Iran’s parliament is reviewing a plan to ban ships linked to the U.S., Israel and other “hostile countries” from transiting the Strait of Hormuz until Tehran is compensated for war damage, according to Iranian state media.
The plan would impose fees of up to 7% of cargo value on commercial vessels that pass through the strait. It would also fine ships 20% of cargo if they violate Iran’s conditions.
Iran on Wednesday said it was finalizing an agreement on shipping routes with Oman, a U.S. ally that sits on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian state media quoted the Foreign Ministry as saying that ships would enter through the strait’s northern corridor near the Iranian coast and exit through the southern corridor near the Omani coast.
Absolute clusterfuck. Everyone has a theory until shit actually goes down and you see how it plays out. Iran has functional control of Hormuz, and any attempt to take that away would be too costly to bear.
Depleted and bombed out as Iran is, they still hold all the cards. And now they have a leader far less inclined to negotiate. Maybe a European power with sway should align with a moderate Middle Eastern power with sway and try to hammer out an agreement.
As a European, I would not support an agreement that helps the US.
I was referring to an agreement that would reopen Hormuz to avert global catastrophe. If oil goes to 200+ a barrel, everyone’s economy burns.
Ah, I see, I thought you meant that Europe could put pressure to help the US. A global recession is of course bad, but I will say that I’m personally willing to endure some economic hardship if it means that we move faster to renewable energy sources and that the US is not appeased in any way.
Economic hardship has been the only effective emission reducer so far. It’s sad to see we did not upgrade the energy production when we had to, so now only a ruined economy gives us a lifeline.
I have to say, during this entire conflict I felt better when Iran closed the strait and we were not in a state of “finally they work on some agreement”, simply because there couldn’t be a better acceleration of renewable energies than oil being expensive as fuck. I know that is somehow a weird accelerationist take, since all western economy still very much runs on oil and even if I personally use electric cars and have a heat pump for heating at home, it still affects me indirectly through the economy at large.
But: Living in Western Europe, this summer so far is brutal: One heat wave after the other, wildfires going crazy, the rivers drying out (impacting the economy as well btw), but somehow it feels out governments treat climate protection like some outdated topic from 2018.
So, I am actually scared about the consequences of Iran closing the strait of Hormuz for sure, but I guess I’m more scared about climate change fucking us over big time.
I wonder how long it would take to rebuild society without oil, if we were to cut it from one day to the next.
I don’t think it would be long. Lots of solutions already exist but are infeasible only because oil is cheaper.
For energy yes, for materials and particularly fertilizer we’d be running in a problem. Moving to more sustainable diets and agricultural methods will take time. Too much time to not have famine for a while if cut off from one day to another.
Also for poorer countries with less infrastructure the impact (also for transportation) will be a lot more devastating.
Hydrogen can be used to make fertilizer and hydrogen can be produced via water and electricity.
I think fertilizer production is one of those things where we already have a solution that works on renewable energy, but it’s more expensive than the conventional methods.
It basically boils down (pun intended) to pressure cooking organic materials. This requires a lot of energy. In my opinion it would make sense to decentralize the production and make it smaller and closer to the also decentralized sources of renewable energy.
About 50% of the price of conventional fertilizer comes from the transportation anyway, so it would make a lot of sense to make it closer to where it’s needed. This is not economically feasible with the conventional production though.