The U.S. is counting on a long-term abundance of oil & natural gas: But what if the boom is just a bubble?

Click here to access article from Shale Bubble.

Despite recent declines in oil and natural gas production, Americans continue to be told that the United States is destined to have growing supplies of both, thanks to the widespread use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). This “shale revolution,” we’re told, will fundamentally change the U.S. energy picture for decades to come....

Is the Oil Industry Dying?

Click here to access article by Richard Heinberg from Pacific Standard.

I've been waiting quite a while to hear from one of the peak oil theorists to respond to the current oil glut and low prices. This article is an excellent response.

Money is effectively a marker for energy, and we can borrow and spend money now on costly energy with the promise that we will pay for it later (hence the massive build-up of debt in the oil industry). But if cheaper-to-produce energy and higher prices don’t emerge soon, those debts will eventually become transparently un-repayable. Hence what is inherently an energy crisis can appear to most observers to be a debt crisis.

The problem of eroding energy profitability is hard to deal with partly because the decline is happening so fast. If we had a couple of decades to prepare for falling thermodynamic efficiency, there are things we could do to soften the blow. That’s what the peak oil discussion was all about: It was an effort to warn society ahead of time. Once the dynamic of declining energy profitability really gets rolling, adaptation becomes much more difficult.

The Peak Oil Dilemma

Click here to access article by David Blittersdorf from AllEarth.

We’re on the backside of the bell curve, and once you start coming down, there’s no going back ever again. Fracking was a trick that most people didn’t see coming, one that gave us artificial time, but it’s not a long-term solution. And other “solutions,” like oil production from tar sands, are just as limited in their effectiveness. Tar sands oil production accounts for a fraction of our world’s supply and is both very energy intensive and very expensive, not to mention extremely destructive to the environment. ....

We're living in an oil-based world and we have a huge crisis coming because of this dependence. We haven't stopped the growth of CO2 emissions, and we're going to see some major changes to our environment because of that. Even if we reduced all emissions to zero today, we'll still see a couple degrees of global warming. Climate change is going to happen, it's just a question of how bad it will be. And it's a shame that peak oil has been delayed by a decade, because it may have forced action on this issue sooner.

Because this article is posted in what looks like a trade journal for the renewable energy industry, it holds out promise that this industry can save us from extinction. However the author does somewhat candidly see a major problem ahead.

The other significant issue we're facing is that oil drives the world's economy, and our modern economy is driven by a concept of an infinite world, infinite growth forever. In a finite world, we're going to crash against that mindset. Society doesn't tend to react until we have an actual, immediate crisis on our hands. We'll have an oil supply crisis soon--it could be in two years, it could be in ten, but it's coming.

The "mindset" is, of course, irrationally driven by our capitalist masters because they are addicted to the wealth and power that capitalism provides them with. Only a massive program that involved planning and implementation to radically reduce carbon emissions on a bigger scale than the Marshal Plan following WWII might save us.

Oh Oil, where is thy peak?

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook. 

I have re-posted many articles written by Engdahl relating to geopolitical analysis which have shed much light on the Empire's real policies and intentions. However, with this piece I think that he steps out of his area of competence to attack both climate destabilization forecasts and growing evidence of a Peak Oil future. He is outright dismissive of the former while concentrating his criticism of the latter view by merely citing evidence of new oil discoveries. It's quite easy to show that his arguments regarding the falseness of Peak Oil views are really quite shallow. 

While I don't regard anyone as omniscient, I am very disappointed with Engdahl's shallow reasoning on this important subject. It's clear to me that he has unquestioningly accepted one of capitalism's premises: capitalist exploitation of energy resources to produce goods for profit can continue indefinitely. Thus he picks evidence--limited to new oil discoveries--that supports capitalist ideology of growth forever. All people, especially in major capitalist countries, are subject to indoctrination in capitalist ideology, and those who spend and benefit from many years in higher education are especially subject to this type of indoctrination. This, I think applies to Engdahl. Likewise because of this conditioning, he also ignores the tremendous amount of evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is contributing to the destabilization of a climate that can support human life.

