Parliamentary group warns that global fossil fuels could peak in less than 10 years
A report commissioned on behalf of a cross-party group of British MPs authored by a former UK government advisor, the first of its kind, says that industrial civilisation is currently on track to experience “an eventual collapse of production and living standards” in the next few decades if business-as-usual continues.
The report published by the new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Limits to Growth, which launched in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening, reviews the scientific merits of a controversial 1972 model by a team of MIT scientists, which forecasted a possible collapse of civilisation due to resource depletion.
The report launch at the House of Commons was addressed by Anders Wijkman, co-chair of the Club of Rome, which originally commissioned the MIT study.
At the time, the MIT team’s findings had been widely criticised in the media for being alarmist. To this day, it is often believed that the ‘limits to growth’ forecasts were dramatically wrong.
But the new report by the APPG on Limits to Growth, whose members consist of Conservative, Labour, Green and Scottish National Party members of parliament, reviews the scientific literature and finds that the original model remains surprisingly robust.
Authored by Professor Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey, who was Economics Commissioner on the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission, and former Carbon Brief policy analyst Robin Webster, the report concludes that:
“There is unsettling evidence that society is tracking the ‘standard run’ of the original study — which leads ultimately to collapse. Detailed and recent analyses suggest that production peaks for some key resources may only be decades away.”
The 1972 team used their system dynamics model of the consumption of key planetary resources to explore a range of different scenarios.
As Professor Jackson and Webster explain in the new APPG report:
“In the standard run scenario, natural resources (for example oil, iron and chromium) become harder and harder to obtain. The diversion of more and more capital to extracting them leaves less for investment in industry, leading to industrial decline starting in about 2015. Around 2030, the world population peaks and begins to decrease as the death rate is driven upwards by lack of food and health services.”
Not all the model’s scenarios result in this outcome, but the majority of them “show industrial output declining in the 2020s and population declining in the 2030s. The researchers didn’t put precise dates on their projections. In fact, they deliberately left the timeline somewhat vague.”
Resource decline
The new APPG report flags up two major challenges facing global society: the overconsumption of planetary resources and raw materials, and the breaching of critical ‘planetary boundaries’ triggering irreversible environmental changes.
According to recent peer-reviewed scientific studies reviewed by the APPG’s report, key resources like phosphorous (essential for fertilising soil in agriculture), coal, oil and gas have “either already reached peak production or will do so within the next 50 years.”
The report in particular assesses evidence regarding ‘peak oil’ — the point when oil production hits its maximum possible production, after which it begins to decline. One recent model, the report finds:
“… suggests that overall oil production is in fact peaking already. The combination of declining conventional oil with increasing unconventional oil supplies then results in a ‘plateau’ in supplies to the end of the century, before a decline begins.”
Global fossil fuel production, the model indicated, “is likely to peak in around 2025” — which is less than 10 years away:
“World fossil fuel production is likely to peak in around 2025… largely as a result of Chinese coal production peaking. In short, unconventional oil seems to buy us several more decades before resource depletion starts to bite.”
An important and often misunderstood issue clarified by the report is that the risk of collapse is not because resources are running out, but because the quality of the available resources is declining, while the cost of extracting this lower-quality resource is increasing.
Collapse happens not due to “the absolute exhaustion of resources but from a simple and inevitable decline in resource quality.”
Planetary boundaries
The overconsumption of planetary resources has increasingly led industrial civilisation to disrupt ecological processes regulating land, ocean and atmosphere, which underpin a ‘safe operating space’ for human survival.
Four of these ‘planetary boundaries’ — biodiversity loss, damage to phosphorous and nitrogen cycles, climate change and land use — have already been crossed.
“Humanity has changed the natural environment so profoundly that we may have created a new — and far more unpredictable — geological epoch, according to recent research. The relatively stable environment of the Holocene, an interglacial period that began about 10,000 years ago, has provided the conditions for human societies to develop and thrive. Now, however, the world has entered a new era known as the Anthropocene, where the activities of humans are the dominant influence on the atmosphere and environment.”
