I'd say a cross between 3 and 6. We could build out some renewable 'critical' infrastructure for high-consuming countries, and some medium-consuming countries, but not for all 6 billion people, at least not at the level in the high-consuming countries. Solar cookers perhaps, but not full replacement of their housing, transportation infrastructure, and implementation of a modest smart electrical grid network.

Personally, If energy is allocated correctly, and people are not given gasoline to take their car to the mail box, things will work out fine.

This recent price spike seemed to illustrate one thing, a high price of gasoline does cause a drop in demand.

I am very glad you posted this. There is some amazing stupid thinking going on and being broadcast through the media about what is happening. The bottom line is that the Financial Times estimates 50 million jobs will be lost this year; peak oil is real; global climate change, resulting from variation in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, now being mapped in near real time by NASA, will result in less predictable food supplies and local weather intensification.

The idea that government has no role in addressing these critical issues is an amazingly naive idea. The seriousness of all of this cannot be overstated. Nice job.

Could a formally Voting made out of it?

I prefer 5. But i dont like it ;-)

The only way we have been able to maintain economic growth this long is by building a huge debt bubble that allowed up to keep up energy production and push that energy through the economy. Now that the debt bubble is collapsing, the amount of energy available and used from all sources is dropping back. With less debt, cash flow becomes much more important, for energy as well as everything else.

As long as renewables are scaling up, the cost of new turbines and new PV vastly exceeds the annual benefit on an unsubsidized basis. Unless we are very short of electricity capacity (and this is debatable, with the current drop in industrial electrical demand), it is hard for governments to justify spending scarce resources in building a huge amount of additional infrastructure, no matter how "green".

Also, if state governments--and individuals--are very much poorer, they will not have all the money they have had in the past to provide subsidies to homeowners for renewables. If states like California are close to bankruptcy, it will be hard to maintain their current level of support for renewables. Because of these issues, I expect that renewables will have a hard time holding their own in the years ahead.

I think some combination of 2, 3, 5 and 6 are all relevant. I think that renewable infrastructure can be built out, and that growth is undesirable - you could reduce growth and still cover the infrastructure issues *VERY SLOWLY* - that is, I don't think that you could do enough to keep the present generation living at a standard they'll be happy with (although I think they would probably accept it in the long term given the right incentives), but could offer a longer term, brighter future for subsequent generations.

My own feeling is that most rapid build outs that have been proposed will probably push us past climate thresholds we can't tolerate. The first priority is to get consumption of resources down, and then build gradually. This, of course, assumes a level of organization, sacrifice and management I think are unlikely - so the odds are good we simply won't do as much as we should.

Sharon

"Yes we have the resources, to live a much lower energy footprint, but lack the political and social will", would probably have been my answer (and since I wrote the poll, I should have included it...;-)

But the purpose is to discuss these points, with as much urgency, logic, and candor as possible - throw out the ones that are unlikely, and get to work. If all are equally likely, then that tells us something of value too.

7) We will do all the wrong things making everything worse facilitating a rapid collapse then we can look back at 1) thru 5) and talk about what we should have done then start doing something/anything which will probably be the wrong thing again.

Sorry I know thats not very constructive but thats exactly what I see happening right here and now.

Well that's a bit bleak then... 73% of us (including me) seem to be going with 4 or 5. I wish I had less faith in the wisdom of the oil drum readership!

That said, 5 is quite a broad category since it doesn't really talk about time-frames and extents of things.

I think when national governments (to the extent they still have sovereignty) have to start dealing with restless domestic populations in an onrushing crisis situation, any positive long-term plans they may have had that could have helped mitigate resource depletion will be replaced with fire-fighting to an even greater extent. Probably amounting to the further curtailment of our basic liberties.

1)Yes, we have enough cheap oil and gas and materials left, that we can continue running the current system while building out renewable energy infrastructure. Yes we can (and will).
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To get enough cheap oil and gas we have to resolve some problems. One of the problems is very low oil discovery rate. Now the rate is one discovery in four drilled wells only. It means that 75% drilled wells is waste (dry holes). The ignorance of most of the world about what we do in oil exploration is amazing.
I would like to inform you, that to drill almost each well with new oil/gas discovery there is new technology for oil/gas detection (US patent 7,330,790). The technology is designed and successfully tested in the Barents and the Black Seas as well as in the Gulf of Mexico (see: www.binaryseismoem.weebly.com ).
With new exploration technology oil industry could make up to three times more oil and gas discoveries than when using conventional technology. And the fact that new technology won't need more investments is also very important. It can significantly mitigate impending oil crises.

