[JustinFrankl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GreyZone', 'T')hat doesn't look like a better standard of living to most of us posting here. It might, to whomever is still standing afterwards but that won't be most of us. Your phrase - "getting through the rebalance will be the challenge" - is a bit of an understatement, don't you think?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Doly', '
')
If most of the objects of everyday use are machine-made, as it happens in Western economies, you need very few people supervising those machines to make them. The rest of people are then employed in services, which means, interacting with other people in ways that they are willing to pay for. This goes from basic services, like teachers and doctors, to fairly trivial ones, like making computer games.

Does that answer your question?

[OilMan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')Maybe someone can explain this to me. It doesn't make sense in terms of my own industry, which is all about making things, and moving things and people around, often from one side of the planet to another.

[GreyZone]

The service economy only works when the available energy pool is increasing or easily increased. When it is declining or when the costs of increasing the energy pool become excessive, the service economy won't work. Those machines are useless without energy to drive them. The telephone switches, the computers, the routers, the gateways that make up our electronic world are useless without sufficient energy to drive them forward. Since a large part of our electrical generation is from fossil inputs (primarily natural gas, which is also approaching peak), our electrical system is at risk too. This is why many people expect rolling blackouts eventually. Such blackouts can be avoided only by replacing those generating stations with generating stations that generate electricity some other way (solar, nuclear, coal, etc.).

As someone else noted, peak oil is really a liquid fuels crisis but since we do transport so much around the world, that crisis will totally upset the existing economy and something new will emerge post-peak. Our best outcome (for the greatest number) occurs if we can find sufficient sustainable and clean energy sources to allow 6+ billion people to live and to slowly wind down the population to more sustainable levels. If the liquid fuels crisis then destroys our ability to mine, extract, and process metals/minerals necessary for making solar cells, solar ovens, etc., then society will fall further.

Note also that most of the world's poor live on diets supplemented by food grown elsewhere and shipped in via private and public relief agencies. That food is grown via the "green revolution" which is itself dependent on fossil fuels at all stages. If that green revolution collapses, we will experience approximately a 65% decrease in total food produced. The green revolution basically tripled grain yields. Without the green revolution, 3-4 billion out of 6+ billion people will starve. So both the production of food as well as transporting it to the poor in those nations is dependent on liquid (fossil) fuels at the present time.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilMan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')Maybe someone can explain this to me. It doesn't make sense in terms of my own industry, which is all about making things, and moving things and people around, often from one side of the planet to another.

[bobcousins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GreyZone', 'I')t looks to me like we have to dispose of at least 2 billion and more likely 4-5 billion human beings before we can reach a stable situation.

That doesn't look like a better standard of living to most of us posting here. It might, to whomever is still standing afterwards but that won't be most of us. Your phrase - "getting through the rebalance will be the challenge" - is a bit of an understatement, don't you think?

[GoIllini]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JustinFrankl', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GreyZone', 'T')hat doesn't look like a better standard of living to most of us posting here. It might, to whomever is still standing afterwards but that won't be most of us. Your phrase - "getting through the rebalance will be the challenge" - is a bit of an understatement, don't you think?

[Ludi]

GoIllini - who is going to pay for the nuke plants for the poor countries?

[holmes]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('holmes', 'I')ts funny monte I havent read anything by ruppert or the other so called doomers. Ive read matt savinars site. not the book. Actually I have only read beyond civilization and dieoff(some of it).
the only so called "leader" of PO ive read is your literature. I need to read your book though when i get the time. But u sum it up perfectly, wish I could be so level headed. . But I see nothing incorrect in this observation. No agendas except to reach sanity. aint nothing wrong with that. Peace on earth and goodwill towards man.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NeoPeasant', 'N')o, we don't have to lower the standard of living, we have to lower the standard of material consumption.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GreyZone', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'I') believe our standard of living would rise as well in a world of balance. It's getting through the rebalancing that will be the challenge.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GoIllini', ' ') There won't be a die-off. The planet has a carrying capacity of 8 Billion if we get off the atkins' diet and switch to nuclear energy.

[peripato]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GoIllini', 'B')ut I think all of this is irrelevant. There won't be a die-off. The planet has a carrying capacity of 8 Billion if we get off the atkins' diet and switch to nuclear energy.

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

"The planet has a carrying capacity of 8 Billion if we get off the atkins' diet and switch to nuclear energy."


I don't know where you pulled 8 billion. (in fact I can guess, but it's not pretty)

The only way nuclear would have any effect is if the government went totalitarian and pretty much made everyone work on farms. (Nukes don't grow food my friend) There's no way you'd have as many people as now though, let alone more.

In short our system has to change, I believe the Government knows this and is taking steps already.

[MonteQuest]

Some might say I have grown rather pedantic in my elder years, but I think it is born more of tedious frustration in the face of mediocrity.

How many times must we rehash some of these issues?

Why are so many of the solutions proffered here of late almost completely dismissive of the entire life-cycle consequences they entail?

Specifically, I see many solutions proposed that just flat totally ignore population growth. No solution, whether it be a techno-fix or a powerdown that does not address population growth is not within the realm of reality...unless the only reality you care about is a selfish, short-term one, where you get yours and the hell with everyone else...much less future generations.

And the biofuels obsession that ignores ecology. The "waste" you wish to burn is food for something else. Period.

Conservation and efficiency solutions that ignore the need to make it a "global" effort to be effective.

Yeah, you are going to see me say Hogwash! a lot more until I see people doing their homework, or at least reading what has been hashed and rehashed ad naseum for years on here before they post these wild spurious claims.

Can we not raise the quality and level of the debate here?

Let's get out of the sandbox.

[rwwff]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 't')hat does not address population growth is not within the realm of reality...

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rwwff', ' ')Sure, but we'd have to agree on an objective first, and I think that is currently a large bone of contention... For myself, I am truly only interested in figuring out what IS happening so that I can be ready to adapt to whatever set of conditions happen to present themselves. Couldn't care less whose fault something is, nor what shoulda, coulda, woulda been.

[rwwff]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'T')he objective is to look at all the facts.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rwwff', ' ')I think everyone already understands the facts. What they disagree about is whether the consequences of any particular item of fact are acceptable or unacceptable.

[rwwff]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rwwff', ' ')I think everyone already understands the facts. What they disagree about is whether the consequences of any particular item of fact are acceptable or unacceptable.