At 06:51 PM 28/09/00 +0200, Julien wrote to the list (among other things),
in reply to Charles and then Mark: ]
".....Or better still, why don't we look behind the prices. Mark and others
continually refer to the world oil production not in dollars or in pounds
of gold but in barils. This is a very good thing to do. We could look at a
historical chart of oil_consumption/ population for the world or for
countries. My little suggestion for the moment is that, if we want to grasp
the effect of the oil price hike, a good statistic to peek at would be oil
consumption per inhabitant for poor countries vs. oil production per
inhabitant for rich countries. When we see both diverge a lot in a short
period of time, then we will be able to say (whatever the market price for
oil is) that this is a time of great stress and scramble for scarce oil
which will have serious economic consequences. If someone knows where to
gather this kind of data (oil consumption per country), please tell me...."
This, I think, is an excellent idea. I would propose some compounding with
the evolution with time of the energy mobilized to extract a barrel of oil.
The two sets of evolution curves ( energy mobilized vs energy extracted as
a function of time, and energy mobilized for use/waste/destruction in the
affluent parts of the world vs energy used by people in non-affluent part
of the world as a function of time) would bring two excellent,
complementary indicators of the evolution of stress on the system.
I have a few ideas of where to find some data, but think that before that,
we should develop a viable expression of these two sets of evolution
curves. Rather than doing this as part of the crashlist (which would be
cumbersome), I would propose that this be inserted as part of the Global
Problematique-focused learning process we are setting up at the NCFS.
Persons interested are invited to reply to me personally at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] I'll give them more info about what we are doing.
This is not a hijacking at all. What we will do would remain very
accessible to crashlist member and anyone who wants could participate.
Best
Yves Bajard
>
>
> >Have to factor in capital-saving effects of new technology.
>
>Mark, I should probably have stopped the thread following such a short and
>vague answer but...
>Historically, new technologies have rather increased the capital base of our
>economies rather than shrank it. Now, the financial bubble enabled capital
>spending to go through the roof so I doubt there's been much capital-saving.
>Has the capital goods production sector been in a crisis lately? If
>there's been
>any shrinking of the capital base of "western" economies, it's probably
>rather
>because of delocalization of more capital intensive stuff than in the past.
>But I don't even know how you measure capital in this sentence and how it
>relates to the energy price hikes, so I may have missed your point.
>
>
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