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The Perfect Storm – Part 1

A Nexus of Climate, War, and Energy

Russian oil imports represent less than 3% of US crude oil imports, while Hawaii’s share of Russian crude consumption represents up to one quarter (25%).

The United States moved forward this week with a ban on Russian oil imports, and without the participation of allies in Europe.  Officials said President Biden had struggled for days over the move amid deep concerns about accelerating the already rapid rise in the price of gasoline hitting the pocketbooks of U.S. Consumers, and Hawaii’s residents will be especially hard hit by energy price increases not only in transportation, but in their electricity and water utility bills, services also dependent on fossil fuels.

Hawaii’s residents, more than any other state, will experience  higher fuel and energy costs due to Russia’s war with Ukraine.  It’s no state secret that …“Isolated by the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii is the most petroleum-dependent U.S. state”; source: U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Blood for Oil

Oil and it’s cousins natural gas and coal are 19th and 20th century energy essentials that made and still enable the world’s economies.  They are also primary and secondary reasons wars are fought.  Between 1912 and 2010, countries fought 180 times over territories that contained—or were believed to contain—oil or natural gas resources.

The energy conflicts ranged from brief, nonfatal border violations to the two world wars. Many of these clashes—including and not limited to World Wars I and II, were exemplified by the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay (1932-1935), the Vietnam War (1963-1975), Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait (1990), the U.S. invasion of Iraq (1990 and again in 2003), the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), and numerous international conflicts in which countries fight to obtain and maintain petroleum resources.


Oil, Gas, Coal an Unsustainable Addiction

Fossil fuels—including coal, oil, and natural gas currently supply about 80 percent of the world’s energy.

The foundations of these fossil fuels are finite. Formed millions of years ago from the carbon-rich remains of animals and plants, as they decomposed were compressed and heated underground in various forms of fossil fuel energy: oil, gas, coal.

These same energy resources we take for granted today are also extremely costly to the world’s economies, all humankind, and the environment and corresponding biosphere in which all living things on planet Earth are interdependent — this is not tree-hugger talk, it is scientific fact and a reality of a living world which many humans take for granted.

As an energy sector, oil, gas (aka Big Oil), and secondarily coal,  has had an unprecedented and historic free ride at the public expense. It’s certainly true the fossil fuel sector has delivered on its promise of energy for all, Gas Prices March 2022but at what price; a question only recently asked and answered, as the energy status quo has become increasingly unsustainable by any reasonable measurement.

The Oil and Gas sector has been and remains the world’s most politically powerful and enriched sector of the global economy; otherwise the following would not have been possible:

  • the fossil fuel industrial sector receives in excess of $5.6 Trillion USD (adjusted for inflation) annually in global taxpayer subsidies per World Bank / IMF studies. .
  • the fossil fuel industrial sector operates mostly liability-free from the global effects of its resource extraction, production-transportation, and the consequences of consumers combustion costs to the environment, society (US alone spends over $1 trillion USD public health costs addressing health costs associated with fossil fuel pollution), certain and escalating climate costs (GHG emissions).
  • The EPA reported this year about 8,000 people die prematurely each year because of the fine particles and ozone precursors from air pollution fuel power plants produce, adding that power plants cause about $80 billion a year in health costs.
  • Over 170 million Americans who were adults in 2015 were exposed as children to harmful levels of lead (previously a prime component of gasoline until banned). The contamination of air and water by lead particulates from gasoline emissions has been linked to high blood-lead levels in widespread early childhood lead exposure.  Extensive research has determined that lead exposure has had a significant impact on cognitive development in children between 1940 and 2015.  Leaded gasoline for on-road vehicles was phased out starting in the 1970s, but not finally banned until 1996. The enormous health costs to the public from this fossil fuel pollutant is still being calculated.

  • And then there are the mounting costs directly linked to GHG emissions from a globally fossil-fueled economy.  By some measurement, still too costly to fully calculate as emissions continue to rise, and as do the effects on the planet. Costs are compounding daily from the  effects of a fossil-fueled world in terms of social, economic, climate and environmental costs.   Some experts and governments have limited this quantitative task to just calculating the social cost of carbon (fossil fuels; from extraction to tailpipe, and to power plant emissions), however, today’s climate related costs extend well beyond social impacts.

In short, what happens when climate change factors are baked into the economy and these changes affect economic outcomes, especially hard hit, lower and middle income families.  Cpi Inflation1These impacts go well beyond the price of groceries or a tank of gas, and extend into agricultural productivity.. damages caused by sea level rise (presently about 40% of the world’s population lives within 50 miles of an ocean coastline).. environmental destruction on a global scale.. a decline in human health and labor productivity — and even this is a limited measurement of the impacts on humans and the planet economists use to determine CPI and other economic benchmarks to measure to the full weight and cost of our current fossil fuel dependency.

To understand the true cost of continuing to rely on fossil fuels to power the world, that’s a work in progress, but you don’t need an economist to tell you we’re in trouble. The deeper our understanding, the greater the need for shift action away from humankind’s reliance on GHG / polluting energy sources, and the essential need to limit the destructive consequences that comes with living under past energy assumptions.

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