To be realistic we will never have an energy shortage again. Because
great slabs of compressed ocean mud have been repeatedly pushed under
the 'floating' continental rock for billions of years then fracked
methane will always be available for any realistically conceivable
world population for any realistically conceivable future. There'll
be few relatively small regions of the earth's crust where one or
more deep strata of shale gas will not lie immediately underneath.
Shale gas will be used for at least 1,000 years because, in the
meantime -- and particularly within the next 100 years -- by far the
most of the present excess world rural population will have ended up
in the shanty suburbs of the presently fast-growing
super-metropolises. There, if the present experience in Brazil,
China, India, Indonesia and other countries is any guide at all,
birth rates will decline to less than replacement. If the world-wide
research surveys of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology are any further guide then, if
the hovel-dwellers are offered sufficient free or state-subsidized
electricity to drive a TV and to receive, or the chance to earn,
enough to maintain a minimum carbohydrate diet then they'll be
content. Those newly-discovered mirror neurons of the brain, which so
powerfully help us to self-identify with the rich and the heroes we
read in novels or see on the TV screen, will do the trick for the
vast majority.
Some of the hovel children, by virtue of a decent set of genes,
exceptional parents and more than the normal ration of luck at
different junctures, will be able to escape and the join the minority
who live in the more prosperous parts of the super-metropolises. In
this way they'll be similar to the small proportion of state-educated
children in the advanced countries of the West who are nevertheless
able to get into the elite universities from which they will almost
automatically enter what I call the 20-class.
Because of the lack of consumer goods with uniquely new
characteristics (now about 40 years on in the West), we are fast
proceeding to a steady-state economy (much to the befuddlement of our
politicians and their growing consternation) in which profits
(necessary for further investment) will come from innovations that
will continue to increase the efficiency of our production systems
and infrastructures, not from status enhancing googaws (which,
increasingly, will not require people to make them).
If the above sounds a bit Utopian, so it is. Quite besides a currency
catastrophe which cannot be far off now due to the increasingly
fragile Eurozone, millions of fracking wells in Europe, China and
elsewhere will be joining the many thousands which are presently busy
in America and supplying cheap methane. What is going to be the
reaction of Russia and the Middle East countries which presently
supply us with the bulk of our oil and gas? Their economies, almost
totally deficient in small and middle industries, are completely
dependent on their olefinic exports. Those countries will be
creating a lot of trouble, we can be pretty sure.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
