Derek Thompson

That's just Europe essentially saying we don't have enough energy coming in.

We're going to do sort of government induced demand destruction, right?

We're going to like ask people to demand less energy.

Why don't you describe the situation there as you see it?

And then there's sort of some second order effects in Europe that I want to talk to you about.

Just to give me the clearest picture, who in Europe is getting hurt the most right now?

So there's a handful of countries that are really, really struggling, and there's others that are more resilient, either because they have nuclear or because they have renewables, which is solar, batteries, wind, hydro.

One thing I wondered is whether, you know, you talked about one possibility of China winning in the Pacific.

In a world where more European countries realize that the global fossil fuel economy has this very weak ACL in the Strait of Hormuz that can crack, that can rupture.

They might think, we need to accelerate the rate at which we are adding renewables, adding solar and batteries in particular.

And you look around the world and you think, okay, who's making the most solar panels?

Who's really the number one global manufacturer of solar technology?

It's China.

Is there a way in which...

one outcome of this war could be a reacceleration of renewable consumption that is buying up solar panels in a way that also helps China because they're the biggest guy in town when it comes to selling this stuff.

Alex, I want to hold on this topic of the way that the Iran war could ironically shift the global energy picture toward renewables.

That is solar and batteries, wind, hydro, nuclear, which is not renewable, but low carb.

It seems to me like one lesson of this war has to be

the degree to which seaborne fossil fuels in particular are incredibly fragile, not just because of the initial bombardment of this war, but maybe also because of the fact that we're seeing Iran and the Houthis launch drones that can fly hundreds of miles away from that country and threaten the ships that are carrying these fossil fuels.

So before we continue to tell the story of how this war could accelerate the shift toward renewables, can we just talk a little bit about the possibility that this war has revealed an enormous vulnerability of the global fossil fuel market?