My opinion is 5, but how can we move this from the realm of opinion and into something more tractable?

I think there are 4 major physical factors and 1 major sociological factor. If we could model those, even roughly, the answer would be apparent:

1. How fast will the energy sources decline in net energy. It took us 150 years (roughly) to ramp up. We know net energy is declining. If we assume we are half way though our hydrocarbons (by volume) we probably have 75 years or less of energy output remaining. So we would have to scale a new energy system twice as fast as we scaled the last one just to stay even.

2. How fast can we scale up our new energy supplies? EROEI sets rate which a new power systems can be added without putting a drain on the current economy (take more energy to build than they can deliver). Our prior energy sources had 100 to 1 or better EROEI. But we had less efficient methods of using that energy. Assuming we are twice as efficient, we would need a 50 to 1 or better EROEI source to match our last build out. We don't have it. We especially don't have it when you have to factor in smoothing out the intermittent nature of most renewable sources.

3. Rust. Or as I like to call it, the velocity of energy. Capital decays over time and must be replaced. Worse, it tends to perform just fine for 40-80 years and then fail. Much of our existing infrastructure will demand replacement soon. This demand will draw on energy needed for growth or alternative energy build out.

4. Hidden Limits. Water. Soil. Lithium. Tellurium. Declining ore grades demanding more energy. There are many other limits to growth that are not directly related to energy production. Many of the limits slow down switching to alternatives. These will further slow down the rate of change.

Sociological

A. The current energy system puts unimaginable sums of money in the hands of a specific group of people. Those people are resisting any transition to a new energy system. (Who puts full page ads in the WSJ denying peak oil? Anyone? Anyone?)

Every day they are able to delay action 1) Depletion gets worst. 2) Alternatives are not scaling and remain on the flat part of the exponential curve. 3) Rust increases.

I have picked on energy groups in A but the same applies to environmental groups and others who are blocking any effort to site wind turbines or power lines etc. (Yes, Sen. Kennedy I am talking to you.)

So I have to agree with Jewish Farmer. We are going to face a long period of austerity. It may be that some time in the next century our renewable systems will finally scale up to something approaching the power levels of today. We would be much more certain if we could model these 5 factors in more detail and over time, Limits to Growth style.

I voted for number 5. It's insane to worry about all nearly 7 billion people on the planet. Why even bring it up? Most will never even see a computer or read TOD on the internet. The best we can hope for is to preserve as much as we can of what we have in the developed western world that we live in. It's very sad about all the ultra-poor in Africa and Asia. Maybe we can continue throwing bones to them, maybe not. Let's get real about population contraction on a finite, resources-depleted planet. Most of the ultra-poor will die. Everyone will feel poorer and most will be saddened by the plight of those that will suffer and die. How can it be otherwise, unless you believe in miracles, of course?

I picked #3. In order to prevent a huge cost run up in important materials and what petroleum is left we need to limit the production of a range of consumer goods. Do we really need aluminum beverage cans more than we need high tension cables for the new HV grid? How many new trucks do we need when repairs to old trucks will keep them useful for 20+ years? New parts for old vehicles will use much less steel then building new vehicles than few of us can afford to buy. A better use for that steel would be new rails and rolling stock. We don't need any more McMansions but we do need the concrete that would be used for their foundations for RR ties, wind turbines, nuke plants, and electric grid tower foundations. What we need ought not need to compete for the materials for what society really needs.

It seems obvious that we need to abandon growth as the goal. This is of course a qualitative change from our current system and it ain't gonna happen overnight. I think we are decades away from a society that has sustainability as its goal. In the mean time we will be dragged kicking and screaming into a lower energy consuming world and it will very likely get ugly.

I believe reality will dictate that the renewable energy technologies that we pursue will be the lowest tech and the lowest energy intensive kinds. Massive expansion of passive solar and some active solar is sort of inevitable in this regard. Of course we will try the high tech stuff first, but scalability will likely limit most of these options. Also, technologies that can function as retrofits rather than replacements will also have a serious advantage. In the very near future the luxury of just throwing something out and replacing it with some state-of-the-art thing is going to disappear. That is my opinion anyway.

