Indices wrote:
Yes but some of these fossil fuels are not at this moment past peak production. Natural gas has not reached its peak. Coal has not reached its peak. Uranium has not reached its peak.
The points I am making are unrelated to peak oil, peak natural gas and peak coal. I am simply making the point that
any system that is premised upon an ever-increasing supply of
any finite resource in a closed system will eventually run into barriers to further expansion.
IMHO, one of the problem with economics is that it imagines that there will always be a substitute for any input necessary for economic growth. While this is usually true, it is not always true, and in the same way that economics provides no answer to the person who has run out of air to breathe ("maybe you could just breathe some of this Co2 instead") or water to drink ("maybe you could just drink some of this seawater"), economics has provided no answer to what happens to industrial capitalism once it becomes impossible to increase the supply of fossil fuels each year (which is what economic models currently take as a given).
Also much of our power comes from renewables already. Hydroelectric is the biggest.
It's about 10% overall, 6% for hydro.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_ ... ted_States
There will come a point, rather soon, where renewable energy will be the energy used to construct more renewable energy plants.
I understand that this is a common belief, but I am suggesting that it is based upon some flawed assumptions. I would encourage you or anyone else to think about these assumptions more deeply. Start with the concept of "net energy" and think about whether any form of renewable energy generates enough
surplus energy to undertake the incredibly capital intensive effort that large scale renewable energy infrastructure requires. If you look at it this way, the necessity of fossil fuel inputs for the construction and maintenance of renewable energy infrastructure is easier to see.
Of all the renewables, hydro is probably the best (i.e., creates most surplus energy without disruption), but most of the world's favorable hydro-power locations already have dams in place, so this is an area of renewable energy that is unlikely to see dramatic growth from its current position, which in the U.S. is about 6% of our total energy needs.
Yes oil production is down due to peak oil having occurred, but that is only one energy source. We have several others. Clearly natural gas is not near its peak as demand is skyrocketing and the price continues to fall. While I think there is potential for a strongly negative outcome in the near future, there is also potential for a positive one.
There is clearly the potential for a positive outcome, but I would suggest that part of that positive outcome is recognizing that the world economy will see dramatic changes in coming decades. The high-consumption lifestyle we have come to think of as normal will go away, much of the third world will never experience the prosperity that it imagines is right around the corner, and there will continue to be chaotic international political relations driven by the increasing desire to secure fossil fuel reserves.
Humanity won't cease to exist, but it will cease to exist in the form to which it has become accustomed over the last century or so (i.e., based upon the dogmatic belief that growth in material prosperity and human population can continue uninterrupted into perpetuity). IMHO, many of our current views on these matters are the equivalent of the clerics refusing to look into Galileo's telescope for fear of what they might see.
I just offer this perspective as a counterpoint to the science fiction-driven narratives of the future, many of which have failed to materialize. Here are a few examples:
1. The speed at which humans travel has not increased in decades.
2. The distance manned space missions have achieved has remained static for almost 40 years (and arguably a manned moon mission today would be impossible, so we may have actually taken a large step backward in recent decades).
3. Life expectancy gains are seeing diminishing marginal returns, and in many cases there is little quality of life in the extra years of life science has provided.
4. Food production gains are seeing diminishing marginal returns, along with some nasty externalities in the form of possible problems with genetically modified food.
5. In the 1950s, the belief was that nuclear power would lead to a future in which electricity became "too cheap to meter" and energy would essentially be free. Today, 60 years later, 14% of the world's energy is produced by nuclear power and no one has come up with any solution to storing nuclear waste or preventing nuclear power accidents. Overall, I would say nuclear power has been an enormous disappointment.
The good news is that human beings are basically the same creatures that we were before we got outfitted with all of this fossil fuel-powered gear, and when the fossil fuel age passes, we will find that we are resilient and will find new ways of living that are responsive to our new conditions, even if those conditions by today's standards might be considered shocking backward steps.
When you open the historical aperture a bit wider and put on the energy-as-driver-of economic-activity lens, you see that from an energy perspective we are living through a golden age in human history. While it is possible that humanity has reached some kind of permanently high plateau of wealth, prosperity and progress, history would suggest otherwise. Note, though, that the trough of the next dip in human affairs (perhaps in coming decades as a result of unanticipated shortfalls in energy inputs) is still likely to be shallower than the last dip in human affairs in the dark ages, which means that even if we saw dramatic declines in standards of living, the multi-milennia secular bull market in humans would remain intact. So we've got that going for us, which is nice.
