Jay,
Coming from a former resources rich state. The state of Oklahoma which had the
richest lead and zinc deposits in the world as well as being the "Oil Capital of
the World" all now depleted, I can share that your predictions are not only
logical but probable. Of course, like the Aztecs who believed that the energy
of the blood of captives kept heaven "running on time," the Oklahomans have
become rabid almost totally conservative Republican, Libertarian and
Fundamentalist Christian. It was shocking to see how the people who were having
their minds "messed with" by the system, just said , "it has to be done," and
tried harder to make a basically illogical system based upon "luck" and "guess
work" work for them. No one in Oklahoma, has asked the question as to whether
it can work at all, yet.
But remember that fewer people worry about AIDs than do Eboli, even though it is
all the way across the globe and isolated in the jungle, and no one wants to
think that all of those cute little mice might make them spit up blood sooner
either. And then there are all of those Italians clustered around Mount V.
Do you think we could come up with some kind of syndrome that connects all of
these massive denials? How about it Brad? A 12 step program maybe? Jay
could write about it, Eva could do the numbers and the economists could work on
the ideology of change, Steve could market it, and Mike Hollinshead could
document the history. Now that might really be Future work.
REH
Jay Hanson wrote:
> From: Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> >Some of you will have seen a recent article in Scientific American.
>
> I archived the Scientific American article at:
> http://dieoff.com/page140.htm
>
> ENERGY BASICS
> We use up or "waste" energy in systems that supply energy -- such as
> oil-fired power plants. Energy is wasted when exploring for oil, building
> the machinery to mine the oil, mining the oil, building and operating the
> power plant, building power lines to transmit the energy, decommissioning
> the plant, and so on. The difference between the amount of energy
> generated and the amount of energy wasted is known as the "energy profit".
>
> By definition, energy "sources" must produce more energy than they
> consume -- must produce a profit -- otherwise they are called "sinks".
>
> BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
> As far as I know, there has been no study that shows the US economy
> could be run on solar technologies. Here one that shows we can't:
> http://dieoff.com/page84.htm .
>
> During the next hundred years, the energy profit for fossil fuel plants
> (oil, gas, and coal) will become negative. It is fundamentally impossible
> to provide a constant level of energy while aggregate energy profit drops.
> Keeping the production of goods and services at current levels will require
> more energy than we now generate. To have more energy in the future means
> that energy must be diverted now from non-energy sectors of the economy into
> energy generation. In other words, once oil "peaks", the world will
> experience declining standards-of-living (as measured by per-capita energy
> consumption) for at least the following fifty years. Can global Capitalism
> run backwards for fifty years? FAT CHANCE!
>
> What economists have been calling the "Valhalla Economy" is falling apart
> NOW: was Asian miracle, now Asian nightmare. I suspect it is due to
> declining natural resource quality. When resource quality is defined in
> terms of energy investment, the record clearly shows that quality is
> declining across almost the entire spectrum of resources. From 1972 to
> 1982, the fraction of GDP allocated to natural resource extraction grew from
> four percent to ten percent.
>
> Joseph Tainter has studied about two dozen failed civilizations and found
> that the key to their success is ENERGY. Human civilizations collapse when
> they become too complex for their energy base. Our present civilization
> became too complex for it's energy base when it came to rely on fossil fuels
> for life. After that, it was just a matter of time....
>
> [ See COMPLEXITY, PROBLEM SOLVING, AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES,
> by Joseph A. Tainter, 1996 http://dieoff.com/page134.htm ]
>
> What can be done to avoid the "crash"? Under Capitalism -- one dollar, one
> vote -- nothing.
>
> Jay