It depends on which non-carbon dioxide polluting technologies that you're talking about.

Some non-carbon dioxide polluting technologies are much more expensive than others. Hydroelectricity in the US on average cost about 0.85 cents per KWh while a non-subsidized industrial photovoltaic facility can cost more than 21 cents per kwh (in a sunny climate) and more than 47 cents per kwh (in a cloudy climate). And non-subsidized home photovoltaics produce electricity even more expensively. The new huge solar thermal power facility that's being built in southern California is supposed to produce electricity at the relatively low cost of 6 cents per kwh but even that would be more than 7 times the cost of hydroelectricity. A urban garbage power plant produces electricity at 4 cents kwh wich would be almost 5 times more expensive than hydro.

You can read my 2008 article 'The Cost of Non-Carbon Dioxide Polluting Technologies' if you want to know the relative cost of fossil fuel electricity production relative to non-carbon dioxide polluting technologies such as wind, solar, and nuclear:

http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/10/cost-of-non-carbon-dioxid...

Marcel F. Williams
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com

About a year ago at a Kyoto treaty meeting, China made the argument that they should not be held to the same pollution standards with respect to carbon emissions as the rest of the world because they had already done more than any other country to limit carbon emissions with there one child-one family policy. It was an interesting point. How much more energy would they be using if they had not instituted this policy?? What would the population of China be???

Any long term solution to resource depletion problems needs to include limiting population growth. Obviously this will never happen but it is at the root of the problem.

Below is a comment from Al Bartlett made about this issue:

Many journalists look to the scientists for advice. The scientists won't talk about overpopulation, so the journalists and the reading public can easily conclude that overpopulation is not a problem. As a result, we have things such as the cover story in TIME Magazine, April 9, 2007, "The Global Warming Survival Guide: 51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference." The list contained such useful recommendations as "Build a Skyscraper," (No. 9, Pg. 74) but not one of the 51recommendations deals with the need to address overpopulation! What's one to do when scientists and political leaders demonstrate their understanding of the fact that overpopulation is the main cause of these gigantic global problems, yet the scientists' recommendations for dealing with the problems never call for addressing overpopulation?

Thanks,
Don

I think we can, but since when have we as a country been proactive about saving money? I'm thinking we'll see something along ~1-3. We'll transition as it becomes unbearably expensive, and end up paying out the nose, like we do w/ too much stuff.

I would pose the 'set-aside' problem; how much of current fossil energy use needs to be de-consumed and invested or embodied in alternative generation? The easiest approach might be to use payback period and ignore dollars or kilowatt hours. Ignoring learning, compounding and conservation we get
time required= payback/set aside fraction

Thus if the average renewable payback was 8 years we would need to invest 100% of the fossil energy for 8 years, 25% of the energy for 32 years and so on to replicate that fossil output. It's not gonna happen because of Easter Island syndrome. We won't commit to the necessary level of sacrifice until it is already too late. Moreover I think there will be a resentment factor from conservatives. When wind and solar reach a whopping 20% of the grid they will say enough already and how about more money for the armed services and art museums.

Therefore I think scenario 4) is near to the mark. However notice if the alternative energy had a payback of 0.8 (ie less than a year) then we would need to invest just 10% (not 100%) of fossil fuel output for the same period. Therefore leaving aside conservation the aim must be to employ fast payback technology subject to constraints like reliability, safety and emissions.

Capital consumption will shift to non-petroleum energy sources. If we insist on "renewables" they will result in less capital creation as their EROEI is so low.

However, we have other options like nuclear that still have a high EROEI, albeit lower than conventional oil.

If you insist on "renewables" you're sunk. Sometimes I think that's a feature, not a bug, to the advocates of renewables.

Two years ago I would have said 3) because of the shortages of steel, cement, glass, aluminium needed to build more hydro, wind solar and nuclear. In the last two years we have had a massive(100%) increase in wind capacity while adding to hydro and nuclear.
Since the world wide recession none of the materials needed to continue building renewable and nuclear power appear to be in short supply.
Oil possibly in the future, but not much oil required to build or transport wind turbines, 85% steel, and the energy in coal used to build a 3MW wind turbine is recovered within a year(EROEI >30:1) thus freeing up more coal that may have been used for electricity production to build more wind turbines, dams etc.

