The premise behind this essay is that the earth’s human population is ineluctably destined to decline over the next, say, 50 years. The impetus for this decline is the peaking of global oil production by conventional means, an event admitted to have occurred around 2005 by even such inveterate optimists as the Energy Information Administration. Global oil production may increase in future years, as it has since 2005 (from 80 million barrels per day to around 90), but the party is over as far as the bonanza of cheap oil, which enabled the astounding population growth of the last 150 years, is concerned. Less oil, or more oil but at a considerably higher price (i.e., expenditure of energy, not necessarily market price), extracted by more expensive, unconventional means (fracturing the earth, squeezing tar from sand, drilling in deep water, etc.), inescapably will lead to a decline in global living standards…
View original post 1,351 more words
Zero to Hero Perfectlyjadeddelusions 