Tori Tsui

The first thing that crosses my mind is the chaos that will ensue and how is this going to affect the energy transition and perhaps forge a greener future?

I think it's about 30 percent of all fossil fuels that they produce get exported.

So that's still a significant portion that they burn domestically.

So, yes, perhaps you might see clearer skies.

But I'm interested in the immediate knock on effects of that politically, socially.

For me, it's quite scary because it's often when we have a fossil fuel shortage.

There's a huge price spiking, food costs, inflation, and it's going to be some of the poorest people who are going to be hardest hit.

It might be wishful thinking to assume that everyone's just going to go, oh, this is the perfect primer for a green revolution.

What typically happened when there are fossil fuel shortages is that there's a power vacuum and people race in to fill that by expanding fossil fuel production and also opening old coal power plants.

Maybe it's a bit cynical of me, but...

I think we're going to actually see a lot more conflict that results from it.

We see the US as this central organising force and regulating global systems and trade rules, especially with markets of raw materials.

And the problem is that you're actually lacking a lot of resilience when you have just one power, because what happens when that's taken away?

The system can collapse.

Absolutely.

Would you say that there's a chance that the Gulf Stream could collapse with the disappearance of North America?

How would that compare to somewhere like Africa?

can't say for sure.

So much of that's happening already with climate change.

And what will happen in 50 years is probably something akin to what we're seeing, the probability of the Gulf Stream collapsing and the increases with climate change.