The Carbon Paradox: Will Fossil Fuels Run Out Before Solutions Arrive?

Ernesto van Peborgh
6 min readDec 14, 2024

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Racing Toward the Abyss: Why our addiction to oil is driving us to collapse, and why clean energy isn’t the silver bullet we hoped for.

Imagine playing a game where you know the rules are rigged. The deck is stacked, the clock is ticking, and the players around the table all seem to know the stakes but act as if they don’t. That’s the game we’re in right now: the global fossil-fueled economy. The question is no longer if this game will end, but how. Will it end with a hard stop because we’ve depleted the resources that power it? Or will it end in a blaze of collapse because we’ve overheated the planet to a point where life becomes unsustainable?

Here’s the reality: our economy runs on fossil fuels, and we’ve built it that way for over a century. Today, about 80% of the world’s primary energy comes from coal, oil, and natural gas. Nuclear, Hydro and other Renewables, which many assume will take over, only accounts for about 20% of global energy use. Worse still, renewable energy — wind, solar, hydropower — currently makes up a fraction of that pie. Despite all the talk of a green revolution, we are still very much a carbon civilization.

The data is sobering. Back in the glory days of oil discovery, one barrel of energy invested could yield 100 barrels in return. Today, we’re lucky to get six barrels for every barrel spent. That’s an energy return on investment (EROI) decline of over 95%. Meanwhile, the percentage of GDP spent just to maintain this energy system has doubled in the past decades. We’re drilling deeper, farther, and at much greater cost — financially and environmentally — to keep the lights on.

But the problem isn’t just that we’re running out of cheap oil and gas. It’s that burning these fuels is pushing the planet toward an uninhabitable future. According to the Paris Agreement, if we want even a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, we can only emit about 250 gigatons of CO₂. At current rates, we’ll blow through that budget in just a few years. To comply, 80% of the world’s proven fossil fuel reserves — worth an estimated $20 trillion — must stay in the ground.

Think about that for a second. What would happen to the global economy if $20 trillion of assets suddenly became worthless? This would make the 2008 financial crisis — a $2.4 trillion disaster — look like pocket change. And so, world leaders, energy companies, and financiers are stuck in a multipolar trap: everyone knows the long-term consequences of burning these fuels, but no one can afford to stop. The system is rigged for perpetual growth, and the only way to keep it running is to keep burning.

But there’s a deeper problem here. Renewable energy is not truly renewable — it’s replaceable. Wind turbines and solar panels don’t grow back like oak trees or hemp fields. They require enormous amounts of energy and materials to build, maintain, and replace every 20 years. And what powers their production? You guessed it: fossil fuels.

And what about the infrastructure needed to support these so-called clean energy solutions? Building a single wind turbine demands an immense amount of diesel to mix the concrete for its foundation, forge the steel for its tower, and operate the 450-foot cranes that assemble it. Solar panels, hailed as the saviors of our energy future, come with a carbon footprint baked in from the mining, refining, and manufacturing processes — all powered by fossil fuels. And let’s not forget lithium batteries, which rely on resource-intensive extraction and leave environmental scars that few want to talk about. Even if the world decided to go fully electric tomorrow, we lack the transmission infrastructure to deliver that electricity to cities — a project that would take decades, not years, to complete. The hard truth is this: our modern lives are entangled with a century-old petroleum-based infrastructure, from the plastic in our phones to the synthetic fibers in our clothes. Transitioning away from it is not just a technological challenge; it’s a systemic one, and the clock is running out faster than we can lay the groundwork for what comes next.

So while renewables can help slow the pace of the game, they can’t change the rules. They can’t replace fossil fuels at the scale needed to sustain our current way of life.

This is the multipolar trap at its core. We can’t stop burning fossil fuels without halting the economy. But we can’t keep burning them without crashing the planet. And so, we press forward, hoping against hope that something — anything — will save us.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of a world leader. You’ve just read the same facts I laid out. You’ve been briefed by scientists, economists, and advisors. You know the stakes. The fossil fuel economy is unsustainable and doomed to collapse, either from resource depletion or climate catastrophe. And yet, you also know that halting fossil fuel production would plunge the global economy into chaos.

You have two choices:

Option One: You comply with the Paris Agreement. You leave 80% of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground, wiping out $20 trillion in assets. The resulting economic collapse would make the Great Depression look like a hiccup, throwing billions of people into unemployment, poverty, and unrest. The political consequences would be catastrophic, and history would likely remember you as the leader who pulled the plug on modern civilization.

Option Two: You press the accelerator. You drill deeper, harder, and at greater cost, betting that innovation will save the day. You hope that renewable energy, battery storage, or carbon capture technology will arrive in time to transition us to a post-carbon economy. But you know, deep down, that this is a gamble. Wind and solar aren’t scalable at the level we need, and they depend on the very fossil fuels we’re trying to phase out. Still, you tell yourself: maybe artificial intelligence will figure it out.

This is where we are today. Global leaders aren’t ignorant, and they’re not in denial. They see the abyss ahead, yet they keep their foot on the gas. Why? Because the system incentivizes it. Political survival depends on economic growth. Economic growth depends on fossil fuels. And fossil fuels, as we’ve seen, are running out. This isn’t a climate crisis. It’s a systems crisis.

But let’s talk about hope. Despite the grim outlook, I’m not ready to give up. There’s one wildcard in this game: artificial intelligence. AI is already transforming industries, solving problems we thought were intractable. Could it help us reimagine energy systems? Could it find ways to decouple economic growth from carbon emissions? Could it even help us develop technologies that we haven’t yet dreamed of?

These are the questions that keep me hopeful, even in the face of overwhelming odds. As a leader, I would have no choice but to bet on hope — on the ingenuity of human beings and the tools we create. Because the alternative is unthinkable.

And so, I leave you with this: what would you do? Would you halt the economy to save the planet? Or would you press forward, betting that technology will save us? These are the stakes. This is the game. And time, my friends, is running out.

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Ernesto van Peborgh
Ernesto van Peborgh

Written by Ernesto van Peborgh

Entrepreneur, writer, filmmaker, Harvard MBA. Builder of systemic interactive networks for knowledge management.

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