Canada

I would love to see oil go the way of asbestos and just be a problem for the next 100 years, but unless a lot of people get really cool with nuclear power and plastic alternatives, we're going to be using a decent amount of oil products for a while. I would rather avoid a situation like Germany, where we build a dozen coal plants because a foreign nation decided to stop playing nice.

Thanks for the links.

The IISD report is talking about a specific period (February 2021 to June 2022) where 33% of inflation can be attributed to oil prices. Outside of that 16 month period though (which was during the absolute peak of oil prices), oil would contribute much less to inflation.

I disagree with the methodology of the False Profits report. A big part of their 43% cost of living increase is attributed to interest rate hikes by BoC and associated job losses. They are also benchmarking to 2019 oil prices (to avoid the effects of the pandemic), but are ignoring the fact that oil prices had been artificially depressed by OPEC overproduction since 2014. If you look at historic oil prices, we're still significantly below the 2004-2014 inflation-adjusted average.

Overall though, I think both of these reports are looking at specific moments in time, and oil prices aren't nearly as impactful on our cost of living as they want us to believe.