Back to Mr Peak Oil
Let's Put the Economy in Orbit!We all hope for a "strong" economy, but we have different definitions of what a strong economy is.On business TV they hope we can get more oil. That goal ignores the scientific fact that we can't burn the oil we have now without bringing on the mother of all climate disasters. We have no choice but to find a way to do without much oil. We need to discover how to not even burn what we already have except very slowly. We should not burn anymore oil at all except a little for emergencies. Another popular hope rests on our capacity to build different sources of energy, which will be a big part of our adjustment to very low levels of oil consumption. That's nice, but new sources of energy will not be ready in time, and they could not replace all the energy we get from oil for many decades. How could we have a "strong" economy with less energy? We can't if our idea of a strong economy is one with enough growth to provide full employment and increasing consumption. We are just about to learn that work can destroy wealth. There is hope in the discovery that we need to scrap our assumptions and enter naked into desperate contemplation. Let's define a "strong" economy as one that provides goods and services. Then, the world becomes a different place. Since goods and services can be provided with low rates of resource consumption, our need for oil is much less than we use today. Real conservation rests on stable human population and the inheritance of a durable infrastructure. That will give us a neo-strong economy that is sustainable. Oil should be like a starter. We should use it to build a system that only needed one huge shot of oil energy to get started. Then it can just to coast along. Our economy should be in orbit. Back to Mr Peak Oil |