The world has just 6 years left to “completely decarbonise the economy” and thereby avoid a rise in global average temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius — beyond which we enter the realm of dangerous climate change.
Permanent recession
The combination of these converging crises shows that continued economic growth is reaching limits inherent to humanity’s relationship with the environment.
“The reasoning behind the claims of the Club of Rome is, in my view, clearly still valid,” said Dr. Rupert Read, a political philosopher at the University of East Anglia and chair of the Green House Think Tank. “And some of their scenarios model alarmingly closely what the world is like, now, 44 years on.”
According to APPG co-chair Barry Gardiner, Shadow Minister for Energy & Climate Change, speaking at the House of Commons launch event, he attended a recent IMF meeting where it was openly recognised that: “Austerity is not working, and instead more new investment is needed in low carbon technologies.”
According to the report authors, growth could well be coming to an end, permanently.
They point out that even Larry Summers, a former World Bank chief economist who served as Treasury Secretary under Clinton and Director of the White House National Economic Council under Obama, has argued that the world is in a new era of ‘secular stagnation’ — a condition in which developed economies show no prospect of ever returning to previous levels of economic growth.
Productivity growth has slowed down dramatically in the US, and is even worse in the UK.
The APPG on Limits to Growth report cites Bank of England data revealing that UK productivity growth has been on a negative trajectory for over a decade — ever since the Dot Com collapse.
Graph from APPG on Limits to Growth report, ‘The rise and fall of UK labour productivity growth’
The APPG on Limits to Growth is chaired by Caroline Lucas (Green Party); and co-chaired by George Kerevan (SNP), Daniel Zeichner (Labour), Stuart Andrew (Conservative), Barry Gardiner (Labour) and Baron Howarth (Labour).
Its secretariat is the University of Surrey’s Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), led by Professor Tim Jackson. Previously, Jackson had founded and run the university’s Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group, with joint funding from the UK Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the Scottish government.
From 2005 to 2010, lead APPG report author Jackson provided extensive advice on sustainability and economics to a range of UK government departments including DEFRA, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Cabinet Office and the Home Office, as well as the UN Environment Programme and the European Commission.
Despite 40 years of mounting scientific evidence since the original ‘limits to growth’ study was released, he and his co-author lament, policymakers have largely failed to act.
“Many business leaders are now openly preparing for a world of resource constraints,” concludes the Jackson report. “But governments are still reticent to think beyond the short-term. The demands of Limits to Growth suggest an urgent need for policy-makers and politicians to take a longer term perspective: not just on urgent challenges such as climate change but also on resource horizons which are at best a few generations away.”
The current trajectory, the report recommends, should give new impetus to efforts to re-defining prosperity in a way that is more in tune with human nature, the natural environment, and their interrelationships:
“It is clear enough from this analysis that the economy cannot realistically countenance much more in the way of material growth… Visions for prosperity which provide the capabilities for everyone to flourish, while society as a whole remains within the safe operating space of the planet, are clearly at a premium here. A number of such visions already exist. Developing and operationalising them is vital.”
Among the mechanisms to do so, Club of Rome co-chair Anders Wijkman told the audience at the APPG’s launch, is shifting taxation from people to environmental “bads” and their causes. Another is to mobilise popular pressure on the financial sector itself: “One thing you can do tomorrow: ask your pension fund about their sustainable investment strategies.”
Ultimately, he said, the measure of GDP is deeply flawed, failing to capture the “full picture” regarding quality of life and human well-being — we need a “new measure” in which society is at the centre of how economic prosperity is defined.
A packed audience in the House of Commons at the launch of the APPG on Limits to Growth (courtesy of @BarryGardiner)
APPG chair Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP of Brighton and Hove, said that this logic must be applied to the national budget: “We need to find a way to green the Treasury— because it has power over relevant ministers’ portfolios.”
