plumbing the depths

Richard Heinberg explains the recession from an ecologist's perspective in:

Temporary Recession or the End of Growth?

and looks at where we are in on the curve of oil production in:

Is the Global Oil Tank Half-full, Is It Half-Empty...Or Are We Running On Fumes?

sciam update: Does Economics Violate the Laws of Physics?

all biophysical economists see only very bleak prospects for the future of modern civilization, putting a whole new spin on the phrase "the dismal science.

the well-being of our economy depends on a healthy natural world. To my mind, economics is a subset ofecology, and we place ourselves (nevermind our progeny) at great peril as we use up the world's non-renewable resources. For more on this alternative view of our global economy, visit these pages from:

NY Times, the SUNY-ESF conference, Revisiting the Limits to Growth after peak oil.

malaise 30 years later

NPR interviewed today the author of the book "What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?". Jimmy Carter spoke to the nation on July 15, 1979, thusly:

What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important.

Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade ...

Point two: To ensure that we meet these targets, I will use my presidential authority to set import quotas. I'm announcing tonight that for 1979 and 1980, I will forbid the entry into this country of one drop of foreign oil more than these goals allow. These quotas will ensure a reduction in imports even below the ambitious levels we set at the recent Tokyo summit.

Sorry kids, for not following through.

the big picture

See The New Republic's piece about Dr. Doom

"A financial crisis needs general thinking, and a team of specialists will have difficulty understanding the whole thing," he says. "Nouriel's approach has always been worldwide, which is not rewarded in academia. "

and

Roubini has traveled from the Jeremiah wilderness, ...

The peak oil thesis is simple and stark:

1. oil has unique qualities as a material and as an energy source
   
2. created eons ago, there's a finite supply of oil
   
3. modern civilization, the world economy and 6 billion people greatly depend on abundant oil
4. we're rapidly using up that oil (80 million barrels a day, including 20 million by the U.S.)
   
5. we're past the peak of what oil we are able to extract globally each year
6. we will not find a substitute for oil in time to avert an irreversible global economic decline
7. we may now be witnessing the start of that decline
8. the decline will be steep and chaotic
9. the decline will result in billions of deaths

Did I say anything about global warming in this? Answer - no, 'cause it's irrelevant.

We Can’t Get There From Here

Leave it to a layperson to bring the facts about energy to the public's attention, but who's listening?  Sharon Begley poses the question and presents the numbers, where the venerable Scientific American studiously avoids it(also here).

Oil prices a-twitter

Why are prices so low, if we're running low of oil?

MSNBC has an answer, as did Kurt Cobb a month ago.

Making energy

President Obama in his 2009 address to Congress:

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy.  So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America.  And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

Freakonomics (pg 268): Peak Oil: Welcome to the Media's New Version of Shark Attacks

If the price of a good goes up, people demand less of it, the companies figure out how to make more of it, and everyone tries to figure out how to produce substitutes for it. Add to that the march of technical innovation.  The end result: markets figure out how to deal with problems of supply and demand.

One oil ad recently speaks of 'making oil supply more available' in order to lower prices. 

But it take eons to make oil, and only a few years to extract it from the Earth.  That is the basic problem we face.

  

Kunstler on the transition

Here's part of Barack Obama's inaugural address:

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.  The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift.  And we will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.  We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.  We'll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost.  We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.  And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.  All this we can do.  All this we will do.

Bold is mine.  What if science and Dr. Chu, the new Energy head, say decline is inevitable?

J. H. Kunstler writes this, HOPE AND FEAR,  reminding me of an earlier blog entry of mine.

For me, the argument is simple and carefully ignored.  

1. Consumption, for the many (of the Earth, by China(and others), for America [shall not perish?]), has become the purpose and measure of our economy. 
2. The basis of consumption, Nature's physical bounty , is limited and is being rapidly depleted.  
   
3. The response by the pols and pundits is: do something quick, stimulate more consumption, government can't allow this or that industry or company (or individual) to fail, borrow now-pay back later.  Have faith.  Party like it's 1999.

But, as Abe Lincoln put it in his Second Inaugural:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which (we) may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.