izentrop wrote:Excellent summary of the situation ... on the other hand I have trouble with the proposed solution ...
Quite disagree completely with the analysis provided by Patrick Permavillage ... And even less with his conclusion (very simplistic it is true) ...
- the author bases his whole demonstration on an energy shortage (identified with an oil shortage, in a somewhat reductive way it seems to me) which would inevitably lead to a collapse. I believe that he completely confuses the historical phase of "all oil" (all oil, moreover, quite relative) that we have just experienced with a fundamental need of humanity, when this is only one form.
- Remember that the availability of energy today is almost unlimited, and overabundant, if we do not limit ourselves to oil and its peak; coal is today the first fossil fuel used, gas has reserves estimated to be larger than those of oil, renewable energies are infinite on a human scale, nuclear energy leaves millennia of reserves for this which is of the fission (even by multiplying its consumption by 20 or 30), the fusion giving access to an almost infinite duration.
- this story of "peak oïl", hackneyed at leisure by the collapseists, is certainly mathematically unstoppable; but this reasoning is applied without caution to a human world a little more complex and whose initial data are far from being as rigorous as mathematical reasoning: here, no one knows the exact reserves, nor the fluctuations in consumption, and all the possibilities of energy substitutions are forgotten; in such a vague, informal setting, it is imprudent to plan a peak oïl for such and such a date, peak oïl which is moreover likely to take on the appearance of plateaus, or roller coaster, as we can see to the experience. The only thing that can be said is that the oil will eventually dry up, the land being of limited size. I much prefer the concept of criticality developed by the CNRS with regard to various mineral resources, which are also endangered ...
- in any case, if there is a shortage, it will concern, it seems to me, first of all a number of metals and / or more or less rare lands, in critical situation, as well as various essential ores the survival of humanity (phosphates for example), which is at least as urgent to be concerned, rather than that of energy ...
- if it is urgent to leave the carbon energies, it is not because of a hypothetical energy shortage, but because the impact of these carbon energies on the climate is such that it is criminal to 'expect; if we continue to burn oil, methane and coal until it is exhausted, the state of the climate and humanity will be such as energy or not, a scarcity will have no importance.
As for the final propositions (life in small autarchic communities of around 150 individuals), they strike me as so false and fanciful (but they don't make me laugh, since some humans have managed to imagine that) that I don't want to argue. But they proceed from a fundamental error on humanity (even if it functions according to the "r" mode, unless it is K) and on interhuman relations ... Our village, today, is the planet, and we will not go back, even if we pretend to go back ... Which obviously does not solve any problem ...