I think we can assess one outcome of this stupid war already: Both the emotional valence and the structural understanding of different energy sources has shifted, and for good. Meaning takes a very long time to erode, but when it does the switch can come quickly; we’re living at a hinge moment, and on the other side of the door is a different world. We tend to think about energy in hard terms—kilowatts, dollars—but in the end our visceral sense of the path forward is what matters most, because attitude informs decision without us even quite realizing it. The world between our ears has changed, decisively, in the direction of renewable power from the sun and wind

Let’s begin by understanding the deep, underpinning role that fossil fuel has played in modernity, both its reality and its psychology. What we call the Industrial Revolution means simply that we learned to control the combustion of coal, then oil, then gas, and in the process gave human life a sweeping set of new powers. Suddenly mobility—the train, the car, the plane—was easy; suddenly muscle power gave way to the genies in a barrel of petroleum, summonable at will to perform endless tasks. Fossil fuel was freedom and power, and this understanding—again, both emotional and structural—set in very deep.

Deep enough that it was able to survive the emerging problems it created. When pollution dimmed cities in the 1960s, that gave rise to the first Earth Day—and to the catalytic converters and the smokestack filters that reduced the problem enough that it never challenged hydrocarbon dominance: We could have our cake and breathe it too. The oil shocks of the 1970s threatened that dominance in the targeted US but didn’t quite topple it; the Reagan program of dramatically increased drilling, and the extension of America’s military shield to the Middle East, gave us enough sense of safety that we stayed on course.

Rising fears about climate change seemed set to tarnish fossil fuel—after all, it now threatened an end to the physical future of our civilizations—but the effects of global warming have in the early stages been sporadic and local, and when the heatwave fades or the fire goes out or the flood recedes we’ve generally reverted back to the perceived and comforting inevitability of fossil fuel. It’s what we’ve known, and hence we’ve put up with a lot to keep the relationship going.

Donald Trump has managed to break the two-century-old grip of fossil fuel on the human imagination.

But there’s been nothing sporadic or local about the effects of this war. As tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz slowed and then stopped, the effects have been dramatic, immediate, and global. In Thailand farmers report they can’t find diesel to keep the pumps that irrigate rice paddies running; in Myanmar, as fertilizer prices soar, the World Food Program has warned that food production costs could double compared with last year’s harvest, in a country where a quarter of the population is already facing acute hunger. There are things we can change to cut energy use (the Thai prime minister said AC units should be set at 80°F, and that bureaucrats should stop wearing neckties “except for ceremonies”) but other customs are harder to rearrange: Bodies are piling up at Thai temples because they’re out of fuel for cremations. In Bangladesh, the prime minister has turned off most of the lights in his office, and economic life is changing by the week:

“I used to do 15 trips a day. Now I spend hours just looking for a pump that’s open, and sometimes I go home empty,” said Sohel Sarker, 38, a ridesharing biker in Dhaka. “I don’t know from one day to the next whether I’ll find fuel.”

These anecdotes add up to much more. As a team from the Financial Times concluded after a global inventory of the shifts:

High fuel prices and shortages force consumers to buy fewer goods. Businesses invest less and governments conserve scarce resources, causing economies to experience weaker growth. The enduring disruption of an energy shock can trigger the destruction of demand, driving economies toward stagnation and recession.

But that’s the macro level. At the micro level, it’s as much about psychology as anything else. The Guardian published an excellent account of how fuel shortages are affecting daily life around the world, and I found myself thinking about the words of another Thai, Teerayut Ruenrerng, owner of a mobile grocery truck:

At about midday, I return home from my morning selling session. I’ll pass three gas stations on the way and stop at each one. Sometimes I can get fuel, sometimes I can’t. Sometimes they will only give me 300 baht or 500 baht (US$9.15 to US$15.25) worth. At lunchtime I take a break, and sleep for about an hour. I start work at midnight.If I’m able to fill up a full tank, I can relax because I know I don’t need to search for gas for at least three days and it’s guaranteed I can go out and sell. But if I can’t find any, I start to get stressed and panic about what I’ll do if I can’t get fuel.

Here’s an interior designer in Sydney:

It’s frightening, because you don’t know how long it’s going to go on for.I just started looking for jobs, because I don’t know whether people are even going to want to spend money on renovating right now, or are going to want a designer. I’m pretty much throwing everything at it, which I think is part of the panic setting in.

And here’s a warehouse worker in Delhi:

As I get ready for work, my eyes keep returning to the gas stove. I last ate yesterday afternoon, some lentils with chapatis. It has been more than a day. I am very hungry, but there is only enough gas left for four or five meals. I hold back, saving it for worse days. There are a couple of cucumbers and tomatoes. I will cut them, add salt, and eat that, and save one more day.

Now, just think of that for a moment. The gas stove, to an Indian, is suddenly a symbol of scarcity, deprivation, fear. The stuff that supplies it comes from somewhere distant over which he has no control—if President Donald Trump gets an idea, or the Islamic Republican Guards get an idea, then the flow on which it depends can stop, and then he goes hungry, counting how many meals his canister might still contain. Multiply this by a few billion people and a few key facets of each........

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