Waiheke Islanders have always paid a king’s ransom for petrol. Now we are the poster child for the fossil fuel crisis, and photographs of our gas stations are being breathlessly shared in national online media.
Our gas prices are reeling as the result of two wars in the Middle East – defined by Wikipedia as the 2026 Iran war, and the 2026 Lebanon war – illegal strikes by the US and Israel against Iran and Lebanon.
Donald Trump, it turns out, is not very good at war. His most urgent military goal has become to undo the effects of his initial attack. Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz was an inevitable result of attacking a country with the longest coastline in the Persian Gulf.
His flip flop pronouncements on the progress of the war have become so confusing that press releases from Iran, an oppressive theocracy, are seen as more reliable.
Although we will suffer economic hardship, we cannot compare it to the suffering of the people under direct attack by forces with zero interest in international law. In Lebanon, some 20 percent of the population has fled, creating a vast humanitarian crisis. In southern Iran, a US Tomahawk missile hit a primary school filled with young children during school hours.
Iran, attacked while at the negotiating table, has hit US warplanes, bases and companies, a British base, Israel, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Oman and Cyprus.
And the Strait of Hormuz has become an Iranian toll road, buzzed (oh the irony) by electric Shahed drones.
American allies in the region have sustained damage which will take years to repair. Qatar has lost 17 percent of its LNG export capability, estimating it will take five years and US$30bn to rebuild. QatarEnergy has declared force majeure (excusing it from liability) on long-term contracts.
United Airlines, reports Fortune magazine, “is bracing for a future where oil prices remain high through 2027. Scandinavian airline SAS said it will cancel around 1000 flights because of rising fuel prices.”
Global corporate interests, in other words, are behaving as if they think oil prices will remain high for at least two years.
As our economy is addicted to liquid hydrocarbons, the coming ‘oil shock’ might be better thought of as an ‘everything shock’.
Soaring oil prices are causing the cost of goods in our shops and supermarkets to rise fast, as a scandalous 90 percent of our freight is still hauled by road. The New Zealand Trucking Association told Radio New Zealand that, since the US and Israeli attacks, fuel accounts for 30 percent of its member’s operating costs – a ‘Trump tax’ of between 8 and 10 percent.
If ever there was a time to decarbonise, it is now. Even if you don’t believe in the climate crisis, New Zealand’s reliance on imported fuel is clearly a devastating economic vulnerability. In the words of New Zealand economist Shamubeel Eaqub, “electrification is energy security”.
Our looming energy crisis has been made more acute by a raft of ideological own-goals by the coalition government. As international EV sales rose, they killed the EV market by ending the clean car discount. They want to bin the clean car standard, after rewarding importers of dirty vehicles. They have pillaged the fund earmarked for decarbonising industry to pay for a huge facility to import liquefied natural gas.
We might have had a cheap second-hand EV car fleet by now, or Auckland light rail – cancelled by the government in January 2024.
And the government axed the Climate Emergency Response Fund, generated through the Emissions Trading Scheme – an efficient, ‘polluter pays’ system for helping to wean New Zealand off fossil fuels. Where did the money go? To make new road signs telling us to drive faster? Simeon Brown might think high speeds are ‘convenient’, but they guzzle gas and endanger cyclists, who you will be seeing more of, by the way.
There are two options in a commodity crisis: increase supply, or reduce demand. As increasing supply is not an option, we need an honest conversation about how to urgently cut non-essential fuel use.
Waiheke economic guru Bernard Hickey urges “a war-styled decarbonisation of our economy, starting with rapid and massive importation of electric cars, trucks and buses, along with shiploads of solar panels and batteries from China to install over any roof facing north.”
Patrick Reynolds from transport blog Greater Auckland wants systemic change, with “an equitable path through the crisis. In times of higher fuel prices – with people already struggling with the cost of living – it will be crucial to enable as many people and businesses as possible to function effectively, on as small an amount of the product as we can manage.”
This means making public transport free, now.
On Waiheke, where petrol and diesel are liquid gold and buses are electric, making public transport free is a no-brainer. Because the less fossil fuel we use, the longer each shipment will last.
• Jenny Nicholls
