Denmark’s energy minister called on citizens to reduce their energy use amid the ongoing Middle East conflict.
Oil prices jumped to over $100 a barrel on Thursday, raising fears of rising inflation.
“If it is not strictly necessary to drive the car, then don’t do it,” the minister stressed to Danish citizens.
I truly do not give a shit until the blame for all the cars is shifted from citizens to employers.
Let this entire thing please normalize remote working again.
Uhm, excuse me, but how are you supposed to click and type, while you’re not situated in a depressing cubicle, after driving 1½hrs to get to the depressing cubicle?!
Not to mention the economic terrorism remote workers are performing every day by not going out to lunch and happy hours in dismal chain restaurants concentrated in business districts we call downtowns. Will no body think of the shareholders?!
ime, plenty of people who choose to live downtown if they could afford to. but parasites have cornered housing supply to insure noone will own anything ever again
One good thing about this shitty timeline. Renewables and biking might get a big push from this. When oil becomes scarce then using it to create long term value instead of burning it for a single use becomes much more attractive.
not in the US. the govt seems disconnected with reality
Even there actually. Lots of states and companoes are suing the trump admin, because they had big plans for solar and windfarms that are now being stopped or delayed because of trump. Capitalists actually love renewables because they are super profitable. Its only the old oil money inheritors that dont.
I thought that renewable energy had at least two problems for capitalists:
- Renewable energy is getting cheaper and cheaper, which makes returns on investment decline over time.
- Renewable energy is easily distributed, working against concentration of wealth (the whole point of capitalism).
Most renewables in the US are still company owned afaik. Solar farms have absurdly small operating cost, so you just invest once and then endlessly milk it for 15-25 years. All you gotta do is mow the grass or let some sheep graze it and do some checks from time to time. Wind is a lot more complicated to maintain, because its mechanical, but the land use is much much lower so you can just pay a farmer to get him to let you use a few small plots of his land to put some turbines up. Its a win win for you and the farmer.
It lowers global prices for solar panles, wind turbines, heat pumps, electric vehicles and so forth in the mid to long term. That is going to impact the US as well.
Cycling is a local matter anyway.
You’re a lost cause anyways. We’re talking about saner countries.
“seems”
The Americans are fscked. They only have their cars.
Setting aside mass transit use, the relative impact of higher oil prices in the US will, I’d imagine, probably be higher than in somewhere like Europe, because Europe already has relatively high prices because it has hefty fuel taxation in the places that I’ve looked at, whereas the US has relatively low fuel taxation. That’ll make the relative price change of the cost of the crude oil changing be larger in the US.
https://moneyweek.com/economy/uk-economy/budget/604621/what-makes-up-the-price-of-a-litre-of-petrol
This has fuel duty in the UK (a consumption tax) being 39% of the price of fuel. Then VAT is 17%. So right there, that’s over half the price at the pump, 56%.
The cost of the gasoline itself — and the crude required is only one input of that — is only 29% of the price at the pump.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=10&t=10
For mid-2024, this has federal tax of 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline, and average state taxes — sales and consumption tax in the US varies by state and municipality — of 32.61 cents per gallon of gasoline.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU000074714
Average fuel price in February 2026 is $3.065/gallon.
So taxation makes up about 17% of the price of fuel in the US.
EDIT: That being said, the US is also, these days, a net oil exporter. So there will be winners in the US, like oil extraction companies — but it won’t be vehicle operators.
Bikes are already at the limit. We need transport options for longer distances that are not a lot worse than a car.
Most US local governments are borderline dysfunctional and can’t build anything. I would love this but I personally see more promise with e-bikes any anything else.
I think the best solution is to allow neighbors to get together and build their own cheap bike infrastructure but that’s still considered a fringe idea right now.
Our governments would rather block solutions than implement them.
Maybe something on rails to cover large distances between cities and towns, or like a really big car that can fit 50-100 people. If only such things existed…
Not between cities - within a city. If I can’t get around without a car once I’m there I’m going to drive my own car. Besides most trips are within a metro, if people only drove between metro areas that would be a big difference.
Both is good. With the exception of NYC, most light rail and bus networks are focused on commuter traffic in the US and trying to go anywhere other than downtown and back home is a struggle. Crosstown routes are rare or require several changes and 2-3 hrs vs 15-30 minutes by car or bicycle.
I’m not against it. However if you need a car when you get there you may as well drive. By contrast if you can not drive near home sometimes you won’t (like if your car breaks), and the better the local system is the more likely you are to use it
though the bad options most of us have is one reason not to use it.
Maybe one day we’ll figure out how to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, and increase economic stability by transitioning to electric vehicles…
if we have to still use oil, i dont see why not focus on buying from norway? dont they still have oil too? or is it just too little?
Why not transition to using public transport AS much AS possible instead? Most people literally do not need their own car, if we would have a good public transport system.
I specified “electric vehicles”, of all types. Could be electric cars, buses, trams, ebikes or whatever.
I started commuting by bus when this started. The trip takes 10 minutes longer, but it’s time I would have spent doomscrolling before work anyways. Now I can doomscroll on the bus instead.
Unfortunately if I take the bus, trip goes from 30 mins to 2 hours…
If there’s no traffic, it goes from 10-15 minutes to ~1+ hour (most of which is outside of the buses). Ebiking is great though (~40 minutes and not as affected by traffic - sometimes its faster than driving because of that).
That’s great if you can managed not to get blended to death by the 10k lb. monster trucks you’re forced to share the road with.
Almost all of the ride is on a trail on the way to work. On the way back, I just go through residential streets that are pretty much empty by the time I go home (where its too dark to take the trail). Moved to where I do because of how convenient it is for commuting. Used to do the ride when I lived further away and had to ride on some busier roads and the perpetual construction on one of the roads made a stretch one-lane that shouldn’t be.
Commuting by train myself. I’ve picked up audiobooks. Lovely way to start and end a workday. Highly recommended.
When we moved to a developed nation from the US, I started commuting via train. My reading logs for books have gone through the roof. I also get to practice languages and use the time to generally enjoy my day. Driving a car never allowed this kind of living well.
I’m up to about 230 days car-free and it’s wonderful.
Good fucking luck. We are married to our cars.
