Tom Walker:
>Somehow, Jay, I doubt we're really talking about the future. Are we? We're
>talking about the present. Surely the fully-loaded energy cost of extracting
>a barrel of oil TODAY already exceeds the energy that can be produced by
>that barrel of oil. By "fully-loaded" I mean including those externalities
>like the cost of repairing the ecological and social devastation wrought by
>continuing a petrol dinosaur-economy. And when I say devastation, I don't
>just mean smoldering ruins, drug addicts, smog and oil slicks. The petrol
>devastation also includes such seemingly benign things as urban circulation
>patterns or international trade relationships that are now hard-wired to
>depend on an abundance of cheap energy.
>
Interesting concept, Tom, but would you not then also have to bring in the
benefits of the energy produced by that oil? For example, I can now get to
where I want to go many times faster than I could have by walking; I can
live and work in a comfortable environment in winter; I can go half way
around the world in a day; I can read all night if I want to; I can get the
news as fast as it breaks; my kid can go to a comfortable, well-lighted
school (provided the teachers are not on strike); and I can use the
internet. I would far rather live in my dinosaur economy than the one in
which my grandparents lived, and in which they died relatively early simply
because they had to use so much of their energy to do the things we now do
not have to do. Fossil fuels are finite, and keeping our dinosaur going
will be a problem, but I for one would like to keep it going, cleaned-up of
course.
Ed Weick
