If there were one video I wish the mainstream population of the U.S. could grasp , take more seriously; and channel some positive energy and resourcefulness assimilating and re-thinking , it's the energy and etc crisis that the U.S. and world seems to be heading into and how these debts will be paid in the future.
I don't subscribe to Hubbert's Peak Oil Theory entirely but some of the things Dr. Bartlett sez is worth consideration IMO. For someone who grew up around farming and even today gardens both outside and indoors with hydroponics, scale and sustainability are cornerstones to being successful not just in the present but in the future. We use to understand the principle as a matter of natural law but once we moved away from the land itself (agarian) and towards an industrialization societal model, the grocery store for example gave our society an illusion that food for example comes from a limitless model and IMO this in not true at all. Dr. Bartlett's example of corn and what it takes to grow verses the final output is dead on. Corn is a very demanding crop on soil resources for example so in large industrial scale farming, the amount of energy from tractors, to watering, to fertilizers is enormous and one of the reasons that corn needs such huge monetary inputs from public subsidy to even sustain it's own current scale. Another reason the farming model is so debt driven rather than economically sustainable.
Without public subsidy, corn cost would be so high that the public would abandon the crop in the marketplace and begin to seek local alternatives whether growing corn locally in smaller scale that is not as highly driven off resource consumption, think organic or look to other crops for food and economic sustainability.
Dr. Bartlett presents some thoughtful ideas and done so for simplicity's sake but there are numerous variables that can change his timeline but then he does in his own way concede to that IMO.
As for peak oil, I know many who discredit (and that I accept) the thinking that the theory of abiotic origins of oil formations has a point. One area I'd make an argument for the abiotic origins and not fossil origins (decaying animal and vegetation matter and a necessary basis for Hubbert's peak oil theory) of hydro-carbons, oil if you will, would be the Saturn moon
Titan and it's own huge presence of vast amounts of hydro-carbons in an environment devoid of ever having animal and plant matter present that we know of. I'll give Dr. Bartlett that maybe from his POV I might be arguing of going to another solar system and getting their sun at this point in the discussion and I'm not arguing our solution is to go to Titan either but I am arguing from a theoretical position of oil origins so I concede that point and we have to look at oil or any other resource from what we know as facts for the moment. Even if oil is of abiotic origins, I would concede it's possible we've extracted beyond nature's production capacity and we are still back to Dr. Bartlett's assertions of the ability of nature to meet our population demand of this resource. At the very least, reduction of demand would either allow the resource to last longer, move the peak oil point out or in the case of abiotic sources, allow the chemical production capacity of the earth to replenish and thus meet or match demand. Either way Dr. Bartlett is right to some degree.
I also question if peak oil is nothing more than a fraud used to manipulate the marketplace to drive prices ever higher while naturally occuring production efficencies would do the opposite to oil costs? Take consumer electronics and put in the place of oil and then make the same economic supply to consumer cost arguments. Also increasing oil prices benefit the state in not only supporting the reserve currency petro dollar but also in the area of general revenue in the form of taxation. A declining product cost for example would require a reduction in the tax revenue costs or the tax would overwhelm the profits benefit and make the business model on tax alone unsustainable. I recently read an article where it was discussed that based on latest data, if we continue on the present course of oil use along with new efficiencies expected to come on line, about the mid 2020's we could be off all foreign oil imports entirely. It doesn't longterm discount Bartlett's math but it does push out the timeline window a bit. But then, what if oil wells began to seemingly
replenish themselves with oil from a different and newer geologic age? Beginning to ponder abiotic origins too?
I believe that oil dominance is as much a condition of state intervention both for it's own needs (power and control) as well as to grant a monoploy position to an industry and it's by-products. What some call crony or state capitalism or neo-mercantilism or neo-fuedalism but masked under free market rhetoric. Even the very money we use day in and day out is built upon this commodity maintaining dominance. What happens to the global reserve currency and the economy built around it whose standing for that status is only held up by oil if all of a sudden oil became as necessary as the stone writing tablet or it's abundance was like the leaves on trees? So many scream about gold backed money yet you sit on your ass about oil! "But I trust the gov't!"
"Gov't loves me this I know, for it always tells me so!" SUCKER!!!!!!!!
I'm not afraid of the questions Dr. Bartlett raises nor what it sez about the heart of consumer capitalism that is only driven forward by ever expanding markets. Ever expanding markets require people, even social security enters shaky ground when a supporting population is lesser than the consuming population. Hoax earlier point about gov't growth well put. What happens to the massive markets we've built when the population needed to support it flat lines and then begins to fall? What happens to the investment markets when these very population forces that built and sustain consumer capitalism peak and fall and there the very consumerism needed to push profits further are no longer there? What then? What would happen to UPS if all of a sudden China and the Asian markets went bye-bye? A farmer not saddled by debt and other lifestyle extremes can always to a certain point plant less crop and still be back year after year doing the same but can UPS stay viable in the rent seeking stock market should such loss of marketshare occur?
Sustainability has been politicized badly but yet it is a vital ingredient to good economics IMO. Would a center manager put 3 drivers in 24 foot vans out on routes that had only 4 houses and 1 dying general store on them? Why not? Because the routes aren't "sustainable" and he/she would be far better off by using the best allocation of resources elsewhere that does sustain his business model.
Gov't central planning models are devoid of sustainability because at any given point we can be told to work harder or give up more and thus the resource base to these planners seem limitless. In fact the entire model can only work in a growth condition, thus the reason gov't only grows larger and is incapable of ever maintaining a limited status.
Mercantilist of our modern age have captured the state and therefore they drive not by natural market forces that freely rebalance mis-allocation of resources but rather shove us into unsustainable markets and we become the fodder forced to keep them afloat for the self interest benefit of a few. Call it the 1% if you like although this is far from being correct IMO.
It's really about human farming at the end of the day anyway!
Thanks for posting Sleeve even though it appears you were slammed by a few for doing it!
