Bob Herbert @ the New Yawk Times:
Our leaders in Washington seem entirely out of touch with the needs, the hopes, the fears and the anxieties of the millions of Americans who are out of work, who are struggling with their mortgages or home foreclosures, who are skimping on needed medication in order to keep food on the table, and who lie awake at night worrying about what the morning will bring. No one even dares mention the poor.
What this election tells me is that real leadership will have to come from elsewhere, from outside of Washington, perhaps from elected officials in statehouses or municipal buildings that are closer to the people, from foundations and grass-roots organizations, from the labor movement and houses of worship and community centers.
The civil rights pioneers did not wait for presidential or Congressional leadership, nor did the leaders of the women’s movement. They plunged ahead with their crucial work against the longest odds and in the face of seemingly implacable hostility. Leaders of the labor movement braved guns, bombs, imprisonment and heaven knows what else to bring fair wages and dignity to working people.
America’s can-do spirit can be revived, and with it a brighter vision of a fairer, more inclusive, and more humane society. But not if we wait on Washington to do it. The loudest message from Tuesday’s election is that the people themselves need to do much more.
What nobody mentions is energy and the conflict between ourselves, our world and our machines. We can have a functioning economy, we can have progress, we can have decent, workable politics and decent, workable lives or we can drive. So far, the entire world has been making the wrong choice …
One of the points I should have made earlier in the White Knight of Zombieland article is that we Americans can choose to cut our energy consumption to 1/10th or 1/20th of what it is today in order to escape energy- driven deflation. What I must add is if we don’t voluntarily cut our energy consumption to that level the energy shortages and accompanying deflation will cut our energy consumption to that level for us. There is really no other choice. The promoters of singularities and other technical whiz- bangery ignore the energy price tags on their toys. Any and all of these things will cost more than they can possibly return! How can it be otherwise? If the current lower- energy consumption goods are being priced into bankruptcy how will the higher- energy consumption goods avoid that fate?
When energy shortages become manifest the entire attitude about energy and energy use will change. It will be out with the guzzling machines and up with people!
Energy will become too valuable to waste – it is nearly at that point now! Energy will be husbanded, put into forms that either return more energy (geothermal, wind, water and solar) or which can be ‘stored’ for indefinite periods like recyclable feed stocks.
Think about it. Running a computer will be much more costly in relative terms, as will the Internet, this blog site, the light bulb in my kitchen, the heat coming out of the radiator, the diesel in the food truck even as the nominal prices of these goods and services will likely decline. There will be more folks out of work in the ‘machine world’, earning less money, less aggregate demand, and energy taking a larger and increasing share of what the economy produces.
@ $20 a barrel for crude there will be almost zero industrial manufacturing or any economies- of- scale. The final demand that cannot bid oil past $20 will not support manufacturing either. When that point is reached this are likely to be zero new computers being made. This will because the infrastructure to manufacture and distribute them will have long since been priced too expensive for cheap computers to support. At the same time, the market for expensive computers will be too small to support the manufacturing base.
Within that cost/value relationship fossil fuel energy will become a form of investment capital to husband and make grow – as it should have been all along. Human labor will be priced at a point where it becomes competitive to machine labor (again). With the acquisition of more labor skill and a greater appreciation of those skills, adding value by labor rather than by cutting costs will increase. Over time, instead of a Zombie world of ugly, expedient fall- apart boxes and cheap manufactured junk, freeway excreta and endless waste a new/old world will arise that will please its inhabitants by its beauty.
That is, if the Zombieland overhang of climate gases and other wastes doesn’t push the life envelope past the point of no- return … first.
One of the things to keep in mind is the nature of the problems described in nauseating detail here @ this and other sites. All of our great problems – not predicaments – are of the self- solving variety.
Increases in global CO2 and other waste gases will solve themselves. Energy waste will solve itself. Population excess will do the same. The issue is taken whether appropriate interventions will effect outcomes. We have but to do absolutely nothing … and the force and effect of the problems themselves will provide permanent solutions.
The solution to the ‘drug problem’ is more drugs. Persons who consume a lot of drugs lose the ability to function, they overdose on drugs, they become ill, cannot earn money and ultimately become destitute. Users of drugs die, they cannot use them anymore. The problem of drug use is solved by the use of drugs.
Wasting energy as we continue to do will result in total depletion whereupon there will be no further waste of energy – because there will be no further energy sources available to waste. Adding climate gasses to the atmosphere will result in the surface of much of the world being unproductive for agriculture along with the atmosphere being unable to provide necessary ‘life services’ such as cycling moisture and water vapor. The outcome will be the decline of the climate gas- producing commerce that is absolutely dependent upon abundant agriculture and water.
