Six billion people would perish inside 12 months if energy from fossil fuels was suddenly switched off all around the world.
That’s the nightmare scenario author and former Bank of England economist Neil Record pictures for the planet if overnight the Just Stop Oil protestors got their way.
“I am going to assume the ‘oil’ in Just Stop Oil means fossil fuels – so oil, gas and coal,” Record writes in London daily The Telegraph. “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.”
Record, aged 70, an early international specialist in currency risk management and the chairman of the Institute for Economic Affairs, asks: “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?” Following is an edited version of his article.
Day 1 – coal mining, oil wells, and gas fields shut down worldwide The first to feel the change – in the UK – would be gas users. In 10 or 15 days, gas distribution systems – industrial and domestic – would be unable to maintain pressure and would have to be turned off. Some 21 million households (74% of the UK population) would no longer have heating, hot water, and cooking facilities. As a consequence, electricity demand for cooking and heating would rocket. The grid would be seriously compromised and likely spiral into uncontrollability. Renewables couldn’t cope either. 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.
Day 25 – Diesel and petrol are likely to have run out. Food distribution would fail. The population, most of which are entirely dependent on bought food, begin to starve. Only isolated rural communities, who live off the land, would be relatively unaffected.
Day 50 – Law and order would have broken down. Mass conflict and slaughter would have been taking place with the increasingly desperate search for the means of survival. Disease would be on the rampage, with no power, no water supply and no sewage flow. Cholera, dysentery and all other Victorian diseases of crowding would take over.
Day 100 – 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. The survivors would be largely rural, living off dwindling food stocks. Accessing food and safe water for urban dwellers (about 55% 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. Law and order would have broken down. 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.
“The world took two centuries to build the fossil-fuel based energy infrastructure,” Record writes. “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.
“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.
“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.”