth of nations, no?
As we reduce our oil use, we shall spend less buying finished product back, and burning it. That'll be good also.
And as others progress, we shall export less, and that is also good.
@Photo55 The sheer scale of resource throughput that our modern economies require to stand up (because of structural choices) is waaaaay out of fit with safe limits. The overt mandate to grow ensures that throughput will stay high – differently composed sure, but still way beyond safe limits.
Until we face up to fitting demand to what is actually sustainable – what the IGP call “living in the flow” – then contemporary notions of ‘sustainability’ are largely illusory
@urlyman @ChrisMayLA6 UK refinery capacity has shrunk significantly over recent years, down from 18 in the 1970s to 4 today. The most recent casualties were Grangemouth and Lindley. Seemingly it's not economic to refine here anymore.
While some of that is due to the decline in domestically extracted North Sea oil and gas, at the same time the Gulf states have heavily invested in refining their own crude, so capturing the value added. I suppose we should recognise this as a form of decolonisation.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2025-0235/CDP-2025-0235.pdf
@marjolica @urlyman @ChrisMayLA6
Halves the transport miles, which account for substantial oil burning themselves, so good for that as well.
@Photo55 what halves the transport miles? Can you clarify?
@urlyman @marjolica @ChrisMayLA6
Making the stuff someone wants where the crude emerged, and sending only that.
Vs sending the crude, and then having the bits they want shipped back or th3 bits someone else wants shipped on. Halfish on average, not exact,
@marjolica and because burning fossil fuels is accelerating the erosion of the basis upon which economies of scale can exist at all, even countries which have a CAPEX head start are just narrowing the window within which any strategic shift that ignores thermodynamic reality can stand up.
Can we muster any new thinking at all?
@ChrisMayLA6 not in the corridors of power, anyway
@urlyman @ChrisMayLA6 @marjolica Seems those haunting the corridors of power sold their souls to oil and coal (and a few others) a long while ago. #neoliberalism
