I realize the shortages you enumerated have different reasons , but a highly respectable French engineer, Jean-Marc Jancovici , has been repeating for years that we are heading into an inevitable age of "degrowth".

It is not an "if". It is now inevitable.

He is very pro alternative sources of energy but he clearly explains nothing can replace petroleum right now. Petroleum is used to build everything. Gas for your car. Your clothes. Plastic bags. Our beloved computers. Everything uses petroleum one way or another.

We are doomed.

I’m just happy I’m too old to go through all the bad times that are coming.

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icantevenhold 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can definitely replace petroleum for many of the things you listed - or find alternative technologies that don’t require it. You can live without plastic bags or plastic clothes for instance.

It’s just that a lot of companies (and people) get very rich from it and they invest A LOT into making sure that petroleum alternatives are not viable.

Of course there are some things were petroleum cant be easily substituted but I would argue the vast majority of use cases doesnt require it.

Energy is probably the most important and there it’s laughable easy to replace.

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toasty228 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> You can definitely replace petroleum for many of the things you listed - or find alternative technologies that don’t require it. You can live without plastic bags or plastic clothes for instance.

Not really, not at this scale, or this price and convenience.

Most things you enjoy today are affordable because we have fossil fuels. The entire supply chain of every single product you can imagine is very dependent on fossil fuels. We're not even capable of making proper roads or tires without petroleum derivates, without these two alone nothing gets to you. Investigate a bit, you'll find petroleum and petroleum derivates a prerequisite of virtually everything.

Renewable energies look like a solved problem today with wind and solar, but it seems like everybody forgets that the entire supply chain to make them is 100% petrol dependant from mining raw materials to the final delivery. In a world without petrol these would be orders of magnitude more expensive, if even possible at all.

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danaris an hour ago | parent [-]

> Not really, not at this scale, or this price and convenience.

Not at this scale and price and convenience.

We can absolutely do so for higher prices. And with solar panels becoming more efficient, cheaper, and more ubiquitous with each passing year, we may find that a lot of those "higher prices" were really just "higher energy input costs", and we will be able to come very close to what we have now. (I don't know for sure—this isn't an area I keep abreast of.)

	▲	toasty228 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You might want to read the whole comment, renewables are only cheap now because every single step of their creation involves fossil fuels. Once everyone wants 60kg of lithium in their car and 100kg for they're home we'll quickly run into the exact same raw ressources problems. If everything gets 10-100x harder and more expensive to make I can guarantee you the world will become a very different place.

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eikenberry 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Wouldn't the most important thing be the nitrate fertilizers? Do we have anything to replace them?

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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