Yep, that is the big question: what is the best way to help those that have economically fallen off the bottom rung of the detritus ladder?  Bereft Indian farmers self-ingesting pesticide, newborns being found dead in the Zimbabwe sewers, the crisis in Sudan, people freezing from lack of natgas heat...on and on until the mind reels.  Yet, detritus entropy dictates that this will only get worse with the passage of time.  The 'trickle down' theory doesn't apply to energy as it can only be burned once.

When the US welfare and Social Security system collapses: how will we treat our elderly, sick, and disabled?  The recent EnergyBulletin article talks about the possible future difficulty in replacing a worn-out water heater--How about the decision of choosing between feeding Grandpa or feeding your child?  Will it be wiser to spend your money on family health insurance vs. spending it on heating oil when it is bitterly cold outside?  What percentage of Americans will take in another family that cannot afford their own housing and the energy to run it?  How willing are we to decrease from using 25% of the world's oil to the world average?  Isn't that inherently fair?

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

Or is the plateau model one that leads to a cliff?

Also, sometime would you update the above 9-month center moving average graph.

Your work and wisdom is much appreciated. Your hard data balances off a lot of the doomers' speculation.    

Internal political pressure for subsidization from countries that do NOT subsidize must grow as price pressures hit home to producing countries. As an example see: Bolivia. This is the equivalent of bread and circuses for the Romans.

Do you really believe that Norwegian and Canadian governments would be able to stay in power as the squeeze for their energy sources becomes more intense while at the same time they maintain an equivalency between foriegn and domestic consumers?

 I see Venezuela using it's reserves for political diplomacy, SA keeping the blooming youth population at bay, Nigeria in civil/piracy war. When the benefits are not seen locally chaos reigns. The fungibility of energy MUST lessen as supplies grow tighter and costs increase simply because the local politics are what controls the well heads.

Yes, there will be black markets, wars, trade 'agreements' but it all just adds up to making the energy just a little bit harder to get, a little more expensive as each producer must use more and more of it's resource to assuage the pain at home in order to not be replaced by a more inward looking regime.

Westexas is more on target than even he dreams.

Gary