But perhaps the most succinct advice summarising the new parliamentary group’s remit came through comments from the floor from Oxford University economist Kate Raworth:
“We need an economy in which we thrive whether we grow or not. Not the other way around.”
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the ‘System Shift’ column for VICE’s Motherboard, and is a weekly columnist for Middle East Eye.
He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work, and was twice selected in the Evening Standard’s top 1,000 most globally influential Londoners, in 2014 and 2015.
Nafeez has also written and reported for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, The Ecologist, Alternet, Counterpunch, Truthout, among others.
He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Anglia Ruskin University, where he is researching the link between global systemic crises and civil unrest for Springer Energy Briefs.
Nafeez is the author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT, among other books. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.
30 Comments on "Parliamentary group warns that global fossil fuels could peak in less than 10 years"
paulo1 on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 5:05 pm
Geeez, Ted Cruz says he will bring the US 5% growth. Surely this article is wrong. :)-
Good article and quite plausible. From where I stand growth of any kind seems based on low interest rates and false stats.
sidzepp on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 5:20 pm
At least it is good to see that the governing bodies are beginning to identify the problem. Of course it will be probably another Paris accord and BAU will continue to drive us to oblivion.
sidzepp on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 5:21 pm
Paulo, I think he probably meant continued growth for the one percent!
penury on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 5:27 pm
It is somewhat satisfying to see experts agree with everyone on the grounds observations, now if the population could only convince the elites that life without slaves will be uncomfortable for them also.
makati1 on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 6:49 pm
It becomes more and more obvious that as the articles proclaiming “BAU is NOT over and has decades yet to run”, that the end is very near. Propaganda is becoming so blatant that even the sheeple are beginning to see the lies and coverups. Good! The sooner it all collapse’ the better for the survivors.
Pass the popcorn.
makati1 on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 7:03 pm
BTW: Even 1% growth is not possible in a world of permanent contraction. THAT is the new norm and the future. Or total collapse from which the Phoenix of Capitalism will never rise again. Either way, past performance is NOT an indicator of future performance, as millions of stock and bond holders, bank savings users, retirement funds, etc. are going to soon find out. The great leveling has begun.
Volcanoes are erupting, bigger and bigger earthquakes are shaking the world, super storms are multiplying, drought, polar vortex cold, new diseases are popping up, old diseases are moving north, etc. Mother nature is releasing her army on the world we have polluted. Or, if you are biblically inclined, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have begin their ride.
Change is good. We are blessed to live in the last gasp of humanity’s existence. Everything we know is falling apart.
Pass the popcorn, while … it lasts.
onlooker on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 7:13 pm
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have begin their ride.
Yes, War, Pestilence, Famine and Death. That is always to sequel to Overshoot. Read William Cattons “Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change” Read it all you cornies.
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 10:03 pm
There is no worry. Jesus will refill the oil wells from underneath. A Sunday preacherman, in a big RV told me so. (it was a converted Greyhound bus).
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 10:09 pm
62 guys own half of everything. If you are one of the 62 guys, you don’t care about articles like this one.
geopressure on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 11:01 pm
The Sky is Falling!!! The Sky is Falling!!!
joe on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 11:09 pm
Collapse will happen sooner than peak oil, because they dont factor in things like the negative effect of fear, or the likelihood of extremists from politically unstable regions impacting supplies. Also the Club of Rome probobly never imagined a return to robber baron scale profits that we are seeing emerging. People only marginally particicpate in Capitalism, most people either work to eat or are in debt. If the wealthy truly paid the same percent of taxes as the poor, society would not have these problems. Instead money is hidden in shell companies and income is domciled in places we never heard of.