 Ignore the current glut of oil on the market today. It's the long term, at least two decades ahead, that is of concern about energy. The collapse in oil prices was caused by the decision of the medieval rulers of Saudi Arabia in collaboration with the directors of the Empire. The latter mainly wanted to undermine the economies of Russia (as they did in the 1980s), Iran, and Venezuela while the Saudi Arabian rulers mostly want to drive out competition from the smaller companies using oil-fracking technologies. 

Thus, what this current oil price collapse and oil glut perpetrated by Empire directors and their Saudi collaborators will be reversed as soon as the impacts become too negative for Saudi and/or Empire interests. The Saudi Arabian government is already taking out loans to balance their government's budget. Meanwhile, many major oil companies based in the US and Britain will simply take advantage of the situation by buying up smaller oil companies at bargain prices. This is precisely why US ruling class directors went along with the Saudis in this scheme. Thus, this incident will only register as a blip on the screen of the world's consumption of fossil fuels over the next several decades.

No serious Peak Oil theorists, as far as I know, have ever argued that accessible oil supplies are diminishing. What they have most convincingly argued is that oil sources that can be economically accessed are diminishing. I am not going to waste time by offering a comprehensive critique of his narrow view regarding Peak Oil, but simply refer to others who have studied and written about Peak Oil for years: Gail Tverberg (who is already arguing that our economies are being threatened by the high cost of energy), Chris Martenson, and Nicole Foss of The Automatic Earth. Just listen to the first 16 minutes of the following lengthy interview with Foss.

It's clear that the continued operation of economies under capitalism are running into a sharp clash with economically accessible fossil fuels, especially oil. Thus she sees simpler societies as the only solution, but this is in sharp conflict with the growth imperative of capitalism.

The Law of Diminishing Returns (Part 1 of 4)

Click here if you wish to access article from its original source at Post Carbon Institute.

Is modern society hitting our defining moment, the point of diminishing returns?

In this brand new short video released today, Richard Heinberg explores how — in our economy, the environment, and energy production — we may well be. When previous societies have hit similar limits, they often doubled-down by attempting ever more complex interventions to keep things going, before finally collapsing. Will this be our fate too? And is there an alternative?

This video is the first in a four-part series by Richard Heinberg and Post Carbon Institute. The themes covered in these videos are much more thoroughly explored in Heinberg’s latest book, Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels.

 

Heinberg knows what we need to do to avoid extinction, but can we do it under the system of capitalism? With reference to declining net energy returns and environmental limits, he says in the interview:

If we plan for that sort of future, we can optimize the transition and the outcome. If we don't, we could end up as just one more failed civilization....

Judging from my reading of his past essays, I think we can safely assume that he thinks this is possible. We should find out in later parts of this series.

Clearly I think not--and such a notion is dangerous to our survival! Such a notion is what is precisely keeping us from doing anything constructive to head of this disaster.

The Paradox of Oil: The Cheaper it is, the More it Costs

Click here to access article by Samuel Alexander posted on Resilience.  (A must-read article)

Alexander is an academic who specializes in environmental issues, and is closely with the Simplicity Institute (based in Australia) in which this article was originally published in PDF format. In this rather lengthy, scholarly, and very important essay he analyses the paradox contained in the title by examining the interplay of economic, environmental, and geopolitical factors.

The main conclusion defended below is that so-called ‘cheap oil’ (at ~$50 per barrel) is just as problematic as expensive oil (at $100+ per barrel), but for very different social, political, economic, and environmental reasons. Just as expensive oil suffocates industrial economies that are dependent on cheap energy inputs to function, cheap oil merely propagates and further entrenches the existing order of global capitalism that is in the process of growing itself to death.