So now, I would say; 1) we can continue to build out renewable energy because we have no resource limitations. There is surplus steel, cement, aluminium,gas,copper, glass and for now at least, even a surplus of oil(although that's not a critical limitation).

What we don't have is a shortage of energy, but we still have a looming shortage of liquid fuels primarily being used by 2 tonne cars and light trucks getting 25mpg and transporting a 100kg person with >50% of trips being non-essential. When the oil shortage hits, that's a lot of inefficiency that can be removed. As a bonus, in US, 400million tonnes of scrap steel, aluminium and glass, parked in convenient 2 tonne packages, great for building solar and wind or PHEV's getting >150mpg.

I'd say #1. With this caveat: while oil, steel and bonding are relatively cheap right now, we need to be building like crazy. Wind, Solar, Nuclear (LFTR). Five years from now, none of these things may be cheap, but compared to what they will be 25 years from now, they will likely still be a relative bargain. So even 5 years from now I say keep building like crazy and begin decommissioning coal plants. Especially the oldest, dirtiest and least efficient. Expand the electric grid and start shifting more and more of our transportation off of fossil fuels.

Hello TODers,

I voted #5--Overshoot & Decline will run its course. I have no idea if it will be Jay Hanson's Thermo/Gene fast crash scenario, then ultimately onward to his 'Requiem' conclusion, or ArchDruid's Catabolic Grind to Collapse.

IMO, full-on Peak Outreach inducing Optimal Overshoot Decline offers the best chance to shoot the gap between the above scenarios. I have many posting series in the archives that go into brief explanations of how I think this could be achieved by the concerted action of others.

If one understands that we are evolved to sit in the dark: huge energy savings can be immediately achieved by abolishing all outside lighting; black asphalt will never reflect photons [google Earth at night to see huge waste]. Vehicle headlights and personal flashlights should be sufficient for all, but easier said than done getting everyone to agree to make the dark side of the Earth being dark nightly, of course. But if this is possible, this energy saved could provide much to ramp viable mitigation strategies.

My assessment of the above happening soon is pretty minimal, so we got to keep working towards more grassroots-to-topdog Outreach efforts. My feeble two cents.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

I voted 5 because we have quite clearly left it too late to prepare for peak oil, on a political level, in any meaningful way (Hirsch report).

Ecologicaly the human race is showing signs of population overshoot through our unsustainable depletion of resources and degradation of our environment.

Humans are geneticly disposed to compete with each other over resources. War is inevitable.

Renewables can't deliver even a fraction of the amount of fixed electricity we currently use but it may be able to help us powerdown to a lower energy budget. What is needed is boldleadership to state where we are going to end up and then work towards that goal. Economics should then be measured not on GDP but on progress towards the goal, along with relative measures of individaul economic security i.e enough food for everyone, adequate shelter, healthcare, education and adequate and strengthening social and community links which are the key to both participation and physical and mental wellbeing.

The goals of course are to transition to a lower but renewable energy society with some basic agreed to principles (laws) such as:

1. The first priroity of the renewable energy grid is to become self sustaining whereby enough is produced to maintain the infrastructure, build replacement parts and repair and replace palnt and buildings necessary to distribute the surplus energy.

2. A hierarchy of energy use is implemented with the surplus renewable energy being allocated to the most critical areas first. As more surplus becomes avaialble as the renewables are built out it is allocated tothose apps lower on the hierarchy.

3. The non-renewable generation plant needs to be maintained but repriced to encourage energy conservation.

The creation of the new renewable energy economy will require a heroic effort on par if not exceeding the efforts of the great Depression/WWII generation. Consumerism and the military/industrial complex that serves it is now fatally injured. It's death throes however could make it more dangerous now than ever before as it becomes desperate for survival. Navigating for the transistionists will be hard going constantly having to fight the greedy, self interested, gluttonous sheeple that just want things to go back the way they remember in the good old days.

Interesting gas2.org article
http://gas2.org/2009/01/28/first-it-killed-the-electric-car-now-carb-goe...

California Air Resources Board going after A123 and plug in hybrid cars.

Seems like some of the CARB board are defending their ethanol projects.

