FACTS

FACT: underground oil stocks exist in finite quantities

The stocks of oil, gas, coal, and ores present underground exist in finite quantities. These stocks are being emptied further and further every year.

Oil takes 40 to 400 million years to be produced naturally underground. The peak of world production of oil, and of certain ores, has already been passed.

Indeed, the quantity of oil extracted worldwide has been declining since 2018. By 2050, world oil production will be halved. Which means that, in 25 years, the quantity of oil imported into Europe will be divided by a number between 2 and 20. Because oil-producing countries will most likely want to keep what remains for themselves.

The peak of gas production is expected around 2030.

The European Union imports 97% of its oil and 90% of its gas. Because Europe has no oil under its soil. Or too little and too scattered for it to be profitable to extract.

Almost any product we buy today required oil and at least one ore to manufacture. Without oil, the manufacturing of almost every product we use today founders.

Without oil, a great number of machines stop running, including trucks, ships and planes: 98% of everything that rolls, flies or sails uses oil. Without oil, there is therefore no more transport. There are no more exchanges between the four corners of the planet. The end of globalisation.

Without oil, tractors no longer work, and agricultural production plummets. Thanks to tractors and fertilisers, cereal yields in the Beauce region were multiplied by 6 to 8 between 1945 and 1975. Thanks to oil, agricultural yields were multiplied many times over and caused the world population to explode, going from 1 billion to 8 billion in the space of 200 years. In 1850, before the advent of oil, we managed to feed 1 billion people. Today, without oil, how do we feed 8 billion individuals? If we want to save at least a few thousand lives from famine in the coming decades, it is urgent to relocalise food production starting today.

FACT: too many greenhouse gases => storms and arid soils => falling harvests

The more the quantities of greenhouse gases increase, the more storms, floods, fires and droughts they generate.

The quantities of greenhouse gases already emitted into the atmosphere, which take thousands of years to disappear, are already too great and are already causing increasingly frequent extreme weather that ravages crops. The area of land turned arid keeps growing.

Under these conditions, how can we manage to grow enough to feed the current population?

It is urgent to anticipate and to set in motion, starting today, a pivot to reduce the emissions of these greenhouse gases:

Produce as locally as possible, depending as little as possible on resources coming from far away. Because transport emits too much CO2 into the atmosphere.
Stop deforestation. Replant tree species resistant to the climate to come. Because trees absorb CO2 and reduce soil aridity by retaining water through their roots.
Consume less, by buying only the essentials for living. Every product or service we buy required oil and the extraction of at least one ore, contributing to the pollution of the natural resources indispensable to all life on this planet. Mining discharges heavy metals into the water, which end up in the water we drink, and in the animals and plants we eat: arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium...

"We are living through the sixth mass extinction, caused essentially by ourselves…" Yann Arthus-Bertrand - Nature

"We can convince ourselves of the inevitable outcome our current thoughtless practices may lead us to simply by examining the many past societies that destroyed themselves by undermining the foundations of their own subsistence, even though they possessed far less powerful means of self-destruction than ours." Jared Diamond - The Third Chimpanzee

"Our refusal to take our history into account condemns us to repeat our past mistakes in ever more dangerous ways." Jared Diamond - The Third Chimpanzee

References - All the explanations here:

The essentials summed up by Jean-Marc Jancovici (world oil production halved by 2050: the last 4 minutes of the presentation at 1:02:30 in the video): +4°C over 10,000 years brought Europe out of the ice => +4°C in 100 years will be unlivable (in French)

Report from Météo France: more heatwaves, intense rainfall, arid soils => with disastrous agricultural yields, how do we feed the population? +2°C in 2030 => +2.7°C in 2050 => +4°C in 2100 in France (in French)

Depletion of underground hydrocarbons and a disrupted climate: the great leap into the unknown - Figures interview, June 2026 (in French) Energy = production, hence redistribution of wealth through social benefits => Shrinking the energy system = impoverishment of the population

The time is no longer for asking how to have more. It is for asking how to keep the largest fraction of what we already have. (in French)

Graphic novel "World Without End : An Illustrated Guide to the Climate Crisis" - Jean-Marc Jancovici - Christophe Blain (USA edition)

Graphic novel "World Without End" - Jean-Marc Jancovici - Christophe Blain (GB edition)

Graphic novel "Le Monde Sans Fin" - original French edition

Graphic novel "Ressources - Un défi pour l'humanité" ("Resources - A Challenge for Humanity") - Philippe Bihouix - Vincent Perriot (in French, no English edition yet)

Graphic novel "Le paradoxe de l'abondance" ("The Paradox of Abundance") - Hugo Clément (in French, no English edition yet)

Documentary "Nature" - Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Can we still drink tap water? - Le monde de Jamy (in French)

Our children will remember these years as a period of unheard-of luxury and tremendous waste, when we amused ourselves debating pension reform - Gaspard Koenig (in French)

Habitability thus becomes the foundation of all other values: what good is freedom if we no longer have access to pure water, healthy soil, a viable climate? - Gaspard Koenig (in French)

And what if there were no end? What if, heatwave after heatwave, our environment became literally unlivable? A world where plants die, where pavements burn, where rails expand, where asphalt melts, where cliffs collapse, where nuclear power plants shut down. Of course, we knew. But it is one thing to know the data of climatology, another to experience its effects in one's own flesh. Eco-anxiety is not a psychological disorder but a healthy and rational reaction. Once fully aware of one's actions and their consequences, who can still take a plane for a week's holiday or ask an AI to draw a duck? Who can willingly contribute to the worsening of their own living conditions? Every milligram of carbon counts. No one can shirk their responsibilities. Before claiming to govern the country, the least precaution is to make sure it still exists in 50 years. - Gaspard Koenig (in French)