Renewables

[xsampa]

You seem to be operating on the theory that the only possible response to societal stress is for society to fall apart. Historically, that isn't want happens. Society changes, it adapts, and it also innovates and looks for ways to meet the problem. While it certainly isn't a given that this will happen, neither is it a given that the only possible response is to just throw our hands up in the air and wait for civilization to die.

Todd

@Drashner:I agree that societies can and will adapt to rising oil prices. The issue is how. At present, given that changing the system will require decades and we're past peak, peak oil's no longer a problem; it's a predicament.

Here's why: Capital of every kind has to be maintained, whether it be roads, trained personnel, or information resources, and as a civilization adds to its stock of capital, the costs of maintenance rise steadily, until the burden they place on the civilization’s available resources can’t be supported any longer.The only way to resolve that conflict is to allow some of the capital to be converted to waste, so that its maintenance costs drop to zero and any useful resources locked up in the capital can be put to other uses. If a civilization depends on nonrenewable resources for essential functions ,destroying some of its capital yields only a brief reprieve from the crisis of maintenance costs. .Once the nonrenewable resource base tips over into depletion, there’s less and less available each year thereafter to meet the remaining maintenance costs, and the result is the stairstep pattern of decline and fall so familiar from history: each crisis leads to a round of capital destruction, which leads to renewed stability, which gives way to crisis as the resource base drops further.

I completely disagree with the theory that the best way to deal with the predicament of peak oil is to " is to just throw our hands up in the air and wait for civilization to die". Instead, we should preserve what we can for future civilizations.