I like straight lines.
Especially if they cut through various time periods, crises, monetary regimes, different generations and different ideas. If something just keeps growing or keeps moving in a certain direction—regardless of what the dominant ideas surrounding those things are—that's a pretty good indication for an underlying force, one that nobody can really fuck with.
No matter what, nothing stops that train, basically.
A piece I wrote for The Daily Economy in 2023 ("Transition This, Transition That") was about this graph:
Given all the green mania of the last generation or two, you'd think there was actually some green "transition" happening? Nope, try again. Energy is additive, you don't replace an old one as much as you add more (for "green" ones, only around the edges). My observation was this:
In the mid-1990s when greening the world became a hot political topic (the Kyoto protocol, the predecessor to the Paris Agreement, was signed in 1997), the energy mix of the world was 86 percent oil, gas, and coal. After three decades of climate change chatter, energy “transitions,” countless government subsidy programs, invasively ugly wind farms popping up everywhere, and an unhealthy obsession — at least in the West — with all things sustainable and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), we’ve hit the unbelievably successful rate of… 82 percent.
The takeaway here isn't "oh, we gotta work harder and make more progress and get that number down!" —the takeaway is that no matter what you believe, you cannot bring that number down. Fine, you went from 86 to 82 in three decades... maybe you can keep the green agenda going and push it to ~78 in another few generations. Whatever; does nothing. The world just keeps churning, ignoring the words you speak into the void.
Today I stumbled upon another such graph: world production of meat
(Fair, there's some nuance there with beef stagnant for 50 years, and chicken and pork exploding upward)
No matter the world's intelligentsia, their (fake) health guidelines and food pyramids, the altogether civilizational-destructive idea of vegetarianism, the green lobby pushing "meatless for the planet!" crap... nothing moves. Take all you know of that, all you've seen or heard on that topic... and it all amounts to a big fat zero. This graph just keeps moving, relentlessly.
Reality decides; what (some) humans say about reality doesn't.