Its all well and good to say peak oil is here, but the fact is that we already see the false economy of stock markets at 18000, backed up by nothing but sentiment, so that hedge funds can collapse it again and reap profits from suckers who bought in. The more people realise the scam, the more anger will grow. Right now people are asleep. After 4 years of Billary OR Trump, people will begin to see, it doesnt matter, the slope is certainly downwards. Then there will be a nostalgia for times past, the kind that Rubio tried to stir with his Regan worship, which is so stupid its likely to work. When peak resources hits as peak oil has, we will be Hati or Liberia very soon after, not decades, because people need to eat.
GregT on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 11:12 pm
“The Sky is Falling!!! The Sky is Falling!!!”
Stop being an alarmist geo. Everything else may be going to shit, but the sky is definitely not falling.
Apneaman on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 11:25 pm
Speed Racer, Praise Jesus.
Here in Canada there is much faith that Jesus saves.
As usual, the APPG report carefully avoids the real AGW problem of non-White expansion and invasion. It only tells White Brits to “ask your pension fund about their sustainable investment strategies.” In other words, ignore the submergence of Britannia by Sand Negroes and other disgusting dross from the earth’s outhouses. The House of Commons is an entertaining debating group, somewhere below the telenovela called “Downton Abbey” in rankings of public interest.
Try telling your average Europe-bound “economic immigrant” that he should restrain himself and his urge to steal a resource-draining “better life” for himself, and stay where he is. Try persuading a garden-variety Spic heroin importer that he is only making the world worse by poisoning Gringo brains with his product. Try explaining to an Indian or Chinese illegal that he is hastening global deterioration by migrating to White North America and breeding like flies.
But even better: try revealing to any member of the above-mentioned APPG cabal that he is suppressing the reality about the non-White population explosion and its parasitism on Whiteland. In any predominantly White country except the U.S., you might find yourself inconvenienced by a heavy governmental fine, if not much worse.
And even in the U.S., things are not looking so good. Note that the bitchy banshee of the Demonic party repeatedly says that she doesn’t want to build walls against foreigners, but bridges to welcome them. In other words, she intends, for her own temporary political gain, to end the civilization of the West for once and for all.
The APPG thingy was amusing. Let’s see what’s next. The 4,583rd rerun of a Holocaust production, perhaps?
Kenz300 on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 7:10 am
Wind and solar are safer, cleaner and cheaper than fossil fuels……………
Wind and solar are the future…..fossil fuels are the past……….
Climate Change is real…… utilities need to deal with the cause (fossil fuels)
100% electric transportation and 100% solar by 2030
The next five years should be very interesting. Looks like the German Army study is on track.
shortonoil on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 7:33 am
“Collapse happens not due to “the absolute exhaustion of resources but from a simple and inevitable decline in resource quality.””
The serviceability of a fuel depends on its quality. Its quality, because it is used as a fuel, is proportional to the energy it delivers to the “economy”. This is opposed to the individual. Our claim, as outlined by the Etp Model, has been that the quality of petroleum is rapidly approaching the un-serviceability level. Our calculation is that the average barrel will have attained that state by 2030. A point henceforth likely to be known as the end of the oil age.
The same argument (although not as mathematically defined) can be made for coal, and possibly natural gas. Natural gas depends on the long term viability of Shale gas. That is still very much in question?
For the most part, the authors are correct. Perhaps the US government will take notice? And then again, perhaps – it will continue to go lumbering along in its bureaucratic stupor until it falls into the abyss?
Almost every problem discussed in the comments I have read can be solved by implementing just two words. Self discipline. Forget the “wants” and pay attention to the “musts”. Population overexpansion is a function of too many live births per woman. Excessive debt that can never be paid is a function of funding wants and ignoring musts. The list goes on. Our biggest enemy in all this is the idiot in the mirror.
joe on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 11:03 am
Sadly Robert its not true. I never invented a car, or figured out how to use oil. If I lived in the stone age I would be a cave man, as would 99.99999% of us all.
We are here because a very small number of people figured out ways to do things better than everyone else, and other people figured ways to exploit better than anyone else. Probobly most of reading this site couldnt programme it. Yet here we are convinced the end is near.