Population excess will solve itself, soil degradation will solve itself, monetary excesses will solve themselves all by the same means of the onrunning functioning dynamics that the problems themselves represent. All the existential problems will and are currently solving themselves; the ‘problem marketplace’ is functioning just as it should without any further inputs from ourselves. We have created the marketplace and can simply content ourselves with watching it spin out its solutions as a form of cheap entertainment.
In pondering this it is to reflect upon the magisterial and austere functioning of our universe, which always allows for the simplest and most effective solutions to all problems. I gasp in wonder and appreciation that I have the privilege to bear witness!
I also gasp at the collective stupidity of our humanoid race which refuses to acknowledge the finality of Nature’s solutions and also refuses to mimic nature’s processes. If nature’s solution to energy waste is shortages we humans must create ‘artificial shortages’ and enshrine these in our culture rather than promoting the culture that amplifies the problem toward Nature’s real solutions.
It’s not as if we have a lot of time to sit around and discuss this …
This is from the ‘Here We Go Again’ department, Charlie Maxwell predicts:
Wheeden’s Maxwell: Brace For $300/Barrel Oil
November 03, 2010When IndexUniverse.com Managing Editor Olivier Ludwig caught up with Charles Maxwell, Weeden & Co.’s senior energy analyst, it was to talk about so-called “peak oil,” the theory that holds that the day when oil production around the planet is no longer sufficient to meet demand is nearly upon us. Maxwell, who has been involved in the oil industry for more than half a century, speaks with the slow cadence and easy charm of a man who has mastered his subject. The problem is that if you take his message seriously—and there are plenty of reasons to believe it unreservedly—it can pretty much ruin your day. From having to eat more root vegetables in winter instead of enjoying oranges from Chile, to watching oil prices spike to $300 a barrel by 2020, a world of slowly but steadily dwindling supplies of petroleum would be very different indeed. But there is an upside, once the shock of it sets in: Peak oil will undoubtedly unleash a wave of technological innovation, most importantly in energy efficiency.
Ludwig: You’re a believer in the peak oil theory, correct?
Maxwell: Yes, but remember, we won’t run out of oil for thousands and thousands of years. There will always be some kind of drilling going on in some isolated place in the world and new supplies will be available.
What we’re saying is that there are oil fields around the world that are young and vigorous and still full of gas with good pressure—remember, it’s the gas that drives oil out through the rock. But the older mature fields have had a good deal of their gas taken off, and with pressures dropping, they’re slowly reaching the stage where they can’t move the oil through rock, and production begins to falter.
Yadda, yadda, yadda …
Maxwell is one of a bunch of well- meaning analysts who reflexively predict $200 – 300 – 300+ oil prices without specifying context. We did indeed just experience $147 oil … followed by $35 oil. The issue with high prices relates to the ‘self- solving’ topic mentioned above. High prices of any good or service are supported by output, somewhere. If the output is dependent upon LOW input prices there is insufficient margin or return on the use of higher priced inputs to support output and the high prices! Duh!
Maxwell and others such as Jeff Rubin and Chris Martenson presume there is a large and profitable off- world economy on the Slobbotnik Asteroid Belt that can subsidize the fuel waste here on Planet Terra. That sort of subsidy is the only way funds can be marshaled to bid up input prices. Prices that are bankrupting businesses cannot allow those same businesses to meet the same prices for more than an extremely short period of time! That is, the actual time needed for those businesses to go bankrupt!
This is why I love economics. It’s more ‘metaphoric’ than any other form of activity!
Prices that have bankrupted businesses cannot at the same time subsidize, “a wave of technological innovation, most importantly in energy efficiency.” The businesses bankrupted are the same businesses relied upon to innovate. High input prices annihilate innovation rather than stimulate it!
When a good ceases to be an input to anything that is output dependent – such as gold bars or Picassos – it can be bid up to any price level. $10 million gold does not effect the price of corn flakes. $100 oil does and the outcome is a reduction in corn flake sales. A long enough period of sales declines and Acme Corn Flake Company folds resulting in the discharge of all of its tens of thousands of factory workers. Acme’s output returns to zero. The demand for goods that Acme and its ex- workers represents vanishes.
This is why oil price spikes have been followed by recessions – general price collapses. Oil prices are dependent upon the economy and its pricing power, not the other way around.
Jeez, it’s common sense, no wonder the economists cannot grasp it!