Running Out of Planet to Exploit By PAUL KRUGMAN

[robertpaulsen]

Running Out of Planet to Exploit
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Nine years ago The Economist ran a big story on oil, which was then selling for $10 a barrel. The magazine warned that this might not last. Instead, it suggested, oil might well fall to $5 a barrel.

In any case, The Economist asserted, the world faced “the prospect of cheap, plentiful oil for the foreseeable future.”

Last week, oil hit $117.

It’s not just oil that has defied the complacency of a few years back. Food prices have also soared, as have the prices of basic metals. And the global surge in commodity prices is reviving a question we haven’t heard much since the 1970s: Will limited supplies of natural resources pose an obstacle to future world economic growth?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/opinion/21krugman.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

[Strelnikov_]

1. "Don’t look now, but the good times may have just stopped rolling."

Even if it turns out that we’re really at or near peak world oil production, that doesn’t mean that one day we’ll say, “Oh my God! We just ran out of oil!” and watch civilization collapse into “Mad Max” anarchy.

But rich countries will face steady pressure on their economies from rising resource prices, making it harder to raise their standard of living. And some poor countries will find themselves living dangerously close to the edge — or over it.

Don’t look now, but the good times may have just stopped rolling.


Don't look now, but Krugman may be going Club of Rome on us.

We can't begin the transformation to the zero growth paradigm until a critical mass of economists and other opinion shapers, like Krugman, reach the conclusion that the era of critical resource constraints has arrived.

And no, Paul, peak oil itself will not result in Mad Max anarchy. That is reserved for the aftermath of an attack on Iran (to maintain resource hegemony) that will probably result in half of the worlds petroleum export market going off-line overnight. Funny how most people seem to be ignoring the political impacts of resource constraints.

[Paranoid Pessimist]

2. I think a collapse into Mad Max anarchy is a very real possibility.

A documentary I watched last night on one or another of those obscure little cable movie channels pretty much debunked saving the day. All the technofixes come up short. They estimate it would take 50 years to come up with a working hydrogen infrastructure -- you can't, apparently, just fill the gas station tanks with hydrogen; there are big problems with transport and storage. Nuclear has all the familiar problems plus to even begin to approach the energy levels needed, 10,000 nuclear reactors would have to be constructed and put on line, and then there would be less than a decade's worth of usable fuel, biomass fuels presently need more fossil fuels to produce the production capacity than they would generate, as to solar power, there isn't the manufacturing capacity right now to produce enough solar cells to produce enough electricity to make a difference; right now solar, wind and even hydroelectric are producing only a small percentage of what would be needed.

Fully militarizing U.S. oil acquisition would have been a possibility before President Junior wrecked the military through overextension.

As soon as enough people realize that the jig is up, acquisitive anarchy of a particularly ugly sort may begin to appear . . . and soon.

[Larkspur]

3. We'll have to learn the ways of the Amish or perish!

While our society may fail, the Amish will keep going.

[Paranoid Pessimist]

7. I don't think there are enough horses or cart-making materials

to support a population of 6 million Amish wannabes.

[Paranoid Pessimist]

9. Billion, not million n/t

[crikkett]

12. that suggestion really pushed a button for you didn't it

You don't have to be amish. Try walking more, or plant a garden. That will help.

[Paranoid Pessimist]

8. Six to nine billion people with horsecarts and hand-sewn clothes?

I don't think even the Amish can survive climate change and massive pollution.

[crikkett]

11. at least they can their food in glass and not BPA

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/bpa-danger-from-cans.php
BPA Danger may be greater from Tin Cans than Water Bottles

"Of all foods tested, chicken soup, infant formula, and ravioli had BPA levels of highest concern. Just one to three servings of foods with these concentrations could expose a woman or child to BPA at levels that caused serious adverse effects in animal tests."

[robertpaulsen]

4. I think I've seen that documentary.

Is it this one:

Oil Apocalypse on the History Channel.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=266x2422

[robertpaulsen]

6. Almost, but Krugman is getting there.

(Paul Krugman is reading The Oil Drum)
Paul Krugman,
This isn’t the first time we’ve had a simultaneous runup in the prices of oil, food, and many other commodities. The great commodity boom of 1972-75 was, if anything, bigger. And there are extraordinary parallels with current events: it was an energy crisis, but there was also a world food crisis, and prices of metals also soared.

... Right now, I’m feeling sympathetic to peak oil types. But are they the modern version of the Limits to Growth crowd? (I don’t think so — the peakers I read don’t suffer from the kind of uninformed intellectual arrogance that was behind the early-70s doomsaying.) Jim Hamilton and Jeff Frankel think it’s low real interest rates — but where are the big inventories?

It’s a puzzlement.
(19 April 2008)
BA: In his blog on the NY Times, economist Paul Krugman links to The Oil Drum, as an example of the peak oil types that he's reading. Unfortunately, he also pushes the untruth about the "Limits to Growth" book being wrong or overblown. For details, see Ugo Bardi's Cassandra's curse: how "The Limits to Growth" was demonized, posted at The Oil Drum.

Contributor JMG wrote to Paul Krugman:
Funny how so many economists badmouth "Limits to Growth" and then you ask them and they've never read it; they've simply absorbed the infinite growth paradigm through their skins and sneer at anyone who suggests otherwise.

I don't suspect that's the case here, I have too much respect for PK, but I wonder why the charge of arrogance against them? What specifically qualifies Meadows et al. as arrogant?

Matt Simmons, perhaps the most important living peak oil Paul Revere, wrote a good article on revisiting limits to growth that more people should read. www.energybulletin.net/1512.html

http://www.energybulletin.net/43024.html

[katty]

5. the "good times" have been debatable for quite awhile, now

the bill for our addiction has come due.

[Triana]

10. ONE thing will fix all of this and it's the elephant in the room no one wants to address

..population control.

We need to address it - or perish beneath the weight of our own parisitism upon this planet. It can no longer sustain the human parasite.

[crikkett]

13. To be human is not to be a parasite. Perhaps an aphid.

Everything has a purpose, and everything has a season. You don't bitch at a field overtaken with wildflowers do you?

The planet wants us or we wouldn't be here.

Lose the misanthropy and consider a holistic viewpoint: what evolutionary purpose do we serve by swarming the planet?

First we mixed up people, plants and animals from difft regions (and we have beautiful gardens and glorious food as a result.) Now we're going into space. Perhaps she's ready to bloom and we're supposed to pollinate space.

Or, we could go the way HP Lovecraft did, and think that it's almost time for some alien mothership to come pick up stores of meat.

[Triana]

14. We are sucking up every resource this planet has and destroying it...

..we are parasites. The planet will survive. WE will not.

[eShirl]

15. George Carlin said Mother Earth needed humans to produce plastic

and now our job is done, she has the plastic and we're not needed anymore

[cliss]

16. Population control:

it's going to happen, by the following:

1) massive starvation.

2) Voluntary population control.
= = = = = =

The current population on planet earth is 6.67 BILLION. We are currently growing by about 9 million new members per month. That's like the entire population of Sweden, every 30 days.
THAT is unsustainable.
Just with the current problems we are having with Agriculture, this situation is going to spiral out of control. Expect massive food shortages this summer, by June it's going to creach a crisis stage. Strange weather patterns are starting to damage crops.

Whether we want to or not, that 6.67 BILLION is going to start going down.