We cannot have growth coming from renewable energy because is not a powerful enough driver. Scientific discovery and invention are the drivers of growth. In fact, renewable energy may not even be able to replace fossil fuels. That is not to say that we cannot have a steady state economy, at least for some time.

If you look at the real numbers on the economy, measured by the old standards, you will see that growth all but disappeared in the US in the last decade. We are now in a long term economic decline. In contrast, Asian economies are undergoing enormous growth, as they catch up to the developed countries.

The facts and figures behind my conclusion are perhaps better discussed in a separate post. They come from a study of the scientific and invention timelines, plus my training in engineering and experience in manufacturing.

In summary, I am examining the exploitation of the forces, or interactions, of nature: strong, electromagnetic, weak and gravity, compared to inventions and productivity, by era: First Industrial Revolution, Second Industrial Revolution, and Today: Nuclear / Biotech Age or Decline.

I will submit it for posting if anyone else is interested.

Oh dear, I thought my response would be out on a limb, my assessment of probabilities erronoeous. I hoped I was mad, not Cassandra. That near 50% share my response is troubling. I'm comfortable with being on the nutty, gloomy, fringe - that gave me hope I'm wrong.

Most of us here are more clued up than 99% of folks, that so many of us take such a pessimistic view implies (crudely) either: we are a self selected group of sicko doomers or, things really will be horridly bad and there is little we can do to avoid it.

I have a problem (inadvertent consequences) with saying what will turn out best. Sometimes what seems worse is the ultimate best path. So, I don't know if doing our best now works out better in the longer term, but my feeling is best now hurts more later.

Ultimately, as a species, we have to leap to sustainability, we have been in a delusional energy world for a while too long already. That may be new energy sources or a slimmed down humanity, most probably both. Wind time back 20+ years and there were more, less painful, choices - we could have made the leap with minimal pain, could have bought enough time if we'd been wiser.

Obama is sounding more like Jimmy Carter than any president since on energy policy. Sadly the boat is almost certainly missed, Carter's moment was the right one, the american electorate rejected it, we will all pay, dearly.

I voted 6. No, we can't have growth. But I'm not sure what renewable infrastructure is. If it meant what I might hope it to mean, I would vote for 4. I think that radical retrenchment, a return to the soil, etc. is the our only longer term option. 5 may turn out to be what happens, but I don't think that the most extreme version of it is inevitable. Going down that road apiece seems to be inevitable from what I see now. But at some point we'll wake up. That much I still permit myself to hope for.

I'm working on a submission to Campfire to lay out my case.

Like many so far, I liked option 5, the most realistic/pessimistic one, the best.

I voted for option 6, "other."

The reason for this has been hinted at by some posters already.

In short, things are going to get very rough. We cannot ensure any outcomes, we can only control our responses.

Let me repeat, for emphasis, that this is what I think President Obama and our leadership need to say clearly to the American people, and to the world:

Things are very bad with too many of us competing for too few resources in a rapidly deteriorating habitat.

We cannot ensure that anyone will survive the next two decades, let alone survive in comfort.

We need to emphasize that no one can ensure the survival of himself, herself, or of any individual children or grandchildren.

We need to emphasize that some people may survive, but we cannot guess how many will survive or specifically who will survive.

We cannot control outcomes, but we can control our responses to this emergency.

Rather than expend energy fighting over scarcening resources, we must conserve as much energy as possible, and see to it that we quite literally tend our own gardens and learn to survive within the limits of our own bio-region.

We must learn to create shelter and the infrastructure in terms of the bio-regions we each inhabit. We must learn to live mostly upon the energy and food budgets of our bio-regions, even while developing better ways to harvest, store and use both energy and food.

We must cooperate on a variety of intensive research and development projects aimed at creating the best array of options that we can for the infrastructures of human settlement around the world. We must focus on simple and resilient and robust designs.

While we have scientific resources to do so, we must cooperate to develop leading-edge technologies, but we must not see any such efforts as magical solutions to the challenges we face.

We have entered a period of consequences, of trials and tribulations which will spare no one. Let us try to focus on our own actions and responses.

We must live out the best wisdom we have. We must pass that wisdom along in hopes that one day a generation that survives will be able to look back and know that some of us did what we could for them as soon as we understood our predicament.

It may even be that these are truly End Times for our species. If so, then let us live them out well, working against the odds and working to make the impossible possible.

