Comments on: The Oil Depletion by Richard Heinberg – A Review and Competition!

By: Kyoto

Kyoto — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 07:30:42 +0000

Richard Heinberg ideas are brilliant! Look how easy it was to turn the Kyoto protocol into a resounding success (!)

I s he on a new oil-derived capsule, or just good ol fashion grass?

By: Robert Forenza

Robert Forenza — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:13:06 +0000

This may also be of interest- we are working in the NE of the USA with a product to help reduce our energy needs bay as much as 14%.

In use by the Irish army since the early 90's

If I can be of further help, please let me know.

best regards

Robert Forenza

By: William Jorgensen

William Jorgensen — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 22:58:58 +0000

In an ideal world any sort of emergency protocol that could be agreed to by the world’s political masters would be sensational. However, in the real world, describing such an agreement would have to include “overly optimistic” as an understatement.
Besides the difficulty of gaining a cross-national political concensus, the economic masters, the real ones, would prefer to hold sway over the masses as the world declined into barbarism than give up any of their economic power. In the end it will be the Rothschilds, Rockefellers and their ilk who will decide how the decline is managed.
The central banks and their owners, more aware of the coming emergencies than anyone, I’m sure, are already taking steps to guard their wealth in whatever post-peak-oil civilisation that remains.
With the idea of a protocol that could be controlled and actually have some chance of success, the backing and institutions of the anonymous super-wealthy cabal is essential. The trouble with that is in finding out, exactly, who and where they are.

By: Lonnie Brown

Lonnie Brown — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 16:10:15 +0000

It would be interesting to plug the results of various degrees of implementation of the oil depletion protocol into the World model that Meadows et al used for "Limits to Growth, the 30-Year Update" just to see how the various systems would respond.

There is a lot of talk about this policy and that technology all over the net. Dynamic systems modeling provides a very clear way to investigate the likely outcomes of all these suggestions.

For example, let's suppose that a 3% annual decline in energy consumption translates more or less directly into a 3% decline in economic activity. Traditionally, this would be enough to send the economy into a severe recession.

Offsetting the worst of the political and economic repurcussions will require a degree of planning and foresight that is difficult to achieve using current political decision making processes: spin, obfuscate, mislead. Even with the best of intentions, the behaviors of complex systems are largely unpredictable via conventional analysis.

Some questions for inquiry:

How should the monetary system be changed so that an ongoing decline in economic activity doesn't collapse the legal infrastructure that supports trade of any kind? Should the gold standard be re-implemented? How about a multi-tiered currency for different trade scopes: local, regional, national, with exchange rates that encourage local investment. How about using H.T.Odum's "Emergy Accounting" system as a basis for a currency?

Is a decreaes in energy consumption equivalent to the decrease in production sufficient to offset the worst of the economic and environmental impacts that we face on the back end of the petroleum age? In other words, will these measures be sufficient to stave off a drastic system collapse in terms of food production, population, etc.?

Most discussions I've seen have been discussions in principle. It's time for the tools necessary to allow people to place the probable outcomes of the various strategies in clearer perspectives.

By: seraphima

seraphima — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 22:20:43 +0000

I'm glad that people like Richard Heimberg are supporting and putting forth these kind of protocols.

However, more and more, politicians and political action are being marginalized and becoming less and less meaningful, effective, or interesting to me.

Change and response to problems of peak oil and global warming, and to peak resources of all kinds, are not going to come from politicians. They are going to come from individual people, small groups, little towns, then bigger groups.

In the US, our president Bush is losing power and influence, as our congressional and local election results are clearly showing today. Nobody much cares what he thinks about the Kyoto protocol- he's obviously clueless, and it's going to catch up with him and his ilk.

Meaningful change starts in our own lives. That's the bottom line.