We are the prisoners chained in the cave, convinced we know everything about the world, yet all we get to see are shadows.
Apneaman on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 11:07 am
Robert, I agree and that’s why, I’m pro sodomy. I think the gay community should get props for not breeding.
ghung on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 11:13 am
Our biggest enemy is our collective inability to identify, and agree to act on, problems before they become predicaments. What we have now is a long list of predicaments.
GregT on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 11:21 am
“Almost every problem discussed in the comments I have read can be solved by implementing just two words. Self discipline.”
Hmmm, tried that, it doesn’t seem to be solving anything. Any other suggestions?
PracticalMaina on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 12:21 pm
Joe, it is not the inventor of the automobile who killed the electric car on 2 separate occasions and is trying to do it again. It was his owners, another word that if remedied could help many problems, greed.
jjhman on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 1:36 pm
PracM:
Nobody killed the electric car, much less twice. Before Tesla they were all born dead. I saw that stupid movie. Obviously nobody involved with that farce knew anything about engineering or production or, duh, the fact that GM never intended to produce or support those cars over a long period of time. It was an experiment, nothing more.
In the past 5 or 10 years, however much has changed. The time is ripe. Tesla made everyone notice that by making a small number of very impressive cars and selling them to a small number of very rich people who could flaunt them.
Now that it is starting to look practical, mostly because of technical improvements in battery technology, even GM is starting to think about a real electric car program.
PracticalMaina on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 3:00 pm
im talking way back to electrified trolley, before the model t. and again in the 70s.
Practicalmaina on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 4:32 pm
Gm spent big bucks to get their old electrics off the road. Now they are just responding to market pressure. It’s pretty wild a car can be unsafe and they simply fix it. But if is low maintenance and doesn’t consume fuel, then it gets scrapped. . Greedy twats, if fuel moves up anymore I am definetly leasing an electric.
george on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 4:55 pm
Look up the Hirsch report . Commisioned by W in 2005 and ” mitigated ” by same .
makati1 on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 6:22 pm
If you know your history, you know that, from at least the stone age up until the present, humans were like locusts consuming everything and then moving to a new location. The “new” locations are now gone and there is nowhere to go for a new start. End of story.
paulo1 on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 5:05 pm
Geeez, Ted Cruz says he will bring the US 5% growth. Surely this article is wrong. :)-
Good article and quite plausible. From where I stand growth of any kind seems based on low interest rates and false stats.
sidzepp on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 5:20 pm
At least it is good to see that the governing bodies are beginning to identify the problem. Of course it will be probably another Paris accord and BAU will continue to drive us to oblivion.
sidzepp on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 5:21 pm
Paulo, I think he probably meant continued growth for the one percent!
penury on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 5:27 pm
It is somewhat satisfying to see experts agree with everyone on the grounds observations, now if the population could only convince the elites that life without slaves will be uncomfortable for them also.
makati1 on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 6:49 pm
It becomes more and more obvious that as the articles proclaiming “BAU is NOT over and has decades yet to run”, that the end is very near. Propaganda is becoming so blatant that even the sheeple are beginning to see the lies and coverups. Good! The sooner it all collapse’ the better for the survivors.
Pass the popcorn.
makati1 on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 7:03 pm
BTW: Even 1% growth is not possible in a world of permanent contraction. THAT is the new norm and the future. Or total collapse from which the Phoenix of Capitalism will never rise again. Either way, past performance is NOT an indicator of future performance, as millions of stock and bond holders, bank savings users, retirement funds, etc. are going to soon find out. The great leveling has begun.
Volcanoes are erupting, bigger and bigger earthquakes are shaking the world, super storms are multiplying, drought, polar vortex cold, new diseases are popping up, old diseases are moving north, etc. Mother nature is releasing her army on the world we have polluted. Or, if you are biblically inclined, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have begin their ride.
Change is good. We are blessed to live in the last gasp of humanity’s existence. Everything we know is falling apart.
