Peak Oil and the economy

Even with large supplies of coal and natural gas, the world faces a potential energy shortfall, one reason that the U.S. Department of Energy suggested in a 2005 report (pdf) that a "crash program" to cope with any decline in oil supplies be instituted. The report argued this program should start 20 years before peak global production to avoid "extreme economic hardship." That's because it will take decades for any kind of energy transition to occur, as evidenced by past shifts such as from wood to coal or coal to oil.

In fact, King and Murray argue that global economic growth itself may be impossible without a concurrent growth in energy supply (that is, more abundant fossil fuels, to date). "We need to decouple economic growth from fossil-fuel dependence," King adds. "This is not happening due to industrial, infrastructural, political and human behavioral inertia. We are stuck in our ways."

Has the 'Era of Easy Oil' Ended?


Duh

The Hard Way

If we fail to elect leaders who are willing to make hard choices reality will eventually step in and do it for us. 


Check out Part 1 - Kurt Cobb on Navigating Collapse (23 minutes) and Part 2 - Kurt Cobb on Alternative Energy & Climate Change (27 minutes) at Resource Insights

Collapse

I just watched NatGeo's Collapse. Fabulous. They covered almost everything that our generation is facing:

• Over population
• Peak Oil
• Water shortages
• Climate Change

All these challenges are converging right now. It's up to us whether we follow our instincts to expand and grow until our resources are gone, or learn to live in a sustainable society.


Collapse Based on the Book by Jared Diamond

Energy: Reducing CO2 Emissions Will Be Harder Than You Think
TIME (blog) - Bryan Walsh

That's a lot of wedges and it means a lot of energy too. Hoffert estimates that maintaining global economic growth while keeping atmospheric CO2 concentrations below the magic 450 ppm number—which some environmentalists say is still too high—would require the production of approximately 30 terawatts of carbon-neutral power by 2050. (That's terawatt as in "one trillion watts," as in 826 times more energy than you'd need to send Marty McFly's DeLorean back to 1985.) But we have yet to produce a single terawatt of carbon-free energy, and given the gridlock in the U.S. over climate and energy policy, I can't say we're moving in the right direction either, and neither does Hoffert:

Broad investment will be crucial to enabling such basic research findings to cross the “valley of death” and develop into applied commercial technologies. Carbon taxes (1) and ramped-up government research budgets (2) could help spur investments, but developing carbon-neutral technologies also requires, at the very least, reversing perverse incentives, such as existing global subsidies to fossil fuels that are estimated to be 12 times higher than those to renewable energy (18). We have to stop marching the wrong way before we can turn around.

There are two types of economic growth 1) expansion: it gets bigger and 2)development: it gets different.

So I think we'll need numerous global transformations of culture and economy to save life on Earth... transform our get bigger economy into one that just gets different, and converting our energy production infrastructure (a large part of the economy obviously) to carbon neutral technologies.

We'll need millions of carbon capture devices installed too... only the technology is not there yet.

In addition the scientists are being optimistic about the consequences of having that much C02 in the air.
Dr James Hansen believes even our current atmospheric CO2 (388 ppm) is too high.

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The right’s climate denialism is part of something much larger

Scientific claims are now subject to ideological disputation. Rush Limbaugh is telling millions of people that they've taken the red pill and everything they once knew and could trust is a lie. They've woken up outside the Matrix and he is their corpulent, drug-addicted, thrice-divorced Morpheus. What could go wrong?

No Way Out

Dec 2008 - GWYNNE DYER (wrote Climate Wars)

Scientists are really scared. Their observations over the past two or three years suggest that everything is happening a lot faster than their climate models predicted. This creates a dilemma for them, because for the past decade they have been struggling against a well-funded campaign that cast doubt on the phenomenon of climate change.
...
The scientists are understandably reluctant at this point to announce publicly that their predictions were wrong — that it's really much worse and the targets will have to be revised. Most of them are waiting for overwhelming proof that climate change really is moving faster, even though they are already privately convinced that it is.

Four harsh truths about climatic change


We can't get out of the way of this and our leaders have their heads in the sand. I've always been opinionated but never an activist... that's about the change.

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Bill Gates thinks we need a miracle

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If you subscribe to Netflix check this out:
The Big Energy Gamble (Nova)
Or
The Big Energy Gamble