The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

by Peter Zeihan

Oil and oil-derived products are critical to all things agricultural. If they aren’t present in sufficient volumes, the tractors, combines, trucks, trains, terminals, and ships that are central to producing and transporting foodstuffs and their input streams simply do not function. And forget the electric vehicle craze. Leaving aside the minor details that, come harvest time, farmers are out in the fields eighteen hours a day (or more) and that there is no battery system in the world that can handle that sort of out-charge with only six (or fewer) hours of in-charge, as well as the less minor detail that an EV ship could not recharge in the middle of the freakin’ ocean, electrification technology does not yet exist that can manage the high power-to-size requirements for either heavy equipment or long-range oceanic shipping. There simply is neither an existing technology nor an imminent technological revolution that can replace oil and natural gas in the agricultural sector.