Pass the popcorn, while … it lasts.
onlooker on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 7:13 pm
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have begin their ride.
Yes, War, Pestilence, Famine and Death. That is always to sequel to Overshoot. Read William Cattons “Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change” Read it all you cornies.
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 10:03 pm
There is no worry. Jesus will refill the oil wells from underneath. A Sunday preacherman, in a big RV told me so. (it was a converted Greyhound bus).
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 10:09 pm
62 guys own half of everything. If you are one of the 62 guys, you don’t care about articles like this one.
geopressure on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 11:01 pm
The Sky is Falling!!! The Sky is Falling!!!
joe on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 11:09 pm
Collapse will happen sooner than peak oil, because they dont factor in things like the negative effect of fear, or the likelihood of extremists from politically unstable regions impacting supplies. Also the Club of Rome probobly never imagined a return to robber baron scale profits that we are seeing emerging. People only marginally particicpate in Capitalism, most people either work to eat or are in debt. If the wealthy truly paid the same percent of taxes as the poor, society would not have these problems. Instead money is hidden in shell companies and income is domciled in places we never heard of.
Its all well and good to say peak oil is here, but the fact is that we already see the false economy of stock markets at 18000, backed up by nothing but sentiment, so that hedge funds can collapse it again and reap profits from suckers who bought in. The more people realise the scam, the more anger will grow. Right now people are asleep. After 4 years of Billary OR Trump, people will begin to see, it doesnt matter, the slope is certainly downwards. Then there will be a nostalgia for times past, the kind that Rubio tried to stir with his Regan worship, which is so stupid its likely to work. When peak resources hits as peak oil has, we will be Hati or Liberia very soon after, not decades, because people need to eat.
GregT on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 11:12 pm
“The Sky is Falling!!! The Sky is Falling!!!”
Stop being an alarmist geo. Everything else may be going to shit, but the sky is definitely not falling.
Apneaman on Thu, 21st Apr 2016 11:25 pm
Speed Racer, Praise Jesus.
Here in Canada there is much faith that Jesus saves.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61qIIpluvfL._SL400_.jpg
geopressure on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 12:36 am
Good one
makati1 on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 12:36 am
joe, you tell it like it is.
theedrich on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 4:15 am
As usual, the APPG report carefully avoids the real AGW problem of non-White expansion and invasion. It only tells White Brits to “ask your pension fund about their sustainable investment strategies.” In other words, ignore the submergence of Britannia by Sand Negroes and other disgusting dross from the earth’s outhouses. The House of Commons is an entertaining debating group, somewhere below the telenovela called “Downton Abbey” in rankings of public interest.
Try telling your average Europe-bound “economic immigrant” that he should restrain himself and his urge to steal a resource-draining “better life” for himself, and stay where he is. Try persuading a garden-variety Spic heroin importer that he is only making the world worse by poisoning Gringo brains with his product. Try explaining to an Indian or Chinese illegal that he is hastening global deterioration by migrating to White North America and breeding like flies.
But even better: try revealing to any member of the above-mentioned APPG cabal that he is suppressing the reality about the non-White population explosion and its parasitism on Whiteland. In any predominantly White country except the U.S., you might find yourself inconvenienced by a heavy governmental fine, if not much worse.
And even in the U.S., things are not looking so good. Note that the bitchy banshee of the Demonic party repeatedly says that she doesn’t want to build walls against foreigners, but bridges to welcome them. In other words, she intends, for her own temporary political gain, to end the civilization of the West for once and for all.
The APPG thingy was amusing. Let’s see what’s next. The 4,583rd rerun of a Holocaust production, perhaps?
Kenz300 on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 7:10 am
Wind and solar are safer, cleaner and cheaper than fossil fuels……………
Wind and solar are the future…..fossil fuels are the past……….
