>1. Draw your devastating conclusions from the experience
>of the inperfect democracies we had so far.
I draw my conclusions from the millions of years of human behavior -- under
every kind of society that has existed.
Human in modern societies have become TOTALLY DEPENDENT on their machines.
These machines are going to "run out of gas" this coming century -- forever.
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TITANIC SINKS
by Jay Hanson, June 25, 1998
By definition, energy "sources" must produce more
energy than they consume, otherwise they are called "sinks".
The global economy burns energy to make money—there is no substitute for
energy. Although the economy treats energy just like any other resource, it’
s not like any other resource. Energy is the precondition for all other
resources.
The global economy receives almost 80% of its energy subsidies from
nonrenewable fossil sources: oil, gas, and coal. They are called
"nonrenewable" because, for all practical purposes, they're not being made
any more. The reason they are called "fossil" is because they were
"produced" by nature from dead plants and animals over several hundred
million years.
The key to understanding energy issues is to look at the "energy price" of
energy. Energy resources that consume more energy than they produce are
worthless as sources of energy. This thermodynamic law applies no matter how
high the "money price" of energy goes.
For example, if it takes more energy to search for and mine a barrel of oil
than the energy recovered, then it makes no energy sense look for that
barrel—no matter how high the money price of oil goes. It will make no
energy sense to look for oil in America after 2005.
During this coming century, the global economy will "run out of gas" as
nearly all fossil energy sources become sinks. One can argue about the exact
date this will occur, but the end of fossil energy—and its dependent: the
global economy—are inevitable.
A good analogy is like having a motor scooter with a five-gallon tank, but
the nearest gas station is 10 gallons away. You can not fill your tank with
trips to the gas station because you burn more than you can bring back—it’s
impossible for you to cover your overhead (the size of your bankroll and the
price of the gas are irrelevant). You might as well put your scooter up on
blocks because you are "out of gas"—forever.
It's the same with the American economy: if as a country, we must spend
more-than-one unit of energy to produce enough goods and services to buy one
unit of energy, it's impossible for us to cover our overhead. At that point,
America’s economic machine is "out of gas"—forever.
[ the rest is at http://dieoff.org/page143.htm ]
Jay
