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this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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So what is the downside of this? It seems like a net-positive. Decreased demand for fossil fuels is great! It's a shame it took a bunch of death and destruction, but now that it has happened, the silver-lining is quite shiny.
Decreased demand for fossil fuels means lower GDP. “The GDP of a nation is its fossil fuels usage” : Jancovici
Energy use and economic output are interconnected. Wealthier countries typically have higher energy consumption per person, contributing to their higher GDP per capita.
If only there were a way to generate near unlimited amounts of energy without fossil fuels.
The entire concept of GDP is going to be the end of humans
It was just implemented wrong, if you read the original paper military spending was meant to count against a countries GDP, if the US had actually used GDP in the way the original authors described they would of probably had negative growth for years now.
Pardon my ignorance but... So what? Like, what if somecountry isn't winning the economic dick waggling competition?
Less food
That number is not actually representative of how much food they produce, though.
I meant “food for consumption”
Still not represented by GDP
Less GDP -> more famines
GDP doesn't directly measure food production.
A decrease in one industry doesn't mean crops stop growing.
This is why China is pursuing electrification. If transportation is battery powered, oil decouples from GDP.
They seem to be the only country on Earth that is actually taking this seriously. Everyone else seems to think oil is forever.
As with all rules of thumb, they don't tell the whole story. Using fossil fuel usage as the sole stand in for energy usage, in an age when fossil fuel usage is being replaced by a different source... Is dumb.
Dumb is pretending it’s possible to move heavy machinery with a different source
Hydraulics already work off electricity. We already have electric cargo ships. Electric planes and semi trucks already exist. The percentage of machines that absolutely require fossil fuels at this point is shrinking rapidly.
Using an outdated metric continues to be dumb, regardless of your own limited awareness of the alternatives.