Also driving the price up are the Ansarallah advances in Yemen and today's Ansarallah bombings of the Saudi East-West pipeline. The market expects that they'll use military force to attempt to close the Bab al-Mandab strait, with their past attempts at closing the strait, stated goals of closing the strait and newly reported use of Claude to develop medium-range ballistic missile guidance software as evidence.
Would be surprising if they don't in fact. In fact it is perhaps quite straightforward to skip Claude and rather tell Qwen 3.8 27b to create an angry birds clone where you track the bird... or something along the line. Pretty sure they are also very good at smuggling various assets through borders, and where not.
The EU imports 97 percent of their crude oil, which is needed to refine diesel and still import a further 10% of their refined diesel.
It is somewhat amazing that Europe hasn't embraced electrification even more but taxing diesel use to encourage using it wisely is a smart geopolitical play given their situation.
Taxation on crude oil and its byproducts is largely for each member state to decide, as is electrification policy.
In some cases the EU steps in; for example with CO2 emission quotas, electrification targets, and largely regulating how countries operate in between them (for example, if France sells energy to Spain, it has to follow some bloc regulations if I am not mistaken).
I find it somewhat amusing how people insist in commenting on EU as if it was something it is not.
I personally think forcing less well off people to use worse modes of transport (or not travel at all) is not a well thought out scheme for reducing environmental impact.
For me, it doesn't matter because my main mode of transport is an EV - but it's a luxury I can afford. Many people that live around me cannot.
It just means these people donate more of their money to the wallets of already absurdly rich owners of companies like Shell and Exxon - instead of using it to enrich their own lives (see the increased profits these companies are making since Iran).
But at least on a positive note, EV sales in my country have never been higher since Trump invaded Iran, so it is somewhat triggering the well-off to finally make the ("scary") switch to EV's.
A basic income does not really change the amount of money people have available. You exchange paying some amount of taxes and handing the money to people qualifying for government benefits for paying more taxes and handing out money to everyone. You may save some money on the bureaucracy for figuring out who is eligible for how much benefits, you may make life easier for people having to apply for benefits, but you also give up the ability to match benefits to individual circumstances making some better and others worse off, you may create some additional incentive not to take a job, ... But to a first approximation everyone will have the same amount of money available.
Often the incentive to take a job would be better under Basic Income as there's so many cliff edge benefits that phase out quickly as you work/earn more in the current system.
(None of it was possible. We haven't gotten the purported DOGE dividend, or tarriff refunds. Though the $500 Obamacare 'refunds' are in the works and the soldiers all got some $1776 bonus... and everyone's suddenly privately funding the Trump accounts as a bribe to him, I guess.)
Yesterday I saw a full-sized 100% electric Volvo semi-truck here in Zurich. It was owned by Aldi and making a delivery to one of their stores. It was a bit louder than I expected but nevertheless impressive.
It really depends on the context and the country. In practice, most people in my country live within 100 km of a commercial harbor (river or sea), so 320km for most foreign imports it seems enough. Grocery store chains have to be within 2 hours from the packing center, so for food too, 320km seems enough. Barely, but enough).
It's optimised for distance to and from the depot and in-city store locations. Presumably it charges at the depot while loading.
Trucks have a lot more space for batteries, so with EV trucks it's all about balancing range and weight for the task. More range means less useful load.
Some Australian electric prime movers (truck that pulls the load on trailers) are using a fork lift in / fork lift out swappable giant battery pack - 10 minute change over from truck to charging station, freshly charged unit back to truck.
"War is merely the continuation of policy by other means."
"Since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object, the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration. Once the expenditure of effort exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced and peace must follow."
----------
Clausewitz would have been flabbergasted by this war. If we're being overly generous to Trump, we might call it an act of senseless passion. The reality is probably worse. The U.S. still hasn't seemed to figure out what it's policy goals or winning conditions are, aside from the president's desire to be an all-powerful winner. Trump seemingly places no value on his nation's blood or treasure, so it might be a very long time before he begins to feel the effort his nation is expending isn't worth the value of his own vanity.
The U.S. needs to have its magna carta moment and reign in its mad king. Maybe that will come with the mid-terms, or maybe this war will drag on for two more years. Trump isn't going to stop it, now or after the mid-terms. As far as he's concerned, the pain isn't his.
The political objectives for the war were Netanyahu's who managed quite the move in getting Trump to commit to this. But still an open question how much his motives were rationally objective or senseless passion.
