2 thoughts on “Monday Message Board”

1. Hope

   Earlier this year I alerted readers to intriguing hints that solar energy may be going into overdrive, with Chinese solar panels now so cheap that mass adoption no longer depends on favourable public policy of any kind, let alone complex subsidies. Ordinary households and businesses in Pakistan just went ahead offgrid, to the tune of 32 GW of capacity in two years.The goverment scrambled to catch up and regularize the popular samizdat boom.

   There were hints that the same process has started in Africa, with a large mismatch between official counts of grid-connected solar and much more credible Chinese export statistics. Ember have now confirmed this: https://www.electrotech-revolution.com/p/the-electric-fast-track-for-emerging

   “The true scale of this shift [to solar] likely exceeds what official data captures. Change is outpacing the centralised statistics: for example, small solar panels on balconies and rooftops go largely unregistered in national figures. The gap between panels imported and capacity officially reported is large and growing. In eight out of ten CVF countries, [climate vulnerable LDCs] cumulative solar imports since 2017 are at least three times the installed capacity recorded in the most recent official statistics.”

   Some small and poor countries are outpacing rich countries in the adoption of clean electrotech :

   ”Small emerging economies are already at the frontier of electrotech uptake across supply, demand and connections: Namibia (35%) and Togo (18%) lead in solar generation, Jordan and Kyrgyzstan in battery sales, and Nepal (70%) and Sri Lanka (64%) in EV uptake.

   Our analysis shows that 46% of CVF nations, measured by electricity demand, have leapfrogged the United States in solar penetration, and about 51% have surpassed it in economy-wide electrification.”

   The kicker is that all this was happening before Trump’s war with Iran. Almost every country, and huge swathes of business, are now grappling with a massive oil and gas price shock. A hundred thousand spreadsheets are being rewritten, with higher and more volatile prices for oil, diesel and gas. Many investments tied to fossil fuels are being downgraded, and ones in renewables and electrotech moved up. Togolese farmers may not have spreadsheets, but they are subject to the same mark et logic.We know this because they have already started the big switch.

   Politics will speed things up. Togo has been run for 20 years by a man called Faure Gnassingbé. He may not have spreadsheet skills either, but he must be competent in assessing political risks. Dependence on Chinese banks for financing low-maintenance electrotech is looking a lot better this week than dependence on Big Oil.

   “Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!” is the Easter greeting of Orthodox Greeks, with the response “ληθῶς ἀνέστη!“ Doubting Thomases – always a large community – may wish to be less categorical in their hope: “Χριστὸς ἀνέστη?” – “Μπορεί.” (Maybe.) Hope comes hard today. Take it where you can.

2. Realism.

   Given that the globe, people and economy, cannot cope or generally claims (in economic circles) that it cannot cope with a 20% drop in crude oil supply and a 20% drop in natural gas supply and percentage drops in production of associated resource streams from helium to fertilizer) then perhaps we can assume that getting the global system wholly, substantially or even partially off oil and gas is now functionally impossible. I mean impossible for humans and this global system either politically and/or in terms of political economy and/or in terms of real resource requirements.

   The rhetoric of moving to sustainability does not seem to line up with the rhetoric, from different players perhaps, that the loss of 20% of crude oil and 20% of gas is an insurmountable disaster and essentially “people will die”.

   AI LLM quote below.

   “Economist Steve Keen has warned that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz, caused by the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict, could trigger a catastrophic global famine and severely threaten the survival of modern, industrial civilization. 

   Keen, known for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, argued in an April 2026 interview on The Diary Of A CEO podcast that the disruption to critical supplies flowing through the Strait could have apocalyptic consequences. 

   Here are the key points of his warning:

   • Fertilizer and Food Supply: Keen highlighted that 20–30% of the world’s fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz. He estimated that losing this amount would cause a 10–25% reduction in global food production, leading to global famine.
   • Civilizational Threat: He warned that without the synthetic fertilizers that transit this area, the Earth could not support its current population of 8 billion, reducing the sustainable population to only one to two billion people.
   • Timeframe: Keen warned that if the closure continues, this global famine could begin in as little as two months.
   • Energy and Transport: Beyond fertilizer, the disruption would cause major energy shortages, and he noted that countries like Australia, with limited oil reserves, would lose the ability to transport food from farms to cities. 

   Keen argued that the conflict has exposed the fragility of the globalized, interdependent economy.” Google AI.

   “Steve Keen (further) argues that modern agriculture is so dependent on synthetic fertilisers that even a partial disruption could trigger a systemic collapse. His claim that the population could drop to 2 billion is based on the “pre-Haber-Bosch” carrying capacity of the Earth. 

   While a 30% reduction in fertiliser availability might seem manageable, Keen highlights several cascading factors that he believes would lead to such a drastic outcome:

   • The 30% “Systemic Shock”: The 20% to 30% of fertilisers passing through the Strait of Hormuz (like ammonia and sulphur) are not just finished products; they are critical inputs for global production. Keen warns that losing this fraction would immediately cut global food production by 10% to 25%, which is enough to cause widespread starvation because the system has no buffer.
   • Fertiliser-to-Population Ratio: Keen points out that of our current 8 billion people, roughly 6 billion are only alive because of the Haber-Bosch process (synthetic nitrogen). He argues that if the synthetic fertiliser supply chain breaks, the planet’s carrying capacity reverts to its organic limit of roughly one to two billion people.
   • Depletion of Reserves: Countries like India only maintain about two to three months of fertiliser reserves. If imports are cut off, their agricultural output would collapse almost instantly, leading to the first “truly global” famine.
   • The Energy Link: The crisis isn’t just about fertiliser; it’s about the oil and gas needed to transport food. He uses Australia as a prime example, noting that even if food is grown, the country only has 30 days of oil supplies. Without fuel, food cannot move from farms to cities, effectively reducing the “survivable” population to those who live near local, non-industrial food sources.
   • Immediate Timeline: Keen predicts that because of these integrated dependencies, a total closure of the Strait would lead to a global famine starting in as little as two months.” – Google AI.

   Personally, I think the 2 billion prediction (for when?) would not arise solely because of an indefinite Strait of Hormuz closure. One or more other global disasters would have to occur, including a near-term or “this century ” global climate disaster. These other disasters, additively, are more likely than not.