Billionaires for Peak Oil

…We often refer to “industrialization” but this misses the revolutionary nature of mechanization – engines small enough to replace individual people – down to the size of lawn mowers. Mechanization is the source of the “liberation” which the modern era feels, and the source of the huge surplus in society which we take for granted. This surplus allows sexual freedom, personal freedom and political freedom. People can, literally “vote with their feet” to find better places.

If there is a limit on mechanization, then there is a limit on affluence. There are “ins” and “outs”. People who live outside of the mechanized economy struggle along on the surplus, and the rigidity, of the rock economy, or even worse, of the subsistence economy that it replaced.
Since petroleum puts a limit on mechanization, and our economic expectations – our money system, our financial system and our political promises made – rest on the continual expansion of the mechanized economy – something has to give. Either the environment gives out as we over sink, the sources give out as we over consume, or the promises give out – and we have to slash living standard so that everyone can get a piece of the mechanized economy’s dwindling surplus.

This then is the case for alarmism – if we don’t run out of oil, we run out of air. And we run out of both before we run out of people who want into the system. And because our monetary system is based on the ability of people to become affluent mechanized consumers and workers – there isn’t enough money on the planet to meet our promises, which rely on expanding the economy indefinitely at over 2% per year.

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