Maybe we (and Clausewitz) needlessly rationalize past leaders as those rational actor ignoring their emotional passions. Trump puts emotions and passions right there in the open, not bothering with plausible denialities. Hegseth is open and proud on his "we do it to show we are masculine" doctrine. But, none of them is a new kind of guy like no one ever heard about before. Emotional irrational men were always present, always seeking power, sometimes getting it. We just strip that side of them, pretending it was calculated and rational.
I'd say this should push Americans towards smaller, more fuel efficient cars and EVs, but I know better. The American consumer seems immune to price pressure.
This reminds me of when people were calling the UK a bunch of wimps for complaining about record high heat of like 80F, just because Americans have been dealing with 100F or more for years (over 100 years in some cases). So what that prices in Europe have already been higher? Prices in America haven't been, so it's a shock to them.
I heard that a relative lack of air conditioners in the UK made the higher temperatures hit them proportionally more than the US too. In both cases my point is that of course it's shocking to suddenly hit circumstances you're unprepared for.
Franklin was pretty specific, it was a good enough Constitution "for now" with a rickety set of checks and balances that'd do for a while .. until a Despot showed up.
He was thinking of "the people" having an ongoing scrutiny and active control to prevent any such slide .. rather than sitting about on their arses, not voting and counting on using guns if it got too bad.
For you personally, I'm guessing your lifestyle depends very heavily on everyone in the apartments and buildings around you, and the grocery stores that supply you, and the roads that they move goods over, and the materials they manufacture in order to distribute power and water and collect sewage....so unless all of them have transitioned, I think you're overestimating your resilience to the loss of fossil fuels.
Most clothes, food, medicine, every bit of plastic you own, the tools used to make your heat pump, the rebar in your apartment walls, etc. none of this exists without fossil fuel, or at least not at this price/scale
Making and using a modern solar panel emits up to 44 grams of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas per kWh over its lifetime as opposed to up to 1000 grams for fossil fuel generators.
Looking at physical markers Europe has been in degrowth for 20 years, less things produced, less sqm of new building, less tonnes transported by freight, the GDP is saved by maths tricks and hopium
They started that path to economic suicide by deciding they don't want cheap gas as well as shutting down reactors. Well, depending on your geopolitical beliefs, entire situation was possibility coordinated to get Europe on American LNG and off the stuff piped from Rusland and the Middle East. This was all in play well before Orange Man, but wow did he push the gas pedal down and accelerate it (pun intended). BTW there's only one way out of it, but many Europeans aren't going to like the medicine nor the global primacy people running the USA.
You don't strengthen an enemy (Russia) by buying their products. Defence is more important.
> as well as shutting down reactors
A German problem, not a wider European one.
The solution is to accelerate the transition into electric vehicles (including HGVs etc.), renewable energy, and nuclear. Oil is obviously still needed for materials production, air fuel, and so on, but extricating ourselves from situations where oil is becoming optional as fast as possible is the best course, not continuing to buy cheap gas from an aggressive neighbour that's fucking your elections and invading its neighbour.
Orange Man was elected in 2015, and Nord Stream 1 was shut down by Russia in 2022, while Europeans decided to construct Nord Stream 2 to completion (finished 2021, but never certified for operation).
Turk Stream pipeline (from Russia to Bulgaria) finished construction in 2020.
As an European, trust me, Trump has little to do with it.
We've been doing fine championing our nationalism instead of creating a strong internal market.
Because Hungarians decide in Hungary and Spaniards in Spain doing business across Europe is still very tough.
So to transport anything from Austria to Hungary you need to fill all the kind of paperwork and find the appropriate codes. And to sell it, even more complicated. And taxation? Don't get me started.
And it doesn't help most of our economies are all export economies, which is a broken economic model where you just keep hemorraging stuff and your people stays relatively poor.
> And it doesn't help most of our economies are all export economies,
The worst part of all this is that becoming more export focused was pushed heavily by Germany during the euro crisis, and now its causing more problems.
Honestly, I'm coming round to the notion that Angela Merkel was literally wrong on everything she ever touched.
Mind you, German political culture consistently makes the wrong decisions (basically in hock to the ICE car industry, which has aged badly).
Trump explicitly claimed that China sells wind turbines to other countries but doesn't use them for their own needs.
That is of course a stupid lie.
But it's amazing how many smart liars say something similar to "China controls 70℅ of the global wind market" without clarifying that they install nearly all of that in China because they installed 73% of new wind capacity in 2025.
It's not our fault that we use oil and gas for daily activities (including going to protests). It's the governments' and corporations' fault for making us do it (or maybe not stopping us).
Also driving the price up are the Ansarallah advances in Yemen and today's Ansarallah bombings of the Saudi East-West pipeline. The market expects that they'll use military force to attempt to close the Bab al-Mandab strait, with their past attempts at closing the strait, stated goals of closing the strait and newly reported use of Claude to develop medium-range ballistic missile guidance software as evidence.