Again, we do not control outcomes, nor can we predict them with absolute certainty or complete accuracy.

"Therefore, we must control our own actions so that a new beginning for some might be possible, or so that at least our ending will be lived in such a way that we will pass from the scene working for survival rather than against it."

Of course, I fully believe that in The Great Global Game leadership around the world is focused on dealing death to others in the mistaken belief that this will increase their own chances to survive and perhaps even thrive.

The last will be first, and the first will be last. The weak will overturn the mighty. Those despised as backward, foolish, impotent and poor will outlive those honored as advanced, wise, powerful and wealthy.

What is the only question each of us has to answer? "What will I do between now and whenever I die?"

Why are we here? To help each other through whatever this is.

And so it goes .....

(A nod to Walker Percy and also to Kurt Vonnegut.)

Here's a little side story on energy woes from the southern Australian heatwave. Several States configured to draw over 700 MW via an underwater HVDC cable but one of the inverter stations failed. That was for hydro from my neck of the woods even though the dams are just 30% full. Apparently the spot price for electricity for a while got to the cap of $10 per kwh but the regulator intervened to make it 30c maximum. Major load shedding is now going on in several Australian cities.

This story is either about coping or not coping depending on your point of view.

We clearly have enough energy to continue economic growth and energy production growth for several centuries. Easily.

Sadly, my view is 5.

Deterioration in EROEI is a relentless curve that applies not only to oil, but to all limited resources; oil just happens to be the most important and immediately pressing curve. Edgar Allen Poe's pendulum just keeps swinging closer and closer to our hearts.

If in fact we have passed peak oil production then we additionally will face a new relentless negative growth curve, complete with halving periods. The first halving period will cut in half production that in absolute terms will be the biggest loss of oil production ever to be experienced. And as to the rate, my word, look at the drop off rate for Mexico.

The demands for energy to build new infrastructure is huge, and is not even seriously on the drawing boards, just at the time we are waving goodbye to oil production growth. And to boot, which of these alternatives will hold a candle to oil? All, at a time that population is still growing, and previously underdeveloped parts of the world now want to join in on the great squander.

And then there is the collapse of the house of cards monetary system, which was an accident waiting to happen, and which accident in my view was triggered by inadequate oil production at acceptable costs. The effects of the monetary collapse just compounds the energy problem by even further postponing exploitation of new oil and alternatives, all the while the depletion monster is sucking the life blood from possible future economic activity.

Yea, 5 is my vote, unless you have the courage to conjure up an even more frightening future to offer as an alternative.

I voted for 4 because it came closest to my own views. But I think the wording of 4 suffers because it posits a particular "why":

4)No, we cannot have growth AND scale renewable infrastructure without creating greater problems and shortfalls in the future. So to effectively build out 'sustainable' energy, we must give up growth as our goal.

5)No, not only can't we have growth, but we can't scale renewable infrastructure for 6+ billion in time to avert population reductions, war, famine, etc.

I think there's a position between 4 and 5 along the lines of: No, we can't have growth because the lead times on the capital build for replacement energy sources are too long as compared to the rate of decline in oil production post-peak.

My take on it is we just can't build up a new capital base of nukes, solar farms, wind farms, geothermal plants, and electric cars fast enough to make the shift over without economic contraction.

What is not clear to me: how steep will be the economic contraction? 1% per year? 2% per year? I figure it'll be less than the yearly percentage decline in oil production since we'll still have other sources of energy.

What a strange question for an article.

By definition, "economic growth" happens whenever money gets spent. On what is irrelevant. Are renewable energy generators built and maintained for free? Why is building $1 billion of coal-fired generation an "investment" while $1 billion of wind turbines is a "cost"? Why does $1 billion of fighter jets "create jobs" but $1 billion of transmission lines improvements not create jobs?

Spend money and build stuff and you create jobs, people take their wages and spend them and so it goes. This applies whether we're building a wind turbine, a coal-fired plant, an auto factory, or as Keynes suggested, putting money in bottles down old mine shafts, filling them in and paying people to dig it up.

Spending money and building stuff creates jobs. The only question is whether the money is spent in the best way possible (burying and then digging up bottles is perhaps not ideal) and whether what we build is the best thing we could build.