It is clear that he is much more informed about the economic and environmental factors than he is about geopolitical factors. Thus, he devotes much more space to the former. However, he does make this one telling comment about the current geopolitical situation:

Perhaps most importantly, with cheap oil Saudi Arabia is able to punish or put pressure on some of its (and the US’s) geopolitical enemies, including Iran and Russia – two oil exporters that are much harder hit by $50 oil than the wealthier Saudi Arabia .... As of early 2015, the Russian economy seems particularly weak and unstable, and there is some speculation that the US has colluded with Saudi Arabia to flood the markets for this very purpose ..., even if this hurts US shale producers. In fact, some analysts argue with plausibility that oil markets, in our neoliberal era, provide a means for the US government and the broader ‘Transnational Elite’ to insidiously wage economic war, especially against Russia .... It is very difficult to know how far these geopolitical influences are shaping the oil markets – and space does not permit a more elaborate analysis – but there certainly seems to be more than plain ‘supply and demand’ issues at play.

Thus the timing of the current low oil prices are driven more by these current geopolitical factors, but other factors will inevitably produce the same effect. In other words, the foreground "noise" of this geopolitics is masking the background fundamental sounds of the operation of capitalism. His essay focuses more on the broader issue of the limited supply of relatively inexpensive oil within a capitalist economy which requires growth, and thus offers some very important insights about the resulting contradictions and disasters that we will experience as long as capitalism exists.

In an earlier essay published in Reliance in October 2014 entitled "Life in a 'degrowth' economy", he argues that only much simpler lifestyles supported by a different economic system will save us from disaster.

We need to create new, post-capitalist structures and systems that promote, rather than inhibit, the simpler way of life. These wider changes will never emerge, however, until we have a culture that demands them. So first and foremost, the revolution that is needed is a revolution in consciousness.

After the Peak

Click here to access article by Richard Heinberg from Post Carbon Institute.

After reading this article affirming peak oil theory and others which are disputing peak oil theory (conveniently after this current glut of oil on world markets), I am reminded of the metaphor regarding the blind men and the elephant. Obviously, peak oil deniers are so focused on this short term oil glut as well as being committed to capitalism that they refuse to look at the science of peak oil.  

Heinberg has written in support of the science behind peak oil theory since the beginning and is highly regarded as an expert. I, also, am thoroughly convinced of the validity of this theory after having read many articles on the subject. However, his overwhelming focus on only one part of this phenomenon has skewed his perception of related issues. I am referring here to his omission, or ignorance about, the capitalist system. Thus, he looks around and finds only the economics profession to blame for the failure of peak oil warnings!

There’s no cause for shame in that: the deck was stacked against us. The economics profession, which has a stranglehold on government policy, steadfastly continues to insist that energy is a fully substitutable ingredient in the economy, and that resource depletion poses no limit to economic growth. Believing this to be true, policy makers have effectively had their fingers jammed in their ears.

He appears to be totally unaware that capitalism requires growth and cheap, abundant energy to exist. Those who receive huge benefits from the system in terms of wealth and especially overwhelming political power cannot but resist and deny peak oil warnings. 

If people are not sufficiently motivated by the social disasters produced by capitalism, then surely they must be by the disasters that lie ahead for their children, grandchildren, and the human race due to diminishing supplies of cheap oil and climate destabilization caused by the overuse of fossil fuels. Thus, peak oil as well as climate destabilization are revolutionary issues.

Brace Yourself for Oil Shock Future. It Won't Be Pretty

Click here to access article by Chris Martenson from Peak Prosperity (behind a paywall) via Russia Insider. (My comments were amended at 4 Pm Seattle time.)

I think that this is a very important study of future oil/gas supply and its various effects on our societies. I have been favorably impressed with this author in the past. Most recently I encountered him in the interview he conducted with geoscientist David Hughes and posted at the Post Carbon Institute. Also, the implications of his analysis correspond closely with those of Gail Tverberg who is a widely respected expert on fossil fuels, and whose writings I have followed for quite some time.

