At first glance, the strange statement in the motto of the article looks somewhat far-fetched. After all, this is not an airplane, not a car, and not a spaceship, but a pencil case. That is, a piece of painted wood with a thin graphite rod and a rubber band at one end (Fig. 1). The number of pencils produced annually worldwide exceeds 14 billion. That the statement in the motto corresponds to the truth is clearly demonstrated in the essay I, Pencil (I, Pencil) published in 1958 and republished in 1964 under the title Only God can create a tree or a pencil. The author, Leonard E. Reed, founded the Foundation for Economic Education – the first brain center modern libertarian in the United States – and was one of the main people responsible for the revival of the liberal tradition in America after World War II.

I, Pencil it is a subjective genealogy told by the main character, a pencil. Using numerous examples to demonstrate the existence of a vast and complex production structure controlled by the division of labor in free markets, I, Pencil explains that no one knows how to make a pencil because of the many manufacturing processes:

My family tree starts with what is actually a tree, a cedar…which grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now imagine all the saws, trucks, ropes, and countless other machines used to saw and transport the cedar logs to the railroad. Think of all the people and the countless professional skills that went into making them: mining ore, making steel and turning it into saws, axes, engines; growing hemp and passing it through all stages to the stage of heavy and strong ropes; logging camps with their dormitories and canteens, with the production and preparation of all food. Unfortunately, no one knows how many thousands of people joined each cup of coffee drunk by forest workers!

Next, the pencil describes the rest of the work required for its manufacture: the manufacture of platform cars, rails and railway locomotives to ensure the shipment of logs to sawmills; development of transport systems – ships, trains, trucks; provision of heat, light and electricity; construction of a pencil factory; manufacturing of mining equipment; graphite extraction; delivery of materials in one place. The following describes the materials required for coloring the pencils, as well as the process of coloring, marking, and adding the brass end; extraction of zinc and copper for the manufacture of brass; production of gum. And the examples do not end there:

Even I have a complex composition. Graphite is mined in Ceylon. Think of these miners, of those who make the many machines, of those who make the paper bags in which the graphite is transported, of those who weave the rope with which the bags are tied, and of those who load them on the ships, and to those who build ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the route joined in my birth, as did the tugboat pilots.

While the division of labor required to make a pencil is impressive—a complex global collaboration to bring all the component parts together, the family tree of other, more complex objects (such as a computer or a “smart” phone) obviously includes much more. branches However, there is one common resource that all family trees need: energy.

Even a simple pencil requires electrical and thermal energy, which is produced by millions of barrels of oil, billions of cubic meters of gas, and thousands of tons of coal. All components of the pencil family tree are, to a greater or lesser extent, a tribute to fossil fuels. A detailed analysis of these internal connections was recently published here. A short passage is instructive:

In the cedar forests of Oregon, many loggers wake up in their own homes very early in the morning; hundreds of people turn on the lights, boil water for coffee, go to work in diesel trucks. The tools they carry are made of steel and iron ore, held together by metal screws, plastic housings, glues and rubber. Gasoline and lubricants are needed to fuel and lubricate chainsaws, and nylon and polypropylene ropes help loggers ascend and descend tall trees by cable.

Oil and natural gas made it all possible, from the heavy machinery needed to mine the materials to be used in the synthetic fibers and, of course, the internal combustion engines that power it. You already understand why the increase in oil prices can start to put pressure on the pencil.

The plea for the appreciation of the moral, not just the material, values ​​of oil and gas is sublimely presented by the Czech-Canadian professor Vaclav Smil in his book How the world really works (2022).

In “The Four Pillars of Modern Civilization,” Professor Smil argues and demonstrates that the modern world was born of four basic materials and could not exist without them: steel, cement, plastic, and ammonia. The latter is actually the most important, since at the beginning of the 20th century the German chemists Fritz Haber and Karl Bosch discovered the secret of the industrial production of synthetic ammonia, with which turned air into bread. Today, half of the food for the 8 billion inhabitants of the planet is provided by synthetic fertilizers produced by Haber-Bosch technology.

It is important to discuss the common key element of the four main pillars of the modern world, especially in the context of a carbon-free future (Just stop the oil!): the industrial production of the four materials relies heavily on the combustion of fossil fuels, and some of these fuels are feedstocks for the synthesis of ammonia and plastics. A common example of plastic: I’m writing these lines on an HP lettered laptop and a wireless acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) mouse while sitting in a polyester-backed swivel chair with nylon wheels that spin on a polycarbonate mat. placed on a polyester carpet… Just stop the oil?!

Let’s look at the bigger picture: life without oil will not be as simple as some people think

That activists from Just stop the oil? I quote:

This has to stop. If we continue on our current path, we will destroy families and communities. We will face the starvation and slaughter of billions of the poor, as well as the total betrayal of our children and their future. . . In eight years, we must completely get rid of our dependence on fossil fuels. . . Climate collapse will mean the end of workers’ rights, women’s rights, all human rights. This is already the greatest injustice in the history of mankind against the global south. If you do not prevent, you are in favor of evil.

Can it be so?

In 2018, I argued that oil is the Achilles heel of modern agriculture, which is designed to feed 8-10 billion people, and that a future based on Just stop the oil it will be a huge challenge to ensure daily nutrition. At the level of 2016, less than half of the extracted oil was converted into gasoline, the most used automotive fuel (Fig. 2). Let’s assume that all the world’s transport will use renewable energy sources by 2050 or even earlier. But this environmental movement— Just stop the oil – does not explain how the raw material, which now uses more than 50% of extracted and processed oil, will continue to be extracted (Fig. 2). –

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