What could happen if we just stopped oil? Six billion might die

By Paul Homewood

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h/t Paul Kolk

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Many of us have been exasperated by the antics of Just Stop Oil protesters. Now, I believe that these are well-meaning and committed to their cause and I am sure that they think that they are trying to save the planet in the best way they can think of – gain publicity, get people talking and influence politicians.

But what would happen if we literally just stopped oil tomorrow and did without the natural resources on which the world, its economies and populations depend? The answer: most likely six billion people would die within a year. 

I am going to assume the “oil” in Just Stop Oil means fossil fuels – so oil, gas and coal. I am also going to assume that we have today’s technological knowledge and infrastructure, so we are talking about stopping fossil fuels now, not at some unspecified time in the future.

Day 1 – no more mining of coal; the world’s oil wells shut down; the world’s gas fields likewise. The first to feel the change would be gas users.

Gas stocks held above ground are typically not that high. So the UK would quite quickly, say in 10 or 15 days, have to turn off its gas distribution system as it would be unable to maintain pressure.

This would mean in turn that the domestic supply would be shut down too – gas would stop flowing, and some 21 million households (74pc of the population) would no longer have heating, hot water, and cooking facilities. In their panic, people might turn to electricity for their cooking and heating, but wait…

The UK electricity grid relies on natural gas as its “buffer” energy source. Every day, demand varies according to consumer demand, and the other main energy supplier, renewables, are highly variable and can only power the grid when gas is picking up the lion’s share of the gap between their output and consumer demand.

So the moment that the main gas distribution system is de-pressurised, the grid-balancing system fails and power cuts ensue.

It is impossible to gauge how extensive these power cuts would be, but the grid would be so seriously compromised, possibly fatally, that they may be widespread and permanent.

Electricity demand would have rocketed through the switch to electric space heating, cooking and water-heating, and so it seems very likely that the sudden excess demand would be undeliverable, and therefore that the grid would spiral into uncontrollability.

No electricity means no communication systems – no mobiles, no TV, and no running water.  With no power and no heating, vulnerable people start to die.

Initially just the elderly in their own homes, then in hospitals when the diesel back-up generators run out of fuel, but then new existential problems emerge for ordinary people in the form of food availability and distribution.

Day 25 – I’m probably being generous with the timing here, but diesel and petrol are likely to have run out by day 25. This means that food distribution would fail, and so the population, most of which are entirely dependent on bought food, begin to starve.

In dire national emergencies, international help is often forthcoming, but in this case, this scenario is taking place, in largely identical ways and timing, across the developed and developing world. Only isolated rural communities, agriculturally self-sufficient, would be relatively unaffected. So no international rescue mission.

Day 50 – in the urban world, many people would be near death from starvation. In the 50 days since the ending of fossil fuel supply, law and order would have broken down, and I suspect that mass conflict and slaughter would have been taking place with the increasingly desperate search for the means of survival.

But disease would be on the rampage too, with no power, no water supply and no sewage flow, so cholera, dysentery and all the other Victorian diseases of crowding would take over.

Day 100 – just three months or so since the world just stopped oil – my guess is that around half of the world’s population (say four billion people) would be dead. The first to die would be the urban poor; then the middle and upper classes, with money and status becoming increasingly irrelevant with the passage of time.

The survivors would be largely rural, able to live off local agricultural produce, or live off dwindling food stocks.

Accessing food and safe water for urban dwellers (about 55pc of the 2023 world population) would be nigh-on impossible, as all the normal distribution routes for food would have failed, and storage facilities (chillers/freezers) would also have failed without electricity.

Pumped water would be unavailable, so access to clean water would be close to impossible.

Day 365 – perhaps a further two billion people would have starved or frozen to death, leaving, say, two billion left alive; remaining food stocks would have been exhausted or spoiled, and the inevitable breakdown of law and order would have meant many would meet a violent end.

Competition for scarce resources, so elegantly solved by the invention of markets and prices, would be replaced by murder and mayhem. The means to reverse the just stop oil experiment would have gone, and the future of humans on the planet would be as insecure as at any time in human history.

The mass extinction would have robbed societies of their cultures, education and survival techniques. A new dark age would ensue.

I have summarised what is a nightmarish scenario. But everything I claim is well supported by fact. For those interested in understanding the intricate interweaving of humans and fossil fuels, I would recommend Vaclav Smil’s book How The World Really Works.

This is not a book written by someone with a particular interest in fossil fuels; it’s just a very well-balanced description of how modern civilisation actually works (as the title claims).

The world took two centuries to build the fossil-fuel based energy infrastructure. That infrastructure represents a material part of the investment savings of the world; it provides humans with huge amounts of flexible, usable energy at extremely modest cost.

This affordability has reached right down to the world’s poor and is transforming their lives – China and India being stand-out examples.

Here’s my question: do the nice, well-meaning people of Just Stop Oil understand how the world works, or not? If they do, they are nihilists; if they don’t, then why are they disrupting the smooth running of our society, promoting an extreme course of action of which they have no understanding?

If, by the way, my analysis is wrong, they should enlighten us on how an immediate ban on fossil fuels will allow civilisation to continue and flourish.

To be clear I am not suggesting that the world is forever in the grip of fossil fuels. Far from it.  History tells us that human civilisation is a story of constant change.

Humans are inventive and adaptable, and fossil fuels are also finite. So in due course new, cheap, non-fossil-fuel energy sources will be developed, new ways of storing and transporting energy will be perfected, and fossil fuel use will slowly become a thing of the past; a transition from one world to another – a better one.

But I suppose the slogan, “Stop oil when the technological and economic conditions allow it, consistent with an improvement in human wellbeing and that of the planet” is not such a catchy phrase.

Neil Record is a former Bank of England economist and author of ‘Sir Humphrey’s Legacy’

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/just-stop-oil-what-happens-six-billion-might-die/

To be fair, Just Stop Oil would say they merely want to stop new drilling for oil, rather than stop all production overnight.

But that would merely bring about the same results in ten years time or so, as by then most of the existing drilled reserves would be quickly drying up.

They believe that by then we will all be living happily with intermittent wind and solar power.

But what if they are wrong? It will be too late in ten years time to suddenly stand up and say “Sorry, we got it wrong. Can we have some more fossil fuels please?”