The graph at the left illustrates the effect on prices caused by diminishing fossil fuel supplies together with higher costs of extraction. He sees extreme volatility in prices as central banks attempt to cope with higher costs of extraction.



You see, the Empire's main central bank, the Federal Reserve, is owned by private banks which, in turn, are owned by the richest (and the most powerful) of the ruling One Percent. The capitalist system under which the economy is run requires economic growth to feed them their interest payments on money they have created out of thin air, backed mostly by the Empire's control of oil resources (and the threat of various forms of violence both overt and covert), and loaned to oil companies and capitalist investors. This is the way Martenson explains it:

I don't know when, but there will come a moment when the world realizes that the trillions and trillions of dollars worth of paper claims in the form of currency, bonds, and derivatives only have value in relation to the actual things they can buy.

At this magic moment in time, the scales will fall off the world's eyes and it will realize that oil is the king of economic energy sources. And that less oil means less real wealth for all those claims to go chase.

Without the economic growth that oil provides, you cannot make a reasonable case for constantly expanding the debt loads of a society.

The logic of constantly expanding debts only works with the assumption of perpetual future growth.

To avoid any misunderstanding, I am not supporting his argument that the current fall in oil prices is solely due to capitalist economic factors. I think there is a confluence of factors which led to this decision by Empire directors to cause this current fall in oil prices, and the timing of this was due overwhelmingly to geopolitical reasons: to damage Russian, Iranian, Venezuelan economies. And there are other factors such as the opportunity for major oil companies to buy up many smaller companies at bargain prices.

Energy & The Financial System: What Can I Do?

Click here to access article by Roger Boyd from Humanity's Test.

Boyd, who has had a long career in the financial industry, is one of the exceptional actors in the capitalist system who refuses to stick his head in the sand. He sees what lies ahead as humans come up against the finite limits of this planet. Unfortunately, his views are severely constrained by his experience and education in institutions which have been thoroughly infused with capitalist ideology. 

It's unclear whether he is unaware that the problems we are facing today are system based, or if he believes that there is no alternative. We will never know because there is no mention of an economic system in this article. Thus, he offers no solution other than giving some advice to individual "investors" about how best to protect themselves. And, he seems completely unaware of the other threat--climate destabilization. There is no safe passage between the Scylla of disappearing cheap energy and the Charybdis of climate destabilization that we are facing today. If one doesn't destroy us through nuclear wars, the other will through catastrophic climate destabilization. 

This is the sort of dreadful thinking that will lead humanity over the cliff to its extinction if the rest of us in the Ninety-Nine Percent refuse for whatever reason to take control and create a sustainable system.

The Peak Oil Crisis: When?

Click here to access article by Tom Whipple from Post Carbon Institute.

For those following the world oil production situation, it has been clear for some time that the only factor keeping global crude output from moving lower is the continuing increase in U.S. shale oil production, mostly from Texas and North Dakota. Needless to say, once the fabled “peak” comes oil and gasoline prices are certain to move higher, triggering a series of economic events – most of which will not be good for the global economy.

....  Usually missing from optimistic estimates for future U.S. shale oil production is any discussion of just how fast production from fracked wells declines.

He concludes along with many independent observers that production will peak during 2016-2017 and will fall off dramatically after that. Could this be one reason why the One Percent ruling class is pursuing foreign adventures so aggressively, and their corporate media has hyped-up its bellicose propaganda in support of these adventures? Considering that their system of capitalism requires growth, the eminent prospect of diminishing supplies of cheap fossil fuels to keep their system going could explain, at least in part, why they are acting so crazy.

Energy and the Economy – Twelve Basic Principles

Click here to access article by Gail Tverberg from her blog Our Finite World.