Also Related:
Saudi Arabia’s crude output falls to lowest level since 1990 https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/saudi-arabia-crude...
Would be surprising if they don't in fact. In fact it is perhaps quite straightforward to skip Claude and rather tell Qwen 3.8 27b to create an angry birds clone where you track the bird... or something along the line. Pretty sure they are also very good at smuggling various assets through borders, and where not.
6 dollars per gallon is 1.37 EUR per liter... Here I am in the netherlands paying 2.74 EUR for a liter of diesel...
The EU imports 97 percent of their crude oil, which is needed to refine diesel and still import a further 10% of their refined diesel.
It is somewhat amazing that Europe hasn't embraced electrification even more but taxing diesel use to encourage using it wisely is a smart geopolitical play given their situation.
Tax was already high on diesel fuels and cars, which is fine. The most recent rise in price is only due to market prices going up.
EU is not a country.
Taxation on crude oil and its byproducts is largely for each member state to decide, as is electrification policy.
In some cases the EU steps in; for example with CO2 emission quotas, electrification targets, and largely regulating how countries operate in between them (for example, if France sells energy to Spain, it has to follow some bloc regulations if I am not mistaken).
I find it somewhat amusing how people insist in commenting on EU as if it was something it is not.
This caps the amount of CO2 you can emit; which is good :)
I personally think forcing less well off people to use worse modes of transport (or not travel at all) is not a well thought out scheme for reducing environmental impact.
For me, it doesn't matter because my main mode of transport is an EV - but it's a luxury I can afford. Many people that live around me cannot.
It just means these people donate more of their money to the wallets of already absurdly rich owners of companies like Shell and Exxon - instead of using it to enrich their own lives (see the increased profits these companies are making since Iran).
But at least on a positive note, EV sales in my country have never been higher since Trump invaded Iran, so it is somewhat triggering the well-off to finally make the ("scary") switch to EV's.
[dead]
But no worries, we'll soon get $5,000 from the US government and this will allow us to buy plenty of gas.
Don't forget the $5000 DOGE dividend, the $2000 tariff refunds, the $500 Obamacare refunds, and the thousands+ in Trump Accounts!
(But $10k in student loan relief? That's Socialist!)
If all of that is possible, why not just provide a reliable basic income? Why does it need to feel like a politician is bribing you for your vote?
A basic income does not really change the amount of money people have available. You exchange paying some amount of taxes and handing the money to people qualifying for government benefits for paying more taxes and handing out money to everyone. You may save some money on the bureaucracy for figuring out who is eligible for how much benefits, you may make life easier for people having to apply for benefits, but you also give up the ability to match benefits to individual circumstances making some better and others worse off, you may create some additional incentive not to take a job, ... But to a first approximation everyone will have the same amount of money available.
Often the incentive to take a job would be better under Basic Income as there's so many cliff edge benefits that phase out quickly as you work/earn more in the current system.
Fair point, but that could also be solved by better benefit structures, but admittedly most likely at the cost of more bureaucracy.
(None of it was possible. We haven't gotten the purported DOGE dividend, or tarriff refunds. Though the $500 Obamacare 'refunds' are in the works and the soldiers all got some $1776 bonus... and everyone's suddenly privately funding the Trump accounts as a bribe to him, I guess.)
"feel like" ?
Yesterday I saw a full-sized 100% electric Volvo semi-truck here in Zurich. It was owned by Aldi and making a delivery to one of their stores. It was a bit louder than I expected but nevertheless impressive.
https://www.aldi-suisse.ch/de/ueber-aldi-suisse/unternehmen/...
"Der Volvo-Lastwagen, der für ein Gesamtgewicht von 42 Tonnen zugelassen ist und eine Reichweite von bis zu 320 Kilometern hat"
320km doesn't seem like a long distance for a truck, curious how that works in practice
It really depends on the context and the country. In practice, most people in my country live within 100 km of a commercial harbor (river or sea), so 320km for most foreign imports it seems enough. Grocery store chains have to be within 2 hours from the packing center, so for food too, 320km seems enough. Barely, but enough).
It's optimised for distance to and from the depot and in-city store locations. Presumably it charges at the depot while loading.
Trucks have a lot more space for batteries, so with EV trucks it's all about balancing range and weight for the task. More range means less useful load.
Some Australian electric prime movers (truck that pulls the load on trailers) are using a fork lift in / fork lift out swappable giant battery pack - 10 minute change over from truck to charging station, freshly charged unit back to truck.
