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by
JW
by
Gregor Macdonald
India’s recent series of power blackouts, in which 600 million people lost electricity for several days, reminds us of the torrid pace at which populations in the developing world have moved onto the powergrid. Unfortunately, this great transition has been so rapid that infrastructure has mostly been unable to meet demand. India itself has failed to meets its own power capacity addition targets every year since 1951. This has left roughly one quarter of the country’s population without any (legal) access to electricity. That’s 300 million people out of a population of 1.2 billion. Indeed, it is the daily attempt of the underserved to access power that may have led to India’s recent grid crash.
But the story of India’s inadequate infrastructure is only one part of the difficult, global transition away from liquid fossil fuels. Over the past decade, the majority of new energy demand has been met not through global oil, but through growth in electrical power.
Frankly, this should be no surprise. After all, global production of oil started to flatten more than seven years ago, in 2005. And the developing world, which garners headlines for its increased demand for oil, is running mainly on coal-fired electrical power. There is no question that the non-OECD countries are leading the way as liquid-based transport – automobiles and airlines – have entered longterm decline.
Why, therefore, do policy makers in both the developing and developed world continue to invest in automobile infrastructure?
The Demise of the Car
by Gregor MacdonaldIndia’s recent series of power blackouts, in which 600 million people lost electricity for several days, reminds us of the torrid pace at which populations in the developing world have moved onto the powergrid. Unfortunately, this great transition has been so rapid that infrastructure has mostly been unable to meet demand. India itself has failed to meets its own power capacity addition targets every year since 1951. This has left roughly one quarter of the country’s population without any (legal) access to electricity. That’s 300 million people out of a population of 1.2 billion. Indeed, it is the daily attempt of the underserved to access power that may have led to India’s recent grid crash.
But the story of India’s inadequate infrastructure is only one part of the difficult, global transition away from liquid fossil fuels. Over the past decade, the majority of new energy demand has been met not through global oil, but through growth in electrical power.
Frankly, this should be no surprise. After all, global production of oil started to flatten more than seven years ago, in 2005. And the developing world, which garners headlines for its increased demand for oil, is running mainly on coal-fired electrical power. There is no question that the non-OECD countries are leading the way as liquid-based transport – automobiles and airlines – have entered longterm decline.
Why, therefore, do policy makers in both the developing and developed world continue to invest in automobile infrastructure?
by
Adam Taggart
by
Chris Martenson
With a new site and a number of new irons in the fire, Adam and I thought it a good time to revisit and renew the mission behind this movement.
Simply put, our mission is to create a world worth inheriting. By this we mean a clean, healthy living environment, a durable economy, and prosperous opportunities for all who participate with us. That's our big, lofty aim.
At heart, our view is that our policies, uses, and practices in all of the Three “E”s are unsustainable. One cannot forever grow non-renewable resource use in a finite world. The exponential nature of that growth just hastens things along.
Because of hard constraints, our exponential money and debt systems are on a collision course with reality. We will first and most immediately — and personally — experience the deleterious effects of this in what we call 'the economy' in the form of stagnant growth, rising unemployment, and various ills and maladies within the financial markets.
This is just another way of saying that very big changes are coming our way. In fact, they are here already.
The simple conclusion is that we must either change our habits and ways on our own terms — or on Nature's. We face a future that will be shaped either by disaster or design.
Here at Peak Prosperity, we are solidly behind the idea of positive change made on our own terms and that we are each responsible for whatever future is created.
There are a number of things that we absolutely have to do in order to achieve our mission. And at the top of the list is reaching and influencing a lot of people (millions upon millions) and doing so effectively.
Creating a World Worth Inheriting
by Chris MartensonWith a new site and a number of new irons in the fire, Adam and I thought it a good time to revisit and renew the mission behind this movement.
Simply put, our mission is to create a world worth inheriting. By this we mean a clean, healthy living environment, a durable economy, and prosperous opportunities for all who participate with us. That's our big, lofty aim.
At heart, our view is that our policies, uses, and practices in all of the Three “E”s are unsustainable. One cannot forever grow non-renewable resource use in a finite world. The exponential nature of that growth just hastens things along.
Because of hard constraints, our exponential money and debt systems are on a collision course with reality. We will first and most immediately — and personally — experience the deleterious effects of this in what we call 'the economy' in the form of stagnant growth, rising unemployment, and various ills and maladies within the financial markets.
This is just another way of saying that very big changes are coming our way. In fact, they are here already.
The simple conclusion is that we must either change our habits and ways on our own terms — or on Nature's. We face a future that will be shaped either by disaster or design.
Here at Peak Prosperity, we are solidly behind the idea of positive change made on our own terms and that we are each responsible for whatever future is created.
There are a number of things that we absolutely have to do in order to achieve our mission. And at the top of the list is reaching and influencing a lot of people (millions upon millions) and doing so effectively.
by
JW
by
JW
by
Gregor Macdonald
Executive Summary
- Escalating energy costs (direct and indirect) create a vicious cycle in the economy that further hinders growth/recovery
- Overspending and other poor capital allocation decisions by state governments are compounding the problem
- California spends $1 on public transit vs. $10 on automobile-related investment, a gap that energy costs will soon painfully reverse
- Solutions are hard to come by and harder to fund, but without investment, alternative systems won't ever achieve scale
- California's future is increasingly easy to predict; individuals and other state governments better take notes or suffer the same fate
If you have not yet read Part I: Dawn of the Great California Energy Crash, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
A key feature in the post-war industrial success of countries like South Korea and Japan, given that they had virtually no domestic energy supplies, was the ability to turn a profit from manufacturing powered by imported energy. This favorable equation relied on three key factors:
- That imported energy remained a cheap input cost compared to the high margin value of exported goods
- That energy producing countries had cheap energy to export
- That purchasers of the exported goods were growing, and were running their own economies on cheap energy
These are the exact same assumptions still being made — and extrapolated into infinity — about California's economy.
Are we really to believe that California's GDP can forever deindustrialize, requiring fewer and fewer energy inputs, while growing in profitability, thus providing the capital to access/import energy — at any price?
California: The Bellwether for the Rest of America
PREVIEW by Gregor MacdonaldExecutive Summary
- Escalating energy costs (direct and indirect) create a vicious cycle in the economy that further hinders growth/recovery
- Overspending and other poor capital allocation decisions by state governments are compounding the problem
- California spends $1 on public transit vs. $10 on automobile-related investment, a gap that energy costs will soon painfully reverse
- Solutions are hard to come by and harder to fund, but without investment, alternative systems won't ever achieve scale
- California's future is increasingly easy to predict; individuals and other state governments better take notes or suffer the same fate
If you have not yet read Part I: Dawn of the Great California Energy Crash, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
A key feature in the post-war industrial success of countries like South Korea and Japan, given that they had virtually no domestic energy supplies, was the ability to turn a profit from manufacturing powered by imported energy. This favorable equation relied on three key factors:
- That imported energy remained a cheap input cost compared to the high margin value of exported goods
- That energy producing countries had cheap energy to export
- That purchasers of the exported goods were growing, and were running their own economies on cheap energy
These are the exact same assumptions still being made — and extrapolated into infinity — about California's economy.
Are we really to believe that California's GDP can forever deindustrialize, requiring fewer and fewer energy inputs, while growing in profitability, thus providing the capital to access/import energy — at any price?
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