Fundamentally there is only so much oil in the ground. That’s all anyone is driving at, and everyone seems to be ignoring that. Plus it’s all shale oil now which is much more expensive to extract. The EROEI is going down as a result and all that oil is being wasted on routine economic activity. Other countries, where the rest of the shale oil will be, are getting much stronger and more able to defend themselves. Why is the concern with predictions? The main point is the working implication of introntrovertible material circumstances on the picture of the future. The economy itself must change. Being concerned with precise predictions even ignores the implication of ‘the bumpy plateau’ which is what I think we’re in now, bumpy not because of that one metric of global world oil production, but because of all of the factors that must distort around it in order to produce it and thereby distort and jeapordize the economy.
Wow. Shocker. Capitalism isn’t so easily reformable toward sustainability. I don’t understand why more democrats, like the ones who have been up until now relying on the sentiment of large financial institutions and corporations to finish the job of addressing climate change, don’t get their head in the game and realize how eco-unfriendly so much of capitalism is, and, depending on one’s definition of capitalism, how eco-unfriendly all of capitalism may be. I think some of them have developed a greater love for their white picket fence-esque life as marketed to them in real time than for understanding the impact of scientific information about climate change on the life of the planet including their own per an authentic scientific understanding - because the latter starts to look more socialist by almost every definition of socialism.