Energy Blindness: Dare to See the Reality?
Nate Hagens, in this keynote, (minute 10:30) highlights what he calls “energy blindness” — our inability to fully grasp the pivotal role energy, especially fossil fuels, plays in our modern world. This blindness perpetuates the illusion that these finite resources are endless.
His talk is like throwing open the shutters of a darkened room, allowing the blinding light of reality to pour in. The realization is both illuminating and jarring, much like staring at the sun after a lifetime in shadow.
While hearing Nate I compare this to a treadmill set to ever-increasing speeds: Without a radical shift, he warns, we risk being hurled into an unsustainable future.
His message forces us to confront our assumptions, rethinking not only energy’s role in our lives but how we might step off this relentless treadmill before it’s too late.
Imagine you’re running on a treadmill. At first, it’s set at a steady pace. You can jog comfortably, maybe even enjoy the rhythm. But then someone starts turning the dial faster and faster. Soon, you’re sprinting just to stay in place. You’re gasping for air, and deep down, you know you can’t keep this up forever. That’s where we are with oil.
Back in 1970, the United States hit what geologists call “peak oil.” It was a moment when domestic oil production reached its highest point before entering a long decline. The graph below tells the story clearly: conventional oil production from the lower 48 states (shown in green) peaked at 9.64 million barrels per day in 1970 and began to fall. Then came the oil shocks of the 1970s, high prices, and a national wake-up call that led to new drilling technologies and a second wind for production. By 1985, Alaska (yellow) reached its own peak at Prudhoe Bay, contributing significantly to the nation’s supply.
Fast forward to 2008, when U.S. production hit a low of 5.07 million barrels per day. This marked the turning point for what’s now known as the “shale revolution” — represented in red on the graph. Shale oil, or light tight oil, has since driven a dramatic surge in production, pushing total output to a new high of 13.1 million barrels per day in 2023. Offshore oil from the Gulf of Mexico (blue) also plays a role, but it’s clear that shale is the main driver of this latest boom.
But here’s the kicker: the treadmill’s speed is still increasing. And we’re getting awfully close to the edge.
Shale oil is extracted from source rocks, the geological birthplace of oil that conventional wells had already tapped and drained. Think of it like getting the last drops out of a ketchup bottle by banging it on the counter. It works, but it’s not exactly a sign of abundance. What’s more, shale oil comes with a steep cost: its wells deplete rapidly, losing around 80% of their production within the first 18 months. This means companies have to drill more and more wells just to keep up.
Here’s the grim math: if U.S. oil companies stopped drilling tomorrow, domestic oil production would plummet by 39% in the first year alone, followed by another sharp drop in subsequent years. Even with ongoing drilling, the decline rates are getting steeper and steeper, as shown by the sharp slopes in the graph’s red sections. The treadmill is speeding up.
The term “Red Queen Effect” comes from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, where the Red Queen tells Alice, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” In evolutionary biology and systems thinking, the Red Queen Effect describes a situation where constant effort is required just to maintain the status quo, rather than to make progress.
And then there’s the “tech” question. Proponents of shale oil often tout technological innovation as the great savior — arguing that bigger and better drills can overcome the challenges of depletion. But let’s be clear: those advances are more about speeding up extraction than increasing the overall amount of oil available. If the oil industry were a soda fountain, we’ve simply swapped out the straw for a bigger one. The liquid might come out faster, but the tank is emptying just as fast.
Now let’s zoom out — way out. Over the past 300,000 years, Homo sapiens have relied on the trickle charge of photosynthesis to power our lives. Plants convert sunlight into energy, which then flows through ecosystems, supporting everything from the food we eat to the fires we burn. But in the last 200 years, we’ve hit the jackpot: fossil fuels.
This “carbon pulse” represents millions of years of ancient sunlight, compressed and stored underground, which we are now burning through at a breathtaking rate. From the perspective of human history, it’s as if we’ve stumbled upon an enormous trust fund and decided to blow it all on a wild spending spree.
The problem is, that trust fund is finite. And as we reach deeper into the well — literally and figuratively — the costs are mounting. Not just the economic costs of extraction, but the environmental costs of pollution, climate change, and ecosystem degradation. Our culture, meanwhile, remains energy-blind. We’ve built our entire way of life on the assumption that cheap, abundant energy will always be there. But the treadmill doesn’t care about our assumptions.
