Energy featured

Just Stop Oil !? Part 1 – Gasoline

By Nate Hagens, originally published by The Great Simplification

July 17, 2023

Just Stop Oil protest

Recorded July 10th, 2023

Description

In this must watch Frankly, Nate illustrates how a reduction in the demand for gasoline will not – as commonly believed  – result in a 1:1 reduction in the demand for oil. This is contrary to a widespread perception, which much growth in the Electric Vehicle industry has been based on, about the correlation between a decline in gasoline usage resulting in an overall decline in oil production and CO2 emissions. While a significant portion of oil refining results in gasoline, we need to be aware of modern civilization’s deep dependencies on the remaining products that all come from the same barrel of oil. Only then can we understand and plan for feasible pathways to reducing oil production and consumption within the confines of a growth-dependent complex adaptive system. How can movements such as Just Stop Oil better reflect the reality of the current oil production system and our economy?

Stay tuned next week when Nate shares 7 potential paths to a less oil-dependent future.

A special thank you to Joris van der Schot, John Rowan, Robert Rapier, and Art Berman for helpful input on this video.

Show Notes

01:13 – What is oil, we use over 30 billion barrels per year

01:40 – Products from a barrel of oil

02:30 – Gasoline is 40% of a barrel of oil, what makes up a barrel of oil

03:07 – Oil refining is a sequential process

04:33 – Catcrackers, Hydrocrackers, lack of refinery investment

06:08 – China scaling EV’s for air pollution mitigation

06:44 – Just Stop Oil

07:50 – Klaus Schwab

 

Teaser photo credit: Just Stop Oil activists walking up Whitehall towards Trafalgar Square on Saturday 20 May 2023 – I should add that they seemed to allow at least some of the buses to pass them. By Alisdare Hickson, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=132699645

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens is the Executive Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF). Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians, and systems thinkers, ISEOF assembles roadmaps for understanding how human societies might adapt to lower-throughput lifestyles.

Nate hosts the podcast The Great Simplification, where he has conversations with experts in energy, ecology, government, technology, and the economy to provide a systemic view of the world around us.

After ten years in finance, Nate left Wall Street to study the interrelationships between energy, ecology, and economics—and the implications for human futures. He was the Managing Editor of The Oil Drum, one of the most respected websites for analysis and discussion of global energy supplies and implications of the upcoming energy transition.

Tags: energy demand, gasoline, Just Stop Oil

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PattiMichelle Sheaffer
PattiMichelle Sheaffer
3 years ago

The IPCC SR-15 lays out the facts on carbon in the next 7 years. So which of these two seems more compatible with civilization, that is, dropping 50% of carbon footprint in 7 years?

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