Een belangrijk (naar mijn mening) artikel die ik er graag even uitlicht. Het vat een aantal bestaande ideeen samen met betrekking tot economie, peak oil, samenleving en de toekomst in het groot. Niet dat er geen andere uitstekende artikelen
te vinden zijn met raakvlakken met het peak oil onderwerp, maar deze is echt sterk, verplichte kost voor iedereen die nadenkt.
Goede beheersing van het engels is een pre.
No bell curve in the jaws of peak oil
Uittreksels:
[quote=''Peter Pogany''][...]If levity were allowed in the serious matter of running out of cheap oil, one might say A funny thing happened on the way to the peak. The maximum rate of global output may be somewhat higher than the already reached ca. 87 million barrels per day, but world oil does not want to go there.
[...]
The notion that accelerated drawdown of a nonrenewable resource must reach a climactic bliss point of intensity beyond which market incentives move into high gear to substitute away from it is beyond debate. But oil is a resource like no other. The economys ever more evident inability to reduce dependence on it while retaining growth raises the strong possibility that the peak -- as rationally defined, rather than empirically experienced -- will never be reached.
[...]
If we take all the factors that may have a significant effect on the long-run demand and supply of oil (which account for its expected exchange value and the marginal cost of production, respectively), we get a cloud of point estimates, dense enough to darken the space delineated by the horizontal axis of time (running from now until 2050) and the vertical one, showing prices all over the place between an inflation-adjusted $20/b and $600/b.
[...]
The global peak will reveal itself to be an eminently ex post phenomenon. Looking back a few decades after the time when the nearness of the maximum rate was suspected, the whole exercise of locating it will be as trivial as running an index finger down a column of numbers. But the year and the event itself will hardly be just another milestone in social and economic history. This simple statistic will be forever cited amidst references to
a vital turning point in the evolution of identity, civilization, and consciousness.
[...]
A specific project should be undertaken only if its IRR exceeds the market rate of interest and should be rejected if it falls below
Assuming that all oil companies follow this rule, the expansion of worldwide oil reserves will continue until the global oil industrys IRR (which may be called the marginal efficiency of capital in planetary reserve development) exceeds -- however slightly -- some appropriate measure of the worldwide market rate of interest.
[...]
Considering the marginal efficiency of capital separate from the market rate of interest is a key element of Keynesian economics. It is easy to see why. For the concept of opportunity cost to make any sense, profit-making alternatives independent from any specific industry must exist. In the policy space determined by Keynesian thought -- by and large the mixed economy, experimented out during the American New Deal to become the global economys institutional-ideological foundation since World War II -- causality runs from the interest rate to a specific industrys marginal efficiency of capital. Indeed, monetary measures designed to influence investment decisions through targeting the level of interest rate have played a critical role in the governments guidance of national economies.
But now we can say good-by to all that.[...]
[...]
Rates stuck at near zero (super-teaser) levels is a testimony of enduring general difficulties across the economic landscape and are next to useless in guiding investment decisions in a constructive fashion. If they tell anything at all to a firm that would like to find out if capacity expansion is worthwhile, it is to get quickly into the gaming parlor of short-term, speculative, liquid investments.
[...]
The crux of the illness invalidating contemporary analysis is the nonrecognition that an exhaustible resource is constraining economic growth and that this phenomenon is
intimately related to the crisis of monetary-financial institutions.
[...]
A correct diagnosis of the worlds economys convulsive disarray will not emerge on a decisive scale until the following epigrammatically compressed simple truth becomes pre-analytical certainty: The increased throughput of oil -- from free energy manna at the production site to energetically inaccessible molecules of filth and fumes -- is tied to an economic system that feeds on exponential growth, which in turn, depends on an even faster acceleration of debt. A growing supply of relatively cheap oil has been the foundation upon which financial innovation which, by its very nature produces not only beneficial (capital allocative) but also parasitic and ponzi schemes, built layer upon layer to insane and obviously untenable heights using the real economy as prop, excuse, and structural material. [ed: Niemand ziet dit in politiek- en ondernemend Nederland, en daarom gaat alles naar de ***** volgens mij]
[...]
Since the prevailing global system of decentralized decision centers (mistakenly labeled as some version of a bona fide market economy) is unable to push oil production beyond a certain level without coming apart at the seams; and since the general public rejects the idea of world government, future generations may also have some oil. A collective instinct of self-preservation at the species level might be at work. It seems to prevail as the fundamental conviction held by generations of economists, namely that an endless growth in material welfare is the economys long-run steady state -- mankinds natural equilibrium condition -- is being chewed to pieces by times iron teeth.
In fine, there are no explicit institutional parameters that would help advance along the path of post-oil enlightenment and regeneration in ways that, at the moment, most people would not consider economic self-mortification.
To the extent that the windows of perception can be wiped clean, there is only one piece of advice: Hold on to your hat! As far as global oil is concerned, Mr. Markets climbing harness will not be there to secure a smooth descent on Mr. Huberts nonexistent down slope.[/quote]
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