Anyone versed in YouTube can tell you that the present exponential increase in population coupled with the soon to come exponential decrease in the availability of oil fueled by the criminal waste of resources (skimmed by their owners-in-arms) in unsocially productive wars will run us ALL into the Ditch, quicktime. Basically, we (the fucking planet) can’t afford the rich.
Change the USA can exemplify to the world?
Once greed is dethroned as virtue, we may progress. I see a cap on net worth tied to minimum wage.
a) Start storing oil. Buy as much as we can, drill responsibly at home and deposit it all in Fuel For Our Kid’s Trust. It’s a limited resource. Let’s name it, claim it and ration it. The rest will follow, 'cause they got kids too.
b) Reduce our usage.
Devote half of our highway lanes to car pools. Hitchiking becomes fashionable, passingthrus are sooner out of town and folks, discovering that they are all in the same boat, will socialize and buy no more car than they need.
Invest heavily in clean alternatives to oil while getting used to rolling brownouts.
I’d like a cite for this claim. I was under the impression that the rate of growth is slowing worldwide and that the AIDS crisis will impact overall population levels.
Ok, instead of population. let’s talk about the burgeoning energy requirements of the emerging global consumer class, cars, clean water and tvs for all. I’m sure there’s an exponent in there somewhere.
What’s oil for if you don’t use it? And in any case peak oil doesn’t mean that the tap is going to run dry at a certain date. It means that it will get progressively more expensive until demand drops or alternatives become cheaper. The free market, like democracy, is the second-worst system, the worst being every other system ever tried. Rationing resources has never worked.
The OP obviously doesn’t know what ‘exponential growth’ entails…or is being hyperbolic. But then, based on the loony-toons ‘solutions’, I’m guessing most have figured that out already. Which is probably why there haven’t been a lot of responses thus far…
See, there is your problem…you are getting your information from YouTube. Neither population nor resources track by exponential growth curves (either positive or negative). Oil (which I presume is what you are on about…and to further qualify, you probably mean cheap, easily accessible LSC oil), is not decreasing exponentially.
Um…too be sure. Evil horrible rich who use up all the oil. Definitely bad. Or something. Yes…quite…
Right. Everyone wants to be like us after all. And they are all just waiting to see what we do so that they can know what’s best. So, let’s see what you think is best, ehe?
Ah…I see your plan. Brilliant. What you want us to do is to shoot ourselves collectively in the head and commit economic suicide! And, seeing us blow ourselves apart the rest of the world will leap at the chance to do the same! And then, the survivors will have all the oil they could possibly want! Brilliant! Masterful! Now, how to get the plan into action…
Er…ok. The less said about this one the better as it’s too sad to even make fun of properly.
Good idea. And if you manage to get the US to commit economic hari kari then I’d say you will go a long way to achieving this, as the survivors are sure to use a lot less oil…and everything else.
Sure…we can all sing kumbaya too. Here, have another toke on this… puff puff
What would the point be, since if we listened to your earlier plan and were actually frothing at the mouth mad enough to implement it there wouldn’t BE a country. Well, except for the Peak Oil folks who will cleverly avoid the fall of our civilization and become the rugged survivalists, struggling valiantly in the wild while being in tune with nature and researching alternative energy in the evenings around the camp fire (are they going to be allowed fire btw? This part of the plan is unclear)…
I shudder to think that there is more. I’d rather not try you, as I can only take so much crazy at any one sitting.
The population doesn’t grow exponentially though. It is set to stabilize at around 10 billion around 2050 (assuming we don’t dramatically expand lifespan).
As far as oil, I don’t know how fast the decline is but I think it’ll be 1-5% a year.
If it is a 3% decline a year, that is a global shortfall of about 2.4 million barrels/day per year, and 600,000 in the US.
So we’d have to cut demand, increase supply from alternative sources of oil (biofuel, tar sands, coal, etc) or use different energies (coal, plug in hybrids, etc) to match that decline.
if it’s used for anything but fueling and greasing the next few generations into reduced consumption and alternative energy sources, it’s being misused.
I’m thinking 2050 at the latest.
Who should pocket the difference?
Is it working for what we used to call the middle class?
We have never before faced the so obvious need for conservation of a finite resource.
I’m predicting an exponential increase in interest.
Not yet, but soon. While profit trumps humanity, the results become more disastrous.
These are the folks who will settle for being the last ones to starve on a stripped planet. They’ll be good for a while in their 100K acre alpine glens with natural hydro/geothermal resources, state of the art wind and solar technology, the last 1000 deep cycle batteries ever to be manufactured and 1000 Mexicans selectively bred to stoop happily on Tequila for a fair share of the fields.
Security provided by Gitmo Architects, Haliburton and Blackwater, with help from ChainLink and RazorWire. These guys are the Patriots and sit just below the salt with the house niggers and get to fuck the Mexicans. Beats workin’.
This is, at the moment, our destined end. Oh, there will be other medium-term survivors, ranchers,farmers and blacksmiths geographically collected and cooperating for the local common good in sunny, reliably watered, fertile valleys. I’m suggesting we encourage this as a lifestyle and get more people involved.
As I’ve said …
De-institutionalize greed.
Pretty much. It would be a global network of sustainable communities weaning themselves from oil.
See above.
Tough luck, buster. Let’s provide UHC while we’re at it.
If we want people to conserve oil, pumping it and storing it isn’t the most efficient way to do it. Just tax the use of oil, and people will naturally use less of it.
There’s no point in squirreling away spare barrels of oil for future use as if we were stocking the pantry shelves with canned goods. If we haven’t come up with adequate substitutes for oil by the time we run low enough on it to see significant price spikes, having a few extra barrels down cellar won’t be enough to ease the economic pain for any substantial length of time.
Lunacy and frivolity are a bad combination in the Great Debates forum, and risk running afoul of the mods’ “joke thread” filter. If you’re going to post a nutty OP and follow it up with nutty observations, you should at least appear to be taking them seriously. Just a friendly hint.
It seems that, as with your other predictions, you are a bit, um, off. I’d say that this has to do with your rather dubious grasp of what the term ‘exponential growth’ means and implies, but I’m thinking that the ‘dubious grasp’ part runs a bit…deeper.
Perhaps this will help. It’s A talk given by Dr. Albert Barlett Professor Emeritus Department of Physics University of Colorado at Boulder “Arithmetic, Population and Energy”
It’s posted on YouTube in 8 9+min segments. I have not been able to find the complete lecture anywhere but in the cite, the 8 segments are collected.