Hell Paul....I go all the way back to Carter when he was ridiculed for making the same suggestion. I can even go back to a time when one particular oil cartel limited production in order to keep prices up. Their goal wasn't to inspire conservation but to just maximize the value of oil. But, it did put pressure on conservation anyway. They effective set the amount (the "allowable") of oil any company could produce. If a company had a well capable of producing 1000 bopd and the allowable was set that month at 30% they could average no more than 300 bopd for that month. If they produced more they would be subject to both civil and criminal charges. This cartel effective controlled the price of oil well into the 1960's.

BTW, the cartel was the Texas Rail Road Commission. They're the state regulator of oil/NG production. And the "allowable" system is still in place and is still the law. Since the development of petropower in the Middle East the allowable in Texas has been set every month at 100%. The TRRC could, in theory, reduce the allowable any time they choose. We’ll hold our breath for that move also.

Fusion is not ready but wind and solar are really taking off. Are they in time? In some ways the answer has to be yes because these are the things that can scale. In some ways the answer has to be no because we are going to see rationing in response to fossil fuel supply constrains that a more dilligently followed energy program would have avoided.

Are they in time? This is an interesting question. Before we answer we need to ask are they in time for what?

I think we should strive to understand what the goal should be. There is a pervasive expectation that any new energy source should replace FF at their current level of usage. If we fail to to that, the expectation is we will revert into some third world economy or worse.

But on the other hand there is an equally pervasive frustration at the inability to get the normal North American to reduce his energy usage. There is a limit to growth and one one them is the limitations on renewable cheap energy sources.

These two pervasive ideas appears to be inconsistent. How can you maintain the current energy usage level, get the North American to conserve and build a sustainable economy all at the same time?

I am tempted to think that the goal should be to implement sustainable energy sources that meet what society needs, not what society wants. This means we figure how much energy is required after wasteful activities are optimized away and set this as the target. Then once we descend the terminal decline, society has to adapt to whatever energy remains available. If the production is sufficient we end up with an industrial economy that has been optimized to a sustainable energy usage level.

This approach would help with a lot of hairy issues:

- How to get the normal North-American to conserve.
- How to scale down the peak oil mitigation problem to a more achievable target
- How to build a society with sustainable energy usage
- How to make sure the post-peak world avoids descending into the MadMax hell

I also think it is so hard to implement sustainable energy sources at the current FF scale, a reduced level is going to be what will be achieved anyway. The question is whether there will be enough new energy production to sustain an industrial economy.