Energy hunger pains - the addict's bottomless pit of unmet needs
A vision occurred to me today, reading about the shut down Alaskan oil pipeline, that of a huge mouth, open wide, and oil pouring in as fast as we can send it in, or I should say the mouth USED to be smaller and we held back some of our production, but now we're going full out to extract oil for the mouth's pleasure.
Is the mouth the global economy, our collective 6.5 billion people, or the network of machines that produce everything we know of as civilization? Or all of the above?
The 400,000 bbl/day no longer being produced from Alaska offers a small flutter of fear to the mouth - will it have enough? Where will the shortage be made up? Saudi Arabia?
Will we go into withdrawal if our daily fix?
All the talk is about restoring production, but what about conservation? What about reducing our consumption a bit?
Well, will it really do any good? One theory says (in a time of surplus) all conservation will lead to more energy to be used eleswhere. Does this still apply in times of shortages?
According to market economics prices alone will moderate demand. Prices will keep going up until the poorest consumers decide to stop playing. So there's maybe PLENTY of oil out there at the right price.
And back to the mouth, will the mouth contract merely by drinking slower (conservation), or are we in store for an actual material reduction - like economic collapse or actual food shortages and population reduction?
We've "solved" many of the causes of early death, and we've had more than enough calorie production at least. We can feed animals and maybe even our machines with biofuels from our farms. At least for the moment, while we have fuel and fertilizers. The rest of the world has been trying to catch up to our modern high-energy, high-input, high production farming methods.
Where will the system start failing first? How long can America borrow to continue of deficit spending? Something has gotta give. That's what I always say.
The big mouth is hungry, and what diets we'll choose in the future is uncertain, but sooner or later, we must pick one.
Is the mouth the global economy, our collective 6.5 billion people, or the network of machines that produce everything we know of as civilization? Or all of the above?
The 400,000 bbl/day no longer being produced from Alaska offers a small flutter of fear to the mouth - will it have enough? Where will the shortage be made up? Saudi Arabia?
Will we go into withdrawal if our daily fix?
All the talk is about restoring production, but what about conservation? What about reducing our consumption a bit?
Well, will it really do any good? One theory says (in a time of surplus) all conservation will lead to more energy to be used eleswhere. Does this still apply in times of shortages?
According to market economics prices alone will moderate demand. Prices will keep going up until the poorest consumers decide to stop playing. So there's maybe PLENTY of oil out there at the right price.
And back to the mouth, will the mouth contract merely by drinking slower (conservation), or are we in store for an actual material reduction - like economic collapse or actual food shortages and population reduction?
We've "solved" many of the causes of early death, and we've had more than enough calorie production at least. We can feed animals and maybe even our machines with biofuels from our farms. At least for the moment, while we have fuel and fertilizers. The rest of the world has been trying to catch up to our modern high-energy, high-input, high production farming methods.
Where will the system start failing first? How long can America borrow to continue of deficit spending? Something has gotta give. That's what I always say.
The big mouth is hungry, and what diets we'll choose in the future is uncertain, but sooner or later, we must pick one.
posted by Ares Olympus at 7:07 PM
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