Now let’s move to the second part of this story: the so-called “green revolution.” Despite the rapid expansion of renewable energy, global energy demand continues to outpace these efforts, leading to increased consumption of fossil fuels. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), renewable electricity capacity additions reached an estimated 507 gigawatts in 2023, almost 50% higher than in 2022. However, this growth is insufficient to meet the rising global energy demand, resulting in a persistent reliance on fossil fuels. Even as renewables surge in percentage terms, they’re barely keeping up with the treadmill of global energy consumption. The phrase conjures images of a world powered by wind and solar, but the truth is more complicated. As the second graph shows, there hasn’t been a green revolution so much as a green addition. New energy sources like wind, solar, and hydropower (shown in red, orange, and blue) are being added to the mix, but they’re not replacing fossil fuels. In fact, global energy consumption continues to rise, and so does the use of coal, oil, and gas.
Here’s a crucial point: terms like “renewable” can be misleading.
An oak tree or a chicken is renewable because it regenerates naturally. But a solar panel or a wind turbine? Those are better described as rebuildable. They require complex global supply chains, rare earth materials, and periodic replacement every 20–25 years. They’re no more “renewable” than a pickup truck.
What’s more, renewable energy is mostly electricity, which accounts for only about 20% of global energy use. The other 80% powers industrial processes, transportation, and countless other functions that don’t easily convert to electricity. And while renewable sources are growing quickly in percentage terms, the sheer scale of global energy demand means that fossil fuels are still increasing in absolute terms. We hit an all-time high in coal production just three months ago.
There’s also the issue of energy fungibility and properties. Clean energy may promise a future free from fossil fuels, but few people realize the staggering amount of petroleum-based infrastructure it relies on. Think about it: how much diesel must be burned to mix the concrete or produce the steel for a wind turbine? How much energy goes into manufacturing and installing solar panels or producing the lithium for your Tesla battery? And even if the entire world decided to go electric tomorrow, the transmission lines to deliver that electricity to urban centers don’t yet exist. Building them would take decades — we’re looking at 30 years at best. Meanwhile, our entire modern existence is built on a 120-year-old petroleum-based system, from the roads we drive on to the plastic in our cell phones, the materials in artificial heart valves, and the synthetic fabrics in our clothes. We’re racing to replace something we’re not yet capable of living without, and the transition isn’t just challenging — it’s an existential dilemma.
Fossil fuels like oil don’t just provide energy; they’re the raw material for over 6,000 products, from the asphalt on our roads to the plastic in a Tesla. Replacing oil isn’t just about finding new energy sources — it’s about rethinking the entire material basis of our civilization.
So far, as the graph shows, the energy transition has been more of an energy addition. The green segments on the chart represent incremental progress, but they’re dwarfed by the growing layers of coal, oil, and gas. And here’s the kicker: the link between energy and GDP is 99.1% correlated globally, and the link between GDP and material consumption is even tighter at 100%. In other words, our economic system is fundamentally tied to increasing energy and material use.
As of today, all the built infrastructure in the world — the buildings, roads, sports stadiums, and museums — outweighs all living things on Earth. Plastic alone is twice as heavy as all the animals on the planet. These statistics aren’t just staggering; they’re a warning. Without a fundamental shift in how we produce, consume, and think about energy, the treadmill will only get faster.
So where does that leave us? There are two dominant narratives about oil and energy. One says, “Drill, baby, drill.” The other says, “Innovate our way out.” Both are rooted in the same underlying belief: that we can outpace the treadmill.
But the truth is, we need a third narrative — one that acknowledges the limits of our finite planet and seeks to adapt accordingly. This means rethinking not just how we produce energy, but how we use it. It means investing in renewable sources, improving efficiency, and preparing for a future where the treadmill finally slows down.
Because if we don’t? Well, we all know what happens when you can’t keep up on a treadmill. You fall off.
Before You Leave!
If you relate to this story, I would greatly appreciate you clicking the 👏button. You can hold it down up to 50 claps and this will help this story get more exposure and this narrative more support. If you feel the calling please reach out privately or leave a comment below
Thanks for your support!