Tverberg, who is a highly respected energy analyst among independent energy scientists and technologists, sums up many years of her research into these "Twelve Basic Principles". I have been following her writings for at least five years, first at the Oil Drum and now here, and cannot recall that she ever questioned the system of capitalism. 

If you are not familiar with her work, you might initially get the wrong impression by her statement in the first principle: "Economic models are no longer valid, as we start getting close to limits." But it will shortly become clear that she is writing about economic models formulated by capitalist economists, not the capitalist model itself. She, like so many others has been infected by the TINA virus, and is unable to think outside the box of capitalism. However, unlike our addicted capitalist rulers, she has examined the evidence and acknowledged the realities of a finite planet, and that we humans cannot continue relying on cheap fossil fuels. Unfortunately, such thinking leads to only a "gloom and doom" scenario.

We seem now to be at risk in many ways of entering into the collapse scenario experienced by many civilizations before us. 

How Fracking Is Blowing Up Balance Sheets of Oil and Gas Companies

Click here to access article by Wolf Richter from Wolf Street.

Richter has provided more recent evidence to support a thesis which long-time energy analyst Gail Tverberg has been hammering on for a number of years: that cheap, easily accessible oil and gas have been used up; thus the costs for future fossil fuel based energy is going to climb steeply to the point where it will have dramatic impacts on the economy.  

Because capitalism functions like a pyramid scheme that relies on future growth, the implications of this thesis for capitalism is staggering; so staggering that capitalists, who are addicted to this system because it provides them with so much wealth and power, refuse to face reality. (This scheme has worked for capitalists in the past because humans had not yet reached the finite resource limits that they are now approaching, nor have they been faced with impending climate destabilization.) It's very much like one of the end stages that have been described by Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:

As the reality of loss is hard to face, one of the first reactions to follow the loss is Denial. What this means is that the person is trying to shut out the reality or magnitude of his/her situation, and begins to develop a false, preferable reality.

Thus, they keep indulging in fantasies like migrating to other planets, or promising that technology will come up with new sources of cheap energy. One of their favorite fantasies is fusion energy--but the reality of cold fusion is far different. As physicist Tom Murphy expressed the enormous problems of fusion energy so well:

No one can truly say whether we will achieve fusion in a way that is commercially practical. If teams of PhDs have spent over 60 years wailing on the problem while spending tens of billions of dollars, I think it’s safe to use our fusion quest as the definition of hard. It’s a much larger challenge than sending men to the Moon. We have no historical precedent for an arduous technological problem on this scale that ultimately succeeded to become a ho-hum commercial reality. But for that matter, I don’t think we have any precedent for something on this scale that has failed. In short, we’re out of our depths and can’t be cocky about predictions in either direction.

How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet

Click here if you wish to directly access the posting of this 8:58m video from The Club of Rome website. 

The Club of Rome originally brought the world's attention in a 1972 report entitled "Limits to Growth" the fact that we are living on a finite planet which cannot experience growth forever. It was widely criticized by left-wing intellectuals and others because of the solutions it offered largely centered on population control. 

Bearing in mind that The Club of Rome is a global ruling class organization which benefits from the system of capitalism, you will understand that their solutions avoid any discussion of the deleterious effects of their system on the planet. They are desperately worried about these effects on the system which sustains their power and wealth. Thus, they focus on other other measures to cope with the problems that their system is causing. 

Notice in this video presentation that the focus is on energy efficiency, recycling, and finding new energy resources. Regardless of their misleading solutions, their analysis of the problem--diminishing opportunities for cheap resource extraction--is accurate. 

In this Report to the Club of Rome,to be released on 12 June, Ugo Bardi delivers a sweeping history of the mining industry, and illustrates how the gigantic mining machine is now starting to show signs of difficulties. Having thoroughly plundered planet Earth we are entering a new world, says Bardi, and he draws on the world’s leading mineral experts to offer a compelling glimpse in the new world ahead.

