alt Hacker NewsYou think the planet is gonna run out of oil before it runs out of water.... interesting.
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The planet will never run out of oil, because people will always run out of money for it first.
Refinery capacity is the bottleneck, there are only ~420 of them that remain [1] globally. We won't run out of oil, we will run out of refineries as they slowly close over the next 10-15 years. No new ones will be built, out of stranded asset risk. The more painful oil is now, the faster permanent changes occur to destroy the future demand curve [2] [3]. An EV deployed today will last long into the future, while ICE combustion sales continue to decline.
China has destroyed oil import demand the equivalent of annual UK oil imports in the last six months, for example. Push those oil and diesel prices up, hold them up as long as possible. Several countries have banned internal combustion vehicle imports to push the needle on the EV trajectory (Ethiopia, Laos) because they are fossil fuel poor. Global EV sales have spiked, and already exceed 25% of total annual vehicles sales (~90M units/year) [4] [5]. We're just discussing how long until we reach tipping points that further accelerate the transition.
How much fossil supply chain infra must be impaired to further move the needle? Hard to say, excited to find out. Electrify or get wrecked. To not to is a choice.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49479229 (citations)
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647405 (citations)
[3] Gas car sales fell 40% in August in China [Charts] - https://carnewschina.com/2026/09/08/gas-car-sales-fell-40-in... - September 8th, 2026
[4] Global sales of combustion engine cars peaked in 2017 - https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/global-sales-of-com... - May 21st, 2026
[5] https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
(as of this comment, China has enough EV manufacturing capacity to satisfy global demand; they are currently export constrained and cannot ship fast enough to meet demand)
I don't get your point. The planet will not realistically run out of either. The water price goes up, then soler + desal becomes more cost effective, then people get to use the material that covers 75% of the planet's surface a bit more. Similarly, when oil gets more limited the price goes up and the planet gets to keep its oil while people stop being able to afford burning more of it. Or perhaps this was exactly your point.