Royal Bank of Scotland warns of global stock market crash

Kingcoal

Doomer facts:

1. Our economy since WW2 has been based on cheap, available oil.
2. Under this economy we have vastly increased crop yields via petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides.
3. With the huge amount of wealth generated by the oil economy, the world has grown accustomed to being bailed out of disasters. Food is in surplus and is widely distributed around the world at very low prices via cheap oil.
4. Cheap oil has fueled the vast development of the suburbs, mid suburbs and deep suburbs, creating "wealth" which requires the continuous support of cheap oil to remain afloat.
5. The US consumes about one cubic mile of crude oil per day.
6. Oil is still readily available, but not so cheap and that is causing economic recession.

Imagine a world where oil is not only expensive, but scarce. That's the future. Generosity ends, third world nations are left to fend on their own with huge, unproductive populations. Millions die of starvation. Economically oil is used as a weapon by unfriendly regimes resulting in food being used as an economic weapon. The Chinese, who convinced their peasant farmers to leave their fields to produce low cost products for the West, now find that not only have those markets disappeared, but that they can't feed their masses. India suffers a similar fate. Millions more die of starvation. In the first world countries, years of economic stagnation have resulted in worse than depression era unemployment. Tens of millions live on the dole and the individual share gets smaller every year. Highways are abandoned, crime is rampant, so many people default, the lists for evictions and foreclosures are years long. People huddle together in front of a fireplace or stove burning coal to stay warm. Banks go bankrupt, Marshall powers are granted to the government - need I go on? At what point did it start to suck?

Other doomer facts:

Biofuels have low or negative EROEI and worse, they can't come close to filling the voids left by diminishing oil. Food is in short supply and can't be wasted making biofuels. Electric vehicles are tested, but become too expensive to produce and maintain because of rising oil prices. In all, most everything nonessential becomes too expensive to produce because of sky high oil prices.

It's simply a world with too many nonproductive people used to living off of the fruits of cheap oil. Without the windfall of cheap oil, consumerism becomes a daily fight to consume enough food and shelter to survive. Since most jobs in the first world are centered around the old consumer economy, those jobs disappear. In retrospect, the oil age was basically a worldwide jobs program to keep all the extra people busy and content. Without the cheap oil, the world is filled with lots of people with no money, empty stomachs and too much time on their hands. Government's are overwhelmed and take draconian measures to preserve law and order. Health care is prioritized, but is expensive and inadequate. Life expectancy goes down, adding to the die off. Slowly over the years, people who for whatever reason, can't win at the daily survival game, die. Old people, people in failing health, young children without providers, etc, they all die.

The die off is inevitable, in fact, I'm a little surprised at how much damage just a little pain is doing to the economy. We are at the very beginning of peak oil. Oil is still plentiful and available, it just costs a little more but look at the fallout on the economy. Our economy floats on a sea of cheap oil, it is tremendously fragile and largely frivolous. Believe me, we ain't seen nothing yet!
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Serial_Worrier · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 05, 2008 Posts: 232

I have to agree. It's amazing how fragile this consumerist economy is. It's like the most massive Ponzi scheme of all time coming unraveled. We should go back to a pure subsistence economy, that makes sense.

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1149

Wise words indeed, sw.

During the great depression a huge portion of the population here and elsewhere lived close to subsistence lives, getting most of their livelihood from the land they lived on. Now more than half of the worlds population, and vast majorities in the US and other "developed" countries, live in cities and most still on the land have become dependent on (addicted to) fossil fuel based fertilizers and pesticides. We are all now much, much, much more dependent on the global economy than we even have been before. And that economy is about to go into (has really started already) rapid, terminal decline.

We could still mitigate the fall by (almost) all switching to (almost totally) vegan local diets, not traveling more than we can walk or bike, not buying tons of useless crap, switching to organic farming and gardening, not spending any more on war, not procreating for a couple decades then limiting ourselves to one child per every fifth couple, chosen by lottery and birthed relatively late in life....

These seem impossible, jarring, politically impossible changes, but they are a cake walk compared to the total misery coming, and to the misery and extinction already unfolding for many, human and non-.

Homesteader

cube · Fusion Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 3353

Serial_Worrier · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 05, 2008 Posts: 232

cube · Fusion Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 3353

serenity · Coal Joined: Apr 05, 2008 Posts: 5 Location: Yorkshire, UK

Just a few instances from The Book of Trades or Library of Useful Arts, 1811:
The Wool-comber
The Currier
The Soap-boiler
The Tallow Chandler
The Wire-drawer
The Brazier
The Cork-cutter
The Pewterer

You only have to go back a couple of generations to find someone in your own family with a now-dead occupation. My great-grandfather was a Boot-Last-Maker; not many of those around these days!

Sit your grandparents down now and get them to teach you their skills; I suspect that in the near future you will need to know how to make, mend, preserve. Rolling Eyes

mrobert

@Serial_Worrier: Thanks for the compliment. This is not about being wise or dumb. It's about being rational and using logics.

People who think: "Nevermind, they will think of something and solve it" ... will be the one to go. Be they smart or not.

@Kingcoal: Don't get this the wrong way, but look outside the US. Others are paying way more for gas then the US, earn a lot less, and get along just fine. People will either change their lifestyle voluntarely, or will be forced to.

@serenity: You would be amazed that in some countries, software programmers like me, know how to work a garden, work with wood, and many other skills. While growing up, I spent my summers at my grandparents which had a 99% self-sustainable way of life.

The 1% was the light we used to turn on for a few minutes when going to bed. I still miss those times, in a nice remote village, where everything was done there and not purchased with a credit-card.

We all the knowledge to live an even better life then today, if we just wanted to, in a very sustainable way.
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turner · Tar Sands Joined: Jun 10, 2008 Posts: 53

Understand you are frustrated with people but....

mw - I think there are a huge number of people out there that believe that someone will think of something and solve the problem, because they can't yet get their mind around the problem. If they were able to be convinced about peak oil they would absolutely throw themselves into it and may in fact outperform lots of people who have been aware of peak oil for some time. If they are already very driven and successful people at what they currently do, there is no reason to think they won't take the bull by the horns and manage a post peak environment as well as the next man.

sw- I know a flight attendant who can fix your car, re-do your bathroom, cook you a gourmet meal, ride a horse etc and still takes it you know where! He'd be on my ark. Don't underestimate people.

patience · Expert Joined: Jan 04, 2008 Posts: 1396

cube,
I think you are right on target. There will be lots of jobs. It's just that they won't be either the sort of work, nor the level of pay that many have come to expect. Rather, a lot of jobs will be the sort that are presently relegated to immigrants, legal, or not.
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Local fix-it guy..