.

Yes, billions may die before their time. A further misfortune is that almost all of those deaths will do almost nothing to reduce CO2 emissions and global reliance on oil.

Almost all of the billions will come from the poorest who use hardly any or no fossil fuels and hardly any other resources. The poorest billion are chronically undernourished and the poorest two billion don't have reliable access to clean water. Food shortages and huge food price increases will hit these the hardest, as will the major effects of climate chaos--flooding, drought and other extremes an disruptions.

From the articel:

"What would we be getting for our money? A collective sense that, in a time of crisis, no one is being left behind. Without the feeling of cooperative buy-in that such a safety net would help engender, similar to what was achieved with the New Deal but on an even larger scale, economic contraction could devolve into a horrific fight over the scraps of the waning industrial period."

When there is a sense that growth is happening and that anyone who is clever enough can catch the right economic updrafts and become very rich, people are more tolerant of extreme, even absurd wealth accumulation. Too may people think (however unrealistically) that they will be the next to roll in the lucre.

But when people realize that economic growth is over, that mostly everyone will be getting economically poorer from now on, seeing some with massive accumulations of wealth while most suffer and die horribly will tend to rankle.

I don't think we're there yet, but the anger at Goldman Sachs and others that continue to make enormous bonuses while helping to cause global economic collapse may be a beginning of a new view of hyper-wealth.

Farm machinery will run on electricity generated by nuclear power.

I don't believe you have any experience or knowledge of the mobile energy required for operation of farm machinery.
Farm machinery (current and future) will operate on home grown/made biodiesel fuel after petroleum fuel/fertilizer becomes too expensive or hard to get, but this will decrease food production be roughly half or less of current production.

Efficiency and eliminating waste alone could reduce energy consumption by more than half.

That may be true but the sticking point has always been how to get there from here without going through an incredibly wrenching experience first.

On one end of the spectrum is a gentle transformation of the economy in which services operate as they do now just more efficiently or using different technology. On this end of the spectrum there is plenty of time and abundant energy to perform the transition.

On the other end of the spectrum is the energy disappears entirely and instantaneously — no more oil from any source on earth. That would obviously be catastrophic.

Clearly we're not going to be directly on either end of the spectrum so the question remains: where will we end up on the spectrum of transition? Will it be closer to the gentle transition as the economists would have us believe? Or will it be closer to the other end? Where we land on the spectrum is exactly what has been discussed here since the site's inception.

I assert that the speed of the loss of oil (particularly due to the Export Land Model but also due to the feedback effects of a crumbling fiat currency system) will place us closer to the 'catastrophic' end of the spectrum. It doesn't mean all is lost, but it does mean that this particular version of human economy is toast.

Here is one way to show it:

Right now the majority of the evidence seems to say that we are certainly not experiencing a gentle transition. For instance, another 1/3 of a million people lost their jobs last month. In just a few more months, millions of previously unemployed will lose their unemployment benefits and will have exhausted their savings. Trillions of $'s of "wealth" still needs to be destroyed to account for the popping global bubble we've been fortunate to live in for the last hundred years or so. And so on.

So, yes, we will do all those things you say. AND it will be extremely unpleasant for many people as our high energy economy transitions to a low energy one. The question then left is: how does one get ready for this transition best?

-André
www.PostPeakLiving.com

Oil will become expensive and these pople will car pool, use motorcycles, walk, bicycle, or work from home.

So what happens with the car-industry ?

Flying on vacation or for business will become too expensive and will be replaced by local vacations and videoconferencing.

So what happens with the aviation industry ? Have you read how much the losses are only this year ?

Farm machinery will run on electricity generated by nuclear power.

Time-frame: 10-20 years ?

Spending on oil will go down and spending on localization and other fuels will go up. Economic growth will not end because of oil. The economy will transform.

Transformation should have started long time ago. If oil-exports start to drop economic downturn is inevitable.

I've read books and articles from Heinberg before so I know he was holding back. But when it comes to peak oil, I like "Hubbert's Peak, Impending World Oil Shortage," from Kenneth Deffeyes the most.

The reason I believe Heinberg was holding back is because there's little or no mention of one of the main reasons peak will be a problem -- urban sprawl. If our population were lower and there was no urban sprawl, then peak oil might be more of an inconvience rather then a potential disaster (this may be over simplisitic). but...,

Main problems:
1. liquid fuels transport
2. too amny people
3. urban sprawl
etc..., I'm sure there's more....

How do we get were we need to go?
I believe we need more light rail (European or Japanese style), and denser cities. Obviously there will be a smaller middle class and more farmers. But how do we get there gracefully? Technically Peak Oil can be a crises or a disaster. It's up to us to decide which road to take.

Rising efficiency implies better ability to afford higher prices, which could increase demand even with higher prices. But it won't happen. If you traded in your old Suburban for a Prius you are much less likely to ride your bike. If you do ride your bike, you have REDUCED your efficiency, since your parked Suburban consumes less energy than your junked Suburban and a parked Prius.

This assumption of higher efficiency in the face of decline is just nuts. Wishing and wanting doesn't make it different.

Cold Camel

This is a really important point, that has been very badly muffed so far. The Jevon's paradox only applies to the "micro-economic" rebound effect. Efficiency improvement is the main price competition method for business world wide and has a "macro-economic" multiplier effect.

Efficiency is growth stimulus.

Believe me, there is much worse than this level of major error in professional sustanability thinking to come. I have never been a joking person about any of the blunt statements I have made on these subjects, well except for having a laugh at how ridiculous the situation is. There are numerous highly consequential conceptual errors being made because people almost universally ignore the responses of the system they are part of as effects of their actions.

Maybe the simplest way to understand that is in terms of one's personal footprint on the earth. Say you reduce your consumption by buying less, but the money goes to the bank. The bank's response to your consuming less is to use the money to multiply businesses. Your choice to reduce your impact on the earth actually had quite the opposite effect... because it's a property of the system we live in to use part of any surplus to multiply more surplus.

Even simpler, if plants and animals followed capitalist principles every creature in nature would be Kudzu, just endless rampant growth. Nature's systems mostly work differently.

Yes, but "getting the story right" seems in this case to upset common wisdoms that were somewhat true for hundreds of years, and that our society is built around, but that stopped being true as our growth system started to run out of its seed resources. The basic assumption of capitalism amounts to "the seed" is never exhausted... but here we are, and we now need a whole new way of thinking.

I think the way to do that is for people to start talking and referring to the same subject, and the obvious one for us to pick is the common 'wilderness' and experience of our all being part of the same global system. It has a lot of mysterious behaviors as a whole that are quite unlike our behaviors as parts.

You'd probably think it ridiculous to walk down the street by steps that get twice as big every block, right? Our global system thinks that's the only possible way to get anyplace, being sort of fixated on the past.