320km seems like a very long distance to go without a rest stop.
"War is merely the continuation of policy by other means."
"Since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object, the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration. Once the expenditure of effort exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced and peace must follow."
----------
Clausewitz would have been flabbergasted by this war. If we're being overly generous to Trump, we might call it an act of senseless passion. The reality is probably worse. The U.S. still hasn't seemed to figure out what it's policy goals or winning conditions are, aside from the president's desire to be an all-powerful winner. Trump seemingly places no value on his nation's blood or treasure, so it might be a very long time before he begins to feel the effort his nation is expending isn't worth the value of his own vanity.
The U.S. needs to have its magna carta moment and reign in its mad king. Maybe that will come with the mid-terms, or maybe this war will drag on for two more years. Trump isn't going to stop it, now or after the mid-terms. As far as he's concerned, the pain isn't his.
The political objectives for the war were Netanyahu's who managed quite the move in getting Trump to commit to this. But still an open question how much his motives were rationally objective or senseless passion.
Maybe we (and Clausewitz) needlessly rationalize past leaders as those rational actor ignoring their emotional passions. Trump puts emotions and passions right there in the open, not bothering with plausible denialities. Hegseth is open and proud on his "we do it to show we are masculine" doctrine. But, none of them is a new kind of guy like no one ever heard about before. Emotional irrational men were always present, always seeking power, sometimes getting it. We just strip that side of them, pretending it was calculated and rational.
I'd say this should push Americans towards smaller, more fuel efficient cars and EVs, but I know better. The American consumer seems immune to price pressure.
Almost nearing the price in Europe. So still early to complain.
This reminds me of when people were calling the UK a bunch of wimps for complaining about record high heat of like 80F, just because Americans have been dealing with 100F or more for years (over 100 years in some cases). So what that prices in Europe have already been higher? Prices in America haven't been, so it's a shock to them.
More of a shock, if anything - the higher taxes in Europe act to damp price swings, so sudden rises like this hit America proportionately more.
I heard that a relative lack of air conditioners in the UK made the higher temperatures hit them proportionally more than the US too. In both cases my point is that of course it's shocking to suddenly hit circumstances you're unprepared for.
Let's get this to $7 next.
The people need to learn.
Which people?
Because the responsibility lies in the founding fathers thinking that electing kings with little to no checks was a good idea.
Franklin was pretty specific, it was a good enough Constitution "for now" with a rickety set of checks and balances that'd do for a while .. until a Despot showed up.
He was thinking of "the people" having an ongoing scrutiny and active control to prevent any such slide .. rather than sitting about on their arses, not voting and counting on using guns if it got too bad.
Come on, you can't keep trying to interrupt the intentions of some blokes who have been dead for 200 years.
This isn't 40k.
The whole world is suffering because of this 2nd Epstein War. Current administration being blackmailed by Israel.
Only the countries that have not yet transitioned to clean energy
And countries that import goods. If you supply chain needs diesel, you're going to be paying more.
In Germany we have had a great influx of electric trucks in the last year
That's basically all countries
"clean" - only at the point of use! (I'm using the traditional definition of "clean", as in, "not making a mess").
That's all of them.
Maybe this war will change that?
Unless you're ready to give up on a lot of convenience this is just not happening.
Hmm, I think for me personally the only thing I'd need to change is the heating in my apartment and I'm already planning to invest in a heat pump.
For you personally, I'm guessing your lifestyle depends very heavily on everyone in the apartments and buildings around you, and the grocery stores that supply you, and the roads that they move goods over, and the materials they manufacture in order to distribute power and water and collect sewage....so unless all of them have transitioned, I think you're overestimating your resilience to the loss of fossil fuels.
I'd wager 90% of things you own and do wouldn't exist without fossil fuels, including your heat pump and your apartment
Yes, the things that affect your lifestyle w.r.t. oil are contained to just you and your apartment.
Instead of a sarcastic swipe, you could try making an actual argument and tell me how I would personally be affected.
Most clothes, food, medicine, every bit of plastic you own, the tools used to make your heat pump, the rebar in your apartment walls, etc. none of this exists without fossil fuel, or at least not at this price/scale
Well let's start with goods and services being more expensive?
There is no clean energy, we don't know how to build any of the "clean energy" harvestors without using massive amount of fossil fuel.
https://iea-pvps.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Fact-Sheet-I...
Making and using a modern solar panel emits up to 44 grams of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas per kWh over its lifetime as opposed to up to 1000 grams for fossil fuel generators.
That's 20x cleaner.
Sure buddy, now go make me a solar panel without using fossil fuel, including mining, refining, processing, etc.
