332 comments on The Path from Petroleum Shortages to Electricity Shortages
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332 comments on The Path from Petroleum Shortages to Electricity Shortages
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GAIA Host Collective
If we have enough energy most minerals can be got in sufficient quantity - problems only really start if you are very short of energy.
So although I quite agree severe financial and liquid fuel constraints will hit, it seems to me that the spread of outcomes will be much wider than might be inferred from a position which seems to perhaps rather discount those possible solutions on the grounds that systemic collapse will not allow them.
Should some areas come through in relatively good shape, then their influence seems likely to spread.
To move from a general argument to a particular one, perhaps it is worth looking at the position of an individual country, France.
If one assumes that some sort of relatively effective response happens there to the financial challenges,and that ethnic conflict is contained relatively successfully, then it is rather difficult to see why a technological civilisation should not maintain itself there, with high standards of living.
They can probably do this using about the same number of reactors as at present, with gradual capacity increases as they come to be replaced with new reactors.
They burn a lot of gas, but then again it has been cheap, and dearer gas would simply mean that they would need to accelerate their program of installing air source heat pumps - they are putting in around 50,000 a year at the moment.
More freight would need shifting to rail, and the existing program of installing electric car charging points in cities would likely be expanded, but the model that Nissan/Renault have of building electric cars and selling them whilst leasing the batteries seems robust.
Biofuels sufficient to provide for agricultural machinery and other essential uses would be well within the capabilities of French agriculture.
Concerns about uranium shortage would seem to be misplaced, as solutions ranging from thorium burning reactors to building breeder reactors or obtaining uranium from seawater are numerous.
If France then is relatively well placed to overcome the difficulties ahead, that provides a core around which Europe can be re-powered.
This is not to dismiss well founded concerns, many of which I share with you.
In this context it is interesting to note the severe longer-term problems of Europe, due to it's unfavourable demography,
as is extensively detailed in articles on this site:
http://demographymatters.blogspot.com/
The same demographic issues perhaps put the present more aggressive stance of Russia into perspective, as over the next 20 years it seems from the ELM that the present leverage provided by oil will evaporate, and the bind that demography will have got them in by this time seem to point to a much weaker Russia.
The outcome you hypothesise seems likely in some places, but my own feeling is that outcomes will be patchy, with relatively successful outcomes in some areas.
It seems like more local almost equates to patchy.
We have gotten used to having inputs from around the world. Once these are cut way back, I am wondering whether this will put an upper limit on how developed even the better-developed areas can be. This week we read about platinum possibly being in short supply. With electricity shortages, I expect the supply of a lot of metals to be cut back greatly--copper and aluminum are two in particular.
A lot of things will change. It is hard to understand the interdependencies.
You've put your finger on what I find difficult or unproductive in some of the analysis here.
Of course, systemic failure may doom any response - I don't know.
However, if that is the working assumption then for a start the analysis tends to jump around from point to point of difficulty, by-passing often fairly simple remedies to particular issues.
I am also not a big fan of power down solutions - systemic collapse would certainly seem probable together with mass deaths under those scenarios in my view.
Considering that heating and air conditioning could be done with a fraction of today's energy inputs, and so could goods transportation and personal mobility, together with feeding the population with a much healthier diet with less, better quality meat, then the obstacles seem primarily institutional.
Focussing largely on the interdependencies rather than biting off bits that are chewable may make life too hard! :-)