Scientists vindicate 'Limits to Growth' – urge investment in 'circular economy'

Click here to access article by Nafeez Ahmed from The Guardian.

...recent scientific reviews confirm that the original report's projections in its 'base scenario' remain robust. In 2008, Australia's federal government scientific research agency CSIRO concluded that The Limits to Growth forecast of potential "global ecological and economic collapse coming up in the middle of the 21st Century" due to convergence of "peak oil, climate change, and food and water security", is "on-track." Actual current trends in these areas "resonate strongly with the overshoot and collapse displayed in the book's 'business-as-usual scenario.'"

Ahmed is limited by employment in a capitalist news organization to express only vague hints at the real solution in order to disguise what he knows is really needed--revolution:

A fundamental reorganisation of the way societies produce, manage and consume resources could support a new high-technology civilisation, ... and with all that, very different types of social structures.

Washington‘s Shale Boom Going Bust

Click here to access article by William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.

The extraction of fossil fuels by the new oil mining technology known as shale fracking or hydraulic fracturing is polluting, expensive, and of short duration. It is driven by hype, debt, and "quantitative easing". It is a desperate attempt to satisfy the voracious appetite of the beast known as capitalism.

Even the US Government’s EIA projects that US oil output will peak at 9.61 million barrels a day in 2019. They see tight-oil or shale oil topping at 4.8 million barrels in 2021. That’s only seven years out. And if the US Government is trying to fast-track approval of LNG gas export terminals on coastal ports to allow US gas companies to export their gas, completion of such complex terminals including environmental impact approvals typically takes seven years. Hmmmm.

Is Thomas Piketty Right About the Causes of Inequality?

Click here if you wish to access the original post (with transcript) from Real News featuring an interview with economist Michael Hudson in which he discusses a popular French economist's book entitled Capital in the Twenty-First Century that is widely circulating among our masters in the One Percent. 

[Interviewer]: So, Michael, this week we're going to be talking about the very popular book by French economist Thomas Piketty. It's a 700-page book that takes on the topic of income inequality. Why do you think so many people are talking about this book? What's in it that has people buzzing?

You might also be interested in Howard Kunstler's take on this book posted on World News Trust in which he writes:

Energy and technology are not substitutable with each other. If you run out of the former, you can’t replace it with the latter (and by “run out” I mean get it at a return of energy investment that makes sense). The techno-narcissist Jeremy Rifkins and Ray Kurzweils among us propound magical something-for-nothing workarounds for our predicament, but they are just blowing smoke up the collective fundament of a credulous ruling plutocracy. 

In fact, we’re faced with an unprecedented contraction of wealth, and a shocking loss of ability to produce new wealth. That‘s the real “game-changer,” not the delusions about shale oil and the robotic “industrial renaissance” and all the related fantasies circulating among a leadership that checked its brains at the Microsoft window.

However, Kunstler's vision of the future is unimaginative and uninspiring--humanity can do better.

Eight Energy Myths Explained

Click here to access article by Gail Tverberg from her blog Our Finite World.

I have followed Tverberg's articles for a number of years. She has demonstrated to me and many others that she knows of what she writes. She is widely respected for her research and knowledge about energy by her peers in the energy field. (Take a look at the quality and quantity of the responses she got from this article.) However, she has one serious limitation. She has been so well indoctrinated in the TINA view ("there is no alternative") that she cannot even consider any alternative to capitalism. To her it is an absolute given, an unalterable reality. 

Nevertheless, I have found her insights about energy extremely useful in understanding the huge conflict that the system of capitalism has for our survival. Whereas other energy specialists writing for capitalist media often engage in fanciful ideas such as fusion energy to deal with the doomed future of capitalism on a finite planet, she looks clearly and steadily at the evidence and can only reach one conclusion--we are facing a herculean task, if not an insoluble, dilemma. In this article she demolishes many such myths by people who refuse to face reality.

