Way back we had a thread about how we guessed peak oil might affect real world conditions, this is a continuation of that. For the purposes of this thread let's stipulate that supply & demand controls price and whether through falling net energy affecting demand or geologic constraints affecting supply, or both, the price of oil products consume a larger and larger portion of personal and commercial budgets. And, rather than stabilizing as after previous episodes, this time the pain continues to increase.
I'll begin:
Weaving po into the current economy is tough mainly because the economy itself is being upended daily. Generally, much of the economy is the churn of replacing broken windows financed with cheap energy and a mortgage on future inflation. The US spends 18% of GDP on healthcare for example and easily 30% of that goes to arguing between insurers and providers, and profits of course. Another 15% is "financial intermediation" - real estate agents, mortgage brokers, banks, which is all gravy (rent). Only a few percent goes to primary sector: agriculture, extractive mining, forestry, etc; only a few more to processing, refining, etc; maybe 6-7% is construction. The rest is making and selling geegaws to each other taxing and spending each others money, robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The thing is, even those most trivial of jobs, like graphic designer, puts food on someone's table... food grown by about 2% of the population currently because of oil, BTW. As has been said by septic tank pumpers since time immemorial "It may be shit to you, but it's my bread and butter.".
Upshot is we have a huge economy based on non-essentials that provide the essentials at cost lower than at any time in history, arguably centered on a single finite resource and the technology it supports.
Leaving aside the current push of .gov to promote dependence on fossil fuels and deregulate pollution,
the cost of renewables will consistently be cheaper than fossils by 2020. This is no small thing. It was the subject of 15 years of arguments here. I think it is far more important in the long run than the temporary reprieve of improved drilling techniques.
Mitigation through alt. energy and efficiency technology is the only path forward.
The increase in all types of efficiency from lightbulbs, to vehicles (potentially if not in practice), to homes, to energy storage has been phenomenal, lightbulbs alone have undergone more improvement in the last 10 years than the previous 100. Even the ease of telecommuting makes it fairly effortless compared to the adventure it was when I first began working from home 20 years ago.
Not to make this political but one of the biggest problems right now is that one of the 2 US political parties is all in on fossils and determined to eliminate the only mitigation we have available in favor of oil/coal/gas. Renewables and all the improvements in efficiencies have grown way beyond my hopes in large part because of government support. Now we have the opposite: tariffs on PV, elimination of subsidies, credits, and CAFE. Then there is deregulation of the FF industry, favorable tax changes, relaxing or eliminating coal plant emissions regs, even walking away from climate agreements that are inadvertent po mitigation,
the list goes on and on.
Two is the concept of peak oil itself. The most people ever online here was over 25k people in a single hour if you can believe it and for the most part they weren't trolls. Where are those folks now you ask? Driving a Hellcat and pretending they were never here. They and other folks who pooh-poohed the idea will be the last to be "fooled" again.
Three, the rebound from high oil prices of 5-15 years ago and the mentioned increase in fuel efficiency has combined to give us the biggest fleet of mediocre mileage vehicles we could never have imagined 5 years ago. I guess on the bright side, they do get better mileage than their predecessors and will be nice and roomy for the carpoolers and make nice tiny houses after the tires are burned to keep warm. ...Sorry, LOL, my inner doomer.
I hocked my crystal ball but my hope would be for a production plateau and a slowly rising price. Unlike the earlier consensus here, people have shown they are generally reasonable and will voluntarily change their ways when given a sufficient signal.
...
That's a start.
How do you see the situation?
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)