Hi Doug,I wonder if what you are describing is something like Dabrowski's theory of Positive Disintgration.
Here is a link, and a little clip that discusses the spirituality of George Harrison from the Beatles. J.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creative-synthesis/201110/you-have-change
Those whom the Gods would destroy or create, they first make mad.The Madness of Adam and Eve. Horrobin How Schizophrenia Shaped Humanity.
gas is still relatively cheap, transport is still relatively cheap, shipping and freight is still relatively cheap, it does not seem as if the problem is energy. Oil prices are down 15% in the last couple of months.
the problem is large clumsy wasteful bumbling corrupt military controlled governments pouring money down the drain
in europe (not UK) the military plays less of a part thanks to WW2 histroy, but there instead we have an almost russian model of oligarchs and political and financial elite that have been in place for decades if not centuries, that bend everything to their will. The EU constituion was rejected in referendums, so they forced it through anyway… it was refreshing to see this being openly discussed on bloomberg tv this week… wow… slowly slowly the house of cards is trembling…
On the eve of the US election, unless the objective of this website is just to be a publication of rhetorical opinion, not backed by anything factual, producing articles that need little research and are written largely on a whim of the day… and not much in touch with current events, it might have been more poignant to write an article about that, instead of yet another peak energy blurb, with the lamest graph that is not backed by any reference or data in particular.
We've had the peak firewood panic along time ago, the peak coal panic you can read about in newspapers from victorian england… technology always finds a way, and infact if you believe in some of the tesla technologies, with wireless electricity now becoming available 120 years after he is rumored to have discovered how to implement it… you have to think that there are plenty of ways of harnessing energy should we decide it's necessary…
we are after all just energy… e=mc2, so everything is basically energy…
the problem is peak humanity… not peak energy…
even if you look at today's music… it's all about how cool i am, how much i hate you, how much of a good party we are going to have etc. etc. … even this facebook fetish of posting photos of your lunch for a thousands friends to comment on… there is little real art or philopshy left… people are so busy with the most mindless banal entertainment, that our existence represents more of a chimpanzees tea party, than a real planet of co-ooperation and intelligence… people are so into themselves, that they cannot help but destroy themselves…
i'd be more worried about a nuclear winter than peak oil…
I am an urban revitalization development professional who has worked extensively in the UK and now Canada. I am struck by the interest in "urbanism" in North America. The trend certainly exists in the UK, and increased city living has been the trend for a decade or more, but it was less marked because the post-WWII move to car-dependant suburban /exurban sprawl had not been so fundamentally achieved. There are older settlements in cities and compact satelite towns, where smaller homes and public transit provided a way of living that while still energy hungry (3 x One Planet resources) did not reach the heights of North America (7 x One Planet resources).Running gas guzzling SUVs and heating / cooling 3,500 sf McMansions is the fast lane to societal oblivion. Living in 800 sf energy efficient apartments on transit lines is definitely a more sustainable way to live, and this will increasingly be reflected in household budgets, and in time, the market prices for the different homes. I am hopeful (probably an article of faith, rather than fact) that the transition will be fast over a couple of decades (with time enough for populations to get sucked back into dense urban cores), but not so immediate that populations and cities don't have time to respond. If it is the cardiac-arrest scenario referenced on this site, then there will be no time to respond, and the only option will be to head to the hills, with arms and whatever we can carry. I suspect the suburbs will be the first of our settlement forms to become defunct.
Chris - have you done any work of what the carrying capacity of US / North America might be if we become a post-urban species living in small, dispersed, self-sufficient rural communities, as seems to be advocated by this site? I am guessing it is significantly lower than the population we currently have now, or might have if we have the time to transition to energy efficient cities…
In order to figure out what the economic future will look like, we need to ask the question, "What creates wealth?"
The answer is not, "A high energy return on energy invested for transportation fuels creates wealth." The answer is, "(Free) human minds create wealth."
Therefore, the only way long-term economic growth is threatened is if the supply of (free) human minds is reduced. And that is not likely to happen soon (barring global thermonuclear war or some similar catastrophe). In fact, it is much more likely that the supply of human brain equivalents will explode in the next 1-3 decades, as computers achieve capabilities comparable to the human brain (and then greatly exceed the capabilities of the human brain).
Chris states that economic growth is dependent on energy return on energy invested for oil being much greater than 1:1. But the U.S. consumes about 7 billion barrels per year of oil. At $100 a barrel, that's only $700 billion dollars…less than 5% of our GDP. It is extremely unlikely that oil will ever be above $300 a barrel for any significant time, but even if it was, that would still be less than 15% of our GDP if we consumed at a rate of 7 billion barrels per year. (And the reality is that, if oil really was $300 per barrel for any significant amout of time, U.S. consumption of oil would go way down.)
It's best to avoid specific pronouncements ("electricity is not a replacement for liquid fuels") since almost certain that things will change radically in the future - perhaps for the best. I always add, "at present" when discussing Peak Prosperity and this is what bugs me the most about PP advocates - the refusal to recognize the new world technology will bring. Beneath the surface, energy usage has plummeted as efficiency, conservation and minituarization have adopted their own version of Moore's Law.I live and prepare for the future in a (hopefully) sustainable way while remaining confident that technology will give us viable solutions… The myth of exponential growth is directly linked to a change in attitude about economics - from sustainable, financially respnsible lives with savings and limits to one of debt and consumption without end.