Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Chris Martenson A growing number of individuals believe our economic and societal status quo is defined by unsustainable addiction to cheap oil and ever increasing debt. With that viewpoint, it’s hard not to see a hard takedown of our national standard of living in the future. Even harder to answer is: what do you do about it?
Markets plunged again on Thursday as warnings of a double dip recession grow louder. Morgan Stanley described the eurozone and the US as “dangerously close to a recession”. Yet oil prices have softened only slightly, and Brent crude remains above $105/barrel…
Money has no value unless it can be exchanged for goods and services but these cannot be supplied without the use of some form of energy. Consequently, if less energy is available in future, the existing stock of money can either lose its value gradually through inflation or, if inflation is resisted, be drastically reduced by the collapse of the banking system that created it. Many over-indebted countries face this choice at present — they cannot preserve both their banking systems and their currency’s value. To prevent this conflict in future, money needs to be issued in new, non-debt ways.
Colin Campbell is the originator of the concept of “peak oil” with the article that he wrote in 1998 in “Scientific American”, together with Jean Laherrere. He is also the founder and honorary chairman of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO). He lives in Ireland, in the village of Ballydehob with his wife, Bobbins. Last month, he wrote me a letter that contains several interesting observations on embedded energy and on people’s life. With his permission, I am reprinting it – slightly edited – together with my answer.
“If anyone tells you that there’s a single-factor explanation for societal collapse,” says collapse guru Jared Diamond, “you know right away that they’re an idiot. This is a complex subject.” So, forget about peak debt, peak oil, peak climate, peak Harry Potter or even peak everything as the single most important problem that could bring today’s whole pulsing, beaming and txt-mssgng mess down into a lifeless pile of shorted-out microchips, rusted carburetors and busted sporks from Taco Bell. Diamond gives the Five Fatals that could do us in, using the example of the unlucky Greenland Norse.
Going further back in time than the 1980s and ‘90s, there’s a possibility that a new conversation of mental health and city form could duplicate the transformation of urban planning a century ago.
The key to the future of shale gas is its EROI. I’ve been unable to find estimates of the EROI of shale gas in the literature. However, I’ve made a preliminary first-order estimate that the EROI of shale gas is in the range of 70 to greater than 100. This is probably significantly better than most other energy sources available today.
The United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) remains optimistic about the future of global oil supply and maintains that global peak oil will not likely occur before 2030. How does the EIA remain optimistic given the growing trend throughout the world towards energy pessimism? This post will explain the methodology that underlies the EIA’s optimistic oil supply vision, and will point out two important flaws in this methodology that call their results into question. … a corrected application of EIA’s approach agrees well with many reports suggesting the likelihood of a near-term or historical peak in global conventional oil.
-The Great Splintering
-Anna Hazare’s fight for change has inspired millions of Indians
-Blood on the Iraqi-Syrian tracks
In the newly revised version of “Reinventing Collapse,” first published in 2008 before the financial crisis began later that year, Dmitry Orlov expands on his attempt to convince you that the U.S. is much less prepared for collapse than the Soviet Union ever was. Many of Orlov’s forecasts from the previous edition have proven accurate. Orlov’s America is a system barely able to sustain itself, ruined by a population bent on a hardened mythology: an iron triangle of home, car and job that is out of touch with the reality of rapidly depleting cheap energy, which made vehicle ownership and suburban home life a gateway to the goal of being middle class. [book review from Canada]
America is in better shape than Europe and Japan. We have good demographics, sound fundamentals, relatively easily solved problems, and no powerful enemies. Why the constant sense of crisis? QE2, hyperinflation, climate armageddon, Obama the socialist, AIDS, alar on apples, jihadists, debt, swine flu – a constant drumroll of doom. Answer: elites govern a weak people by exploiting their fears. For example, look at the “government is broke” panic.
Today, the view that the United States has declined, has seriously declined, is a banality. Everyone is saying it, except for a few U.S. politicians who fear they will be blamed for the bad news of the decline if they discuss it. The fact is that just about everyone believes today in the reality of the decline.
What is however far less discussed is what have been, what will be the consequences worldwide of this decline. The decline has economic roots of course. But the loss of a quasi-monopoly of geopolitical power, which the United States once exercised, has major political consequences everywhere.