Spend more money = economic growth. Of course if you have some new and different definition of "economic growth" I'd be glad to hear it. Like the GPI guys, I think that a million bucks on a school and a million bucks on cleaning up an oil spill are not really equal, simply talking of "the economy grew by a million dollars" is misleading.

Answer 1: No. Oil hit nearly $150 a barrel last summer because the world economy was buzzing along with little or no rise in oil production. Now a world recession and oil's down to $40. Oil production is or soon will begin declining, and that production ceiling will be a solid lid on growth when and if we pull out of this recession.

Answer 2: If we did have the resources to pull it off, we should focus on local economies and railroads.

Answer 3: Non-essencial industry is still someone's job. I don't expect the demise of non-essencial industry to be orderly at all.

Answer 4: Summed up in answer 1.

Answer 5: When the economy (i.e. growth) suffers, it gets much more difficult to create an entire new infrastructure. Particularly this late in the game. It's possible, but not likely.

Answer 6: The black swan event?

I went for 4 but a bit of 5 and 6 really...

If managed we can depopulate without civilisation collapsing completely or billions starving... its an ask but not impossible.

it does require a zero growth/contraction paradigm which is a very hard sell to the atlas shrugged crowd.

in a economy in transition there will be areas of growth.. renewable energy production for starters.. so in essence presentation of growth in a virtual manner may not match reality especially if money (whatever that really is) is invested long term in transition projects with no short term gain.

if a scaled renewable infrastructure is built some growth may be possible in the long term at least to the ceiling of solar harvesting permitted by physical restraints. This ceiling may be pretty huge looking at the available collection area.

the way to sell contraction and zero growth to the growth crowd is arguing that growth is only possible in the long term via capital investment that facilitates the expansion of energy production to greater than fossil fuel peaks AND must in the near term consume these fossil fuel resources on transition infrastructure(what a horrible sentence).A major corporation will go into negative territory when acting out long term changes in its business model.. investment etc.

that investment in the current "downturn" is a double whammy on a already stressed system which means "growth" is distant goal for sure..

So on a helpful level I would sell this contraction/zero-growth thing as investing for targeted growth in the far term.

its all semantics really...

the maths of the physical reality looks after itself... the trick is adding in the dividing term "mean energy/capita" and managing the standard deviation...

6 because 3 doesn't list government under that 'non-essential industry'. And 5 - because the people who have won't accept have-not status.

(And government is needed. So are laws. But why does Congressman Rangle not have to pay fines for the IRS? The guy in charge of Treasury screws up WRT the IRS and he gets a pass too? )

I voted 1, I think we have enough fossil fuel left to make the transition if we start before peak. The transition is on the supply side but also on the demand side, we are wasting way too much energy for activities that are not necessary in order to grow the economy:

This graph is very interesting, it says: You can have all what you want, you just have to get exponentially more energy to pay your interest... (the correlation is R² = 0,78)

So the question comes down to: Can we have exponentially growing non-fossil energy? Some believe, some not. When you think, wind power will pay your interest, the answer is... "no", it follows the hubbert curve.

Please have a look at the right side and note that in 2002, 2003 and 2004 we needed more energy for our debt than the actual interest rate was (blue bar bigger than red bar). So, where is the efficiency? I mean this efficiency, that was planned to save us and bail us out! Were there maybe already too many efficiency-advances in the past and there is not enough efficiency left for us?

(click to enlarge)

My answer is number 1

If you look at the question from the standpoint that as consumption continues to reduce oil, gas & coal reserves, heading us towards peak or past peak for each of those, with associated higher energy costs due to lower eroei, then the answer is academic. We must move towards greater deployment of renewables as fast as possible while we can afford the energy to produce renewables.

One of the questions that comes up in any discussion of this nature, is; When will there be enough energy produced from renewables to make enough replacement renewables, so that energy from fossil fuels are no longer needed, i.e, a closed loop system? We're not even close to that point, and until we do reach that threshold, our reliance on finite fossil fuel resources takes us closer to the day when those dwindling resources will raise the price to the point when we will no longer have a window of opportunity to replace fossil fuels with renewables. At that point it's just a matter of time and wars until the whole economic system rusts in place.

Then the roads crack and grass grows up through the cracks, international news turns to local only news, people grow and trade crops, we all get around on bikes, and the only entertainment is the funky little outdoor play we put on once a month. No thanks!