Message-ID: <008f01bd859c$e863f820$88745ecc@jay95> Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 06:15:52 -1000 From: Jay Hanson <mailto:j@QMAIL.COM> Subject: The End of Oil: Now it's Official To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Last November, Jean Laherrere and Colin Campbell presented three papers (against Adelman and Lynch from MIT) at the oil conference in Paris. The oil conference was organized by the International Energy Agency (IEA).Subsequently, the IEA prepared a paper for the G8 Energy Ministers' Meeting in Moscow 31 March 1998: WORLD ENERGY PROSPECTS TO 2020. [ http://www.iea.org/g8/world/oilsup.htm ]
The IEA followed Laherrere and Campbell's view and forecast a peak in conventional oil for 2010 at 78.9 Mb/d and decrease in 2020 at 72.2 Mb/d. [source: personal correspondence from Laherrere. See Laherrere and Campbell's Scientific American paper at: http://dieoff.org/page140.htm ]
According to Richard Duncan, this is a significant reversal in IEA position: "This is a real stand-down for them because until recently they were in the Julian Simon no-limits camp." [personal correspondence]
See Richard Duncan's energy paper at: http://dieoff.org/page133.htm
It is odd that policymakers are just now starting to realize the critical role energy plays in our world. It is energy -- not money -- that glues modern society together.
Joseph Tainter has studied about two dozen societies that have collapsed over the last 2,000 years. In COMPLEXITY, PROBLEM SOLVING, AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES, he tells us:
"Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be. If our efforts to understand and resolve such matters as global change involve increasing political, technological, economic, and scientific complexity, as it seems they will, then the availability of energy per capita will be a constraining factor. To increase complexity on the basis of static or declining energy supplies would require lowering the standard of living throughout the world." See: http://dieoff.org/page134.htm
And finally, for one of the best short papers I have read, see: ENERGY AND HUMAN EVOLUTION, by David Price at http://dieoff.org/page137.htm
Jay -- www.dieoff.org