bopuc/links

In fact it will produce less. The last three years have been the first in 150 years that no new oilfields were discovered. That essentially means that the oil biz has found pretty much everything that it is economical to recover. We're now consuming 4 barrels for every 1 we discover.

I can live without cars and jet travel, but if we don't switch over to organic agriculture, things are going to get pretty scary.

Cuba did it out of necessity after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Something interesting to look up (google Cuba Organic Revolution)

I'll have something to blog about this soon, actually.

aj, very interesting.
Can you provide me with any information or evidence that China is investing on a massive scale in organic agriculture and alternative fuel sources? It seems to me that this would truly be in everyone's favor, not just China's.

Cause from the looks of it, they, and almost every other country on earth, is just blindly following the same system which has so far worked but is now not only collapsing but threatening the survival of the planet...

Let's also not forget that China is not alone in it's expansive growth. India is not far behind. On top of that, the two countries also share another profoundly disturbing trend: the male/female ratio is apparently widening, creating far far too many single men. The effect of that is a large percentage of disaffected men, disconnected from society who then end up in one of two situations: criminal activity or military employ. The latter is bad for the country itself, the former, for it's neighbors...

Sorry Borister,

China is indeed going full-tilt capitalist boogie, not local, green, organic. Cars displace bicycles, new superhighways and parking lots spring up everywhere, skyscrapers stand literally where rice paddies were only decades ago. It's all fueled by Green Revolution petro-agriculture, Three Gorges-type megaprojects to generate electricity and irrigate deserts...in short, all choices without a viable future.

The worldwide problem is a complete disconnect between economic models predicated on 3-7% annual growth to sustain themselves, and the rapid slide towards unavailability of cheap energy and resources to sustain that growth. Because of this disconnect, governments are very slow to put policies in place that could cushion the impact -- things like tax credits for urban vs. exurban construction, prioritizing green roofs over new highways, etc. etc.

People still don't get the idea that fossil fuels are a one-time bonanza. We assume it's always going to be there, like air and water (and we should not take even those for granted.) Once they're gone...they're gone.

At the rate we currently use energy, sustainable alternatives like solar/wind/wave/geothermal just can't supply enough. *Maybe* enough for domestic heat and light, presuming massive efficiency gains, but forget about heavy industry, air transport, and individual mobility...things will be, in short, seriously downscaled.

Some say we can switch to coal, because we supposedly have "plenty." Maybe for power generation, for a short time, but many people have funny ideas about transforming coal (through an extremely inefficient process) into some sort of fuel for cars. If we were to start using coal-derived petroleum substitutes, we'd go through our "plenty" pretty darn fast, and then we're back where we started. Eventually, if we switch to coal, then at some point we start burning coal to mine coal -- running just to stand still.

Neither coal or sustainables can replace petroleum as a chemical feedstock, or natural gas for fertilizer. Absolutely nothing replaces petroleum for energy potential, room-temperature stability, and energy density.

Then there are the always-smiling "cornucopian" theorists, who make wild-eyed claims about nanotech or superconductors, or biotech or hydrogen, how we're all about to "turn the corner" and live in an age of such immense material riches that people a century hence will think of us as savages. The cornucopians are basically trying to salvage the reputation of modern economics' fixation on Growth at all costs, despite what the laws of physics say, by sweeping said laws of physics under the rug....

China's way to big-scale capitalism is maybe the biggest threat to the earth now. Wired has an article in 13-04 about how many cars China will need over the next years. I have blogged about it at http://www.brilliantdays.com/archives/2005/03/the_oildrinking.php

And who can blame the Chinese? They just want what almost every person in Europe and North America sees as a given right: Drive anywhere you want, as much as you want.

We really do need to jump over some "bad technology" when previous underdeveloped countries get more developed. If China has to go through all the errors of Europa and USA first, the earth will be in big truble.

99 of 100 cars sold in China SHOULD be low-energy, low-pollution cars like the Prius, not just 1 in 1000 (or whatever the low number is today) as it is in Europe and USA.

Here in Norway electric cars are allowed to drive in the bus lanes. But not the Prius. Lame. The rules should be different. For example: If your car uses less then 0.5 liters of petrol per 10 kilometers, you are allowed to use the bus lanes.

We also pay car tax according to the size of the engine, not how much it pollutes. So very expensive Mercedes cars with the best petrol engines you can get (in terms of pullution), have to pay lots more in car taxes than smaller old cars that pollute a lot.

The rule should be: Reward the ones who really tries not to pollute by giving them money and time (less tax, use bus lanes). Then people will start thinking. Talking about the rain forest doesn't make it...

This will self-correct.
When there is no more oil to make gasoline, gasoline usage will drop remarkably fast.
Of course, people will need to adjust, but compared to other historical upheavals, this will be relatively minor. After all, it was only a hundred years ago that we did not have cars.