I thought reduced fossil fuel usage benefits the world.
“In 2025, the global fleet of EVs avoided the consumption of around 1.7 million barrels of oil per day” https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2026/executive...
I bet they post record profits
It's quite funny how Trump is killing European industry. Literally everything America has been doing the last few years has benefited China.
The Chinese economy has real weaknesses make no mistake about it and a competent US leader could have worked with his global allies to exploit them.
Looking at physical markers Europe has been in degrowth for 20 years, less things produced, less sqm of new building, less tonnes transported by freight, the GDP is saved by maths tricks and hopium
They started that path to economic suicide by deciding they don't want cheap gas as well as shutting down reactors. Well, depending on your geopolitical beliefs, entire situation was possibility coordinated to get Europe on American LNG and off the stuff piped from Rusland and the Middle East. This was all in play well before Orange Man, but wow did he push the gas pedal down and accelerate it (pun intended). BTW there's only one way out of it, but many Europeans aren't going to like the medicine nor the global primacy people running the USA.
> they don't want cheap gas
You don't strengthen an enemy (Russia) by buying their products. Defence is more important.
> as well as shutting down reactors
A German problem, not a wider European one.
The solution is to accelerate the transition into electric vehicles (including HGVs etc.), renewable energy, and nuclear. Oil is obviously still needed for materials production, air fuel, and so on, but extricating ourselves from situations where oil is becoming optional as fast as possible is the best course, not continuing to buy cheap gas from an aggressive neighbour that's fucking your elections and invading its neighbour.
Orange Man was elected in 2015, and Nord Stream 1 was shut down by Russia in 2022, while Europeans decided to construct Nord Stream 2 to completion (finished 2021, but never certified for operation).
Turk Stream pipeline (from Russia to Bulgaria) finished construction in 2020.
Cheap gas from the Russians? No thank you
As an European, trust me, Trump has little to do with it.
We've been doing fine championing our nationalism instead of creating a strong internal market.
Because Hungarians decide in Hungary and Spaniards in Spain doing business across Europe is still very tough.
So to transport anything from Austria to Hungary you need to fill all the kind of paperwork and find the appropriate codes. And to sell it, even more complicated. And taxation? Don't get me started.
And it doesn't help most of our economies are all export economies, which is a broken economic model where you just keep hemorraging stuff and your people stays relatively poor.
> And it doesn't help most of our economies are all export economies,
The worst part of all this is that becoming more export focused was pushed heavily by Germany during the euro crisis, and now its causing more problems.
Honestly, I'm coming round to the notion that Angela Merkel was literally wrong on everything she ever touched.
Mind you, German political culture consistently makes the wrong decisions (basically in hock to the ICE car industry, which has aged badly).
> Honestly, I'm coming round to the notion that Angela Merkel was literally wrong on everything she ever touched.
In a world where the Russo-Ukrainian conflict doesn't happen she was fine.
In a world where it does, suddenly an export economy hungry for materials and energy suffers the lack of Russia.
[dead]
The "just stop oil" folks must be delighted with the direction of things in the middle east.
I think it just proves them right. China seems to be doing OK partly due renewables push. But what do I know, electrification is a Chinese hoax.
Yes, it all makes a lot more sense when you include the geopolitical context. China has an enormous abundance of coal and relatively little oil.
Trump explicitly claimed that China sells wind turbines to other countries but doesn't use them for their own needs.
That is of course a stupid lie.
But it's amazing how many smart liars say something similar to "China controls 70℅ of the global wind market" without clarifying that they install nearly all of that in China because they installed 73% of new wind capacity in 2025.
I would prefer to stop the demand rather than the supply. The high prices encourage production elsewhere.
How do we stop the demand for plastics (and any other number of process chemicals) and fertiliser?
Also - while it may encourage production at other sites with a higher cost of production, higher prices in general will slow demand.
But how will they protest if they can't drive and meet up or fly to those green events?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
It's not our fault that we use oil and gas for daily activities (including going to protests). It's the governments' and corporations' fault for making us do it (or maybe not stopping us).
Take a train or a bike? Y'know, the thing they're advocating for?
Hell, Greta Thunberg crossed the Atlantic on a sailing ship.
> Hell, Greta Thunberg crossed the Atlantic on a sailing ship.
I need to attend a scientific conference in the USA next month. Please can you kindly tell me how I can also sail across the Atlantic to get there?
(As an aside, my employer has already issued my burner phone and laptop; SOP for visiting countries such as the USA).
That sounds like something you could do via Zoom and save yourself the hassle.
Nobody claimed we could do a systemic change without, y'know, change.
Indeed, how will anyone get to London or NYC or ...