Climate Change is real…… utilities need to deal with the cause (fossil fuels)
100% electric transportation and 100% solar by 2030
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBkND76J91k
Cloud9 on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 7:30 am
The next five years should be very interesting. Looks like the German Army study is on track.
shortonoil on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 7:33 am
“Collapse happens not due to “the absolute exhaustion of resources but from a simple and inevitable decline in resource quality.””
The serviceability of a fuel depends on its quality. Its quality, because it is used as a fuel, is proportional to the energy it delivers to the “economy”. This is opposed to the individual. Our claim, as outlined by the Etp Model, has been that the quality of petroleum is rapidly approaching the un-serviceability level. Our calculation is that the average barrel will have attained that state by 2030. A point henceforth likely to be known as the end of the oil age.
The same argument (although not as mathematically defined) can be made for coal, and possibly natural gas. Natural gas depends on the long term viability of Shale gas. That is still very much in question?
For the most part, the authors are correct. Perhaps the US government will take notice? And then again, perhaps – it will continue to go lumbering along in its bureaucratic stupor until it falls into the abyss?
http://www.thehillsgroup.org/
Robert Spoley on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 10:25 am
Almost every problem discussed in the comments I have read can be solved by implementing just two words. Self discipline. Forget the “wants” and pay attention to the “musts”. Population overexpansion is a function of too many live births per woman. Excessive debt that can never be paid is a function of funding wants and ignoring musts. The list goes on. Our biggest enemy in all this is the idiot in the mirror.
joe on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 11:03 am
Sadly Robert its not true. I never invented a car, or figured out how to use oil. If I lived in the stone age I would be a cave man, as would 99.99999% of us all.
We are here because a very small number of people figured out ways to do things better than everyone else, and other people figured ways to exploit better than anyone else. Probobly most of reading this site couldnt programme it. Yet here we are convinced the end is near.
We are the prisoners chained in the cave, convinced we know everything about the world, yet all we get to see are shadows.
Apneaman on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 11:07 am
Robert, I agree and that’s why, I’m pro sodomy. I think the gay community should get props for not breeding.
ghung on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 11:13 am
Our biggest enemy is our collective inability to identify, and agree to act on, problems before they become predicaments. What we have now is a long list of predicaments.
GregT on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 11:21 am
“Almost every problem discussed in the comments I have read can be solved by implementing just two words. Self discipline.”
Hmmm, tried that, it doesn’t seem to be solving anything. Any other suggestions?
PracticalMaina on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 12:21 pm
Joe, it is not the inventor of the automobile who killed the electric car on 2 separate occasions and is trying to do it again. It was his owners, another word that if remedied could help many problems, greed.
jjhman on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 1:36 pm
PracM:
Nobody killed the electric car, much less twice. Before Tesla they were all born dead. I saw that stupid movie. Obviously nobody involved with that farce knew anything about engineering or production or, duh, the fact that GM never intended to produce or support those cars over a long period of time. It was an experiment, nothing more.
In the past 5 or 10 years, however much has changed. The time is ripe. Tesla made everyone notice that by making a small number of very impressive cars and selling them to a small number of very rich people who could flaunt them.
Now that it is starting to look practical, mostly because of technical improvements in battery technology, even GM is starting to think about a real electric car program.
PracticalMaina on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 3:00 pm
im talking way back to electrified trolley, before the model t. and again in the 70s.
Practicalmaina on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 4:32 pm
Gm spent big bucks to get their old electrics off the road. Now they are just responding to market pressure. It’s pretty wild a car can be unsafe and they simply fix it. But if is low maintenance and doesn’t consume fuel, then it gets scrapped. . Greedy twats, if fuel moves up anymore I am definetly leasing an electric.
george on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 4:55 pm
Look up the Hirsch report . Commisioned by W in 2005 and ” mitigated ” by same .
makati1 on Fri, 22nd Apr 2016 6:22 pm
If you know your history, you know that, from at least the stone age up until the present, humans were like locusts consuming everything and then moving to a new location. The “new” locations are now gone and there is nowhere to go for a new start. End of story.