[Tuike]

Are new peak oil books being published anymore? I searched Google for new peak oil books and found this:
https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/peak-oil
All books are two decades old.

[ralfy]

I think the latest is Peak of the Devil from Chip Haynes, from last January. Before that was Breakdown by Tim Watkins, from last November.

[Tuike]

^ Thanks for the tip. I ordered Breakdown from Amazon.de and fetched it up from nearby parcel locker pickup site. Back cover text seemed interesting. Peak of the Devil seems to be explaining the basics of peak oil theory, if I interpret the back cover text correctly, so I'll pass that one. I'll start reading Breakdown after I finish Being You by Anil Seth.

[theluckycountry]

I think the alternate energy puppet show has done much to dispel interest in the subject. That plus the fact that the suffering due to the peaking of oil has been kept mostly in the third world for a decade and a half. Now that real progress in the collapse of living standards is occurring across Europe and north america, we might see some renewed interest, though I doubt it. People focused on the price of oil back then, and still do, which was natural and certainly an indicator. But the price can be fixed at any level and nations still excluded from buying what they need to maintain their level of complexity.

Sri Lanka is the poster child for this, it's exports in $ terms were not enough to buy the oil and Gas it used to, so it stopped buying as before. That reduced demand, and added to the millions, probably billions of people worldwide doing the same it took the pressure off the declining reserves. When oil went from $20 to $70~$80 where it trades now it caused a lot of inflation, but not a lot of wage inflation. The big Assumption was that people around the world would continue to consume as they always had and drive prices for hydrocarbons through the roof. That would have made the trip over the top of the bell curve fast. It was a failed assumption, and it was not even really investigated either?

It was taken for granted, like that we all take a dump every morning. And it's still not been quantified as far as I've seen? To keep prices at the current levels there must be an ongoing reduction in usage happening across the globe. I remember reading a story 15 years ago about an Indian entrepreneur who was setting up an airline that would allow average Indians to fly around the country like Americans did. Whether he knew the low fuel prices back then after the GFC couldn't last I don't know but the airline never took to the skies. Wages in the two most populated nations on Earth are 1/3 or 1/4 what our wages are, that's why we exported all out manufacturing to them. They hoped they would rise to our living standards but there was never a hope of that given oil depletion.

So while we're starting to feel the pain in the West the majority of nations outside the west are already well down the curve of living standard collapse. And every collapse has its cover story to obfuscate the truth. A rogue government, bad business decisions, anything but the fact that the people of a nation simply can't afford to buy the energy "they" use to buy. Look at Saudi Arabia, look at it's population curve in fact!



That's an old chart ending 15 years ago, the current pop is 39 million so the curve continues upward https://countrymeters.info/en/Saudi_Arabia

They breed like mice, as do all the Arabs (no contraception)
Now consider this

THE WELFARE STATE IN SAUDI ARABIA:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')robably one of the most salient phenomena in the modern history of Saudi Arabia is the emergence and dramatic expansion of its welfare state. In the course of a half century, it has become an integral part of the institutional framework of that nation. It accounts for more than 50 percent of the state public expenditures, and its programs touch a large section of the Saudi citizens.