Republicans, Democrats, and environmentalists all have favorite energy myths. Even Peak Oil believers have favorite energy myths. The following are a few common mis-beliefs,  coming from a variety of energy perspectives. I will start with a recent myth, and then discuss some longer-standing ones.

Fracking is the death spasm of a defunct economic order

Click here to access article by Paul Mobbs from Ecologist. 

This environmental consultant is growing in his awareness about the contradictions imposed by finite limits in our planet in relation to the economic system of capitalism. (Although, he doesn't name the system.) Also, in discussing his new awareness, he seems to be having difficulties keeping conventional thinking audiences with him.

The real problem is economic growth and consumption within a finite environment. It's only by changing the economic process [system?] itself, to adapt to the ecological limits acting upon the human system, that we can tackle the inter-related issues of resource depletion, climate change and ecological degradation.

The Smog of Fraud

Click here to access article by James Howard Kunster from his blog.

This is an excellent example of middle class type of criticism of the Obama administration that I referred to in my recent post. Yes, it does reveal to us some important aspects of the existing capitalist system, but it also avoids questioning the system itself and one of the basic flaws of the system--class war that is widening the gap between the capitalist rich and everyone else. Instead, he initially points his finger at the "Obama team" and then mentions bankers and accountants, but mostly seems to suggest that "everybody" is in on it. Somehow there is fraud everywhere and no one or no thing is to blame. Thus, there apparently is nothing to be done. (To be fair, I haven't read much of his other works. I'm just basing my comments on this article.)

Everybody knows this now and everybody is trying desperately to work around it, led by the Federal Reserve. Trust is gone and credit is going and debt is sitting between a rock and a hard place with its grubby hands pressed together, praying that it will be forgiven, forgotten, or overlooked a little while longer.

Kunstler is a peak oil advocate who sees that diminishing fossil fuels will require us to live in more fossil free societies by arguing that 'there is no other alternative energy source on the horizon that can replace relatively cheap oil. He therefore envisions a "low energy" world that will be radically different from today's.' (I agree, but strangely I find no evidence that he is concerned about the other threat coming from global warming which I think will affect us earlier.)

He doesn't see that development of capitalism has inevitably resulted in a few winners among vast numbers of losers. To keep the system going requires ever more lending from the first group to the second which, of course, cannot go on forever. But, he doesn't see this as an inevitable consequence of a flaw in the system. He does see that, as a consequence, capitalists must now engage in all kinds of fraudulent activities to accumulate more wealth. To this he just throws up his hands and implies that everyone is doing it--apparently it's just human nature to be wicked or that people aren't as smart as he is by choosing to live more simply. People following his advice might end up feeling morally and intellectually superior, but they would change nothing.

What’s Ahead? Lower Oil Prices, Despite Higher Extraction Costs

Click here to access article by Gail Tverberg from her blog Our Finite World. 

This widely respected analyst of energy and concerns related to peak oil once again provides more analysis that inevitably leads her to a conclusion that is quite dramatic for its understatement:

...governments seem to be getting close to being “out of ammunition,” in trying to fight what is really diminishing returns of one of the major drivers of our economy. I don’t know exactly how things might play out, but experience with prior civilizations suggests that “collapse” might be a reasonable description of the outcome.

( In my opinion an even better exposition of her argument is in an article she wrote last month entitled "Two Views of our Current Economic and Energy Crisis".)

Her focus has been entirely on the economics of energy extraction while mostly avoiding issues related to fossils fuels and global warming. She has always been dismissive regarding nuclear energy because of its high costs and problems with spent fuel. (For arguments regarding the feasibility of nuclear energy I recommend this from a British author.)

Because I've never read any mention of "capitalism" in her numerous articles, I must assume that she is another subscriber to the capitalist myth which states that "there is no alternative". Her circumscribed thinking is another illustration of the power of indoctrination to limit an otherwise intelligent person's imagination.