I’m a bit of a sucker for a good narco-drama, whether the Wire, Breaking Bad or Netflix’s Narcos franchise. Not because they glamorise the drugs trade, quite the opposite – the scuzzy power struggles, fraught with betrayal, are grimly Shakespearean. But they only occasionally touch on the impact of the drug trade on the rest of society from the corruption of ‘democratically’ elected politicians to the ordinary people who just happen to get in the way.

The ‘war on drugs’ has focussed almost entirely on trying to cut off the supply of drugs from Central/South America into the US and Europe. And despite all the resources we have thrown at disrupting the producers and traffickers, why do the drugs keep coming?

In a word, demand.

While hundreds of thousands of people in ‘the West’ are prepared to pay through the nose for a toot at the weekend, or find themselves in the deathly grip of an addiction, then the narco-subs, the hidden packages and the waddling drug mules will keep coming. After all, the death of Pablo Escobar and the arrest of El Chapo changed nothing.

One of my bugbears is those who believe climate change is solely the fault of the oil majors. UK Green Party Leader Zack Polanski is the latest to suggest that consumption is not the problem, solely supply. If only the CEOs of BP and Shell would close down their companies and take up flower arranging, then climate change would be solved and we could get on with the rest of our lives. What utter nonsense.

This is not to defend the egregious behaviour of the oil majors over the last century or so. But to suggest that consumers live in one bubble and producers in another, isolated, one, is pure nonsense. And on a practical level, if the supply of oil and gas was switched off tomorrow, we’d be plunged into a dystopian Mad Max-style apocalypse as everything is intertwined. This is why we talk about a transition.

This transition is and will be driven by an interaction between supply and demand. The precipitous fall in the cost of solar panels was driven by feed-in tariffs and other incentives which boosted demand and brought economies of scale. And if you buy an EV, then that’s about 300 barrels of oil you are not going to buy to fuel it over its lifespan. Scaled up, the rise of the EV globally is already impacting the global oil market which is why no-one is enthusiastic about investing in Venezuela’s reserves. Consumer choice matters.

Last week, I wrote about my gas boiler failure. While we were awaiting the verdict of the engineer, me and the Prof did some initial research into a heat pump in case the boiler was condemned, but plumped to replace the £90 failed part instead. While we could probably afford to change (thanks to the generous grant), there were a few serious practical challenges to address, and it was bloody cold, so we put it off. I just have to accept that this decision has significant impact on my carbon footprint and my continuing personal contribution to climate change, but I will get there. And then my demand will swap from gas to (more) green electricity.

The role of demand is neglected in other elements of Sustainability. Policy makers try to drive the circular economy by incentivising waste diversion, but my question is “to where?” Pushing stuff into a loop with no outlet will soon jam up, whereas ‘pull’ will bring economics to bear. Pioneering companies purchasing, say, secondary polyester for clothing have brought economies of scale to those recycling loops, again by boosting demand. Every time someone buys a green option, it sends a message to the market to evolve.

As the old saying goes “The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.” I say the oil age will end when we stop buying oil.