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Can we expect the economy to keep growing?
If we read the financial pages, economic growth seems to be viewed as the “normal” situation to which economies inevitably return. But is it really? If we look back over the past 50 years, or even over...
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Lower Oil Prices–Not a Good Sign!
Are lower oil prices good news? Not really, if it means the world is sinking into recession. We know from recent past experience and from common sense that higher oil prices are a drag on oil importing...
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Reaching financial limits–What kinds of solutions are available?
We live in a finite world. At this point, we seem to be reaching limits in several different areas: Cheap oil. Our economy runs on cheap oil, but there is a limit to the amount of cheap oil that can be...
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High-Priced Fuel Syndrome
Governments and economists around the world have not figured out that what the world economy is suffering from, to varying degrees, is “high-priced fuel syndrome“. High-priced fuel syndrome has a...
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Can an Economy Learn to Live with Increasingly High Oil Prices?
Prof. James Hamilton of University of California recently wrote a post called Thresholds in the economic effects of oil prices. In it, he concludes As U.S. retail gasoline prices once again near $4.00...
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Renewables Are Overrated, We Need Cheap Oil – Interview with Gail Tverberg
This article originally appeared at Oilprice.com. What does our world’s energy future look like? Does renewable energy feature as much in the energy production mix as many hope it will? Will natural...
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Financial Issues Affecting Energy Security
Last week, I gave a talk called Financial Issues Affecting Energy Security at the Advances in Energy Studies conference in Mumbai, India. The general topic of the conference was, “Energy Security and...
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IEA Oil Forecast Unrealistically High; Misses Diminishing Returns
The International Energy Agency (IEA) provides unrealistically high oil forecasts in its new 2012 World Energy Outlook (WEO). It claims, among other things, that the United States will become the...
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Why Malthus Got His Forecast Wrong
Most of us have heard that Thomas Malthus made a forecast in 1798 that the world would run short of food. He expected that this would happen because in a world with limited agricultural land, food...
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Our Investment Sinkhole Problem
We are used to expecting that more investment will yield more output, but in the real world, things don’t always work out that way. Figure 1. Comparison of 2005 to 2011 percent change in real GDP vs...
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How Oil Exporters Reach Financial Collapse
Recently, I explained how high oil prices can bring on financial collapse for oil importers. In this post, I’ll discuss the flip side of the situation: how oil exporters reach financial collapse....
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Low Oil Prices Lead to Economic Peak Oil
We have all heard the story about oil supply supposedly rising and falling for geological reasons. But what if the story is a little different from this–oil production rises and falls for economic...
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Reaching Oil Limits – New Paradigms are Needed
I have written in recent posts that oil limits are more complex than what many have imagined. They aren’t just a lack of a liquid fuel; they are inability to compete in a global economy that is based...
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Oil Limits and Climate Change
They say that every cloud has a silver lining. If future energy consumption (which is mostly fossil fuel) drops because of a financial collapse brought on by high oil prices and other limits, then, at...
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Two Views of our Current Economic and Energy Crisis
As the US heads toward debt default and continues with government shutdown, the underlying reason for the predicament is generally not clear to the American people or the world. The story that the...
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Sustainability: How Humans’ Economy Differs from Natures’
A few years ago, I had an ah-ha moment when it comes to what we as humans would need to do to live in a sustainable manner. It is very easy. All we have to do is leave our homes, take off all of our...
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What’s Ahead? Lower Oil Prices, Despite Higher Extraction Costs
Nearly everyone believes that oil prices will trend higher and higher, allowing increasing amounts of oil to be extracted. This belief is based on the observation that the cost of extraction is...
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The Connection Between Oil Prices, Debt Levels, and Interest Rates
If oil is “just another commodity,” then there shouldn’t be any connection between oil prices, debt levels, interest rates, and total rates of return. But there clearly is a connection. On one hand,...
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Converging Energy Crises – And How our Current Situation Differs from the Past
At the Age of Limits Conference, I gave a talk called Converging Crises (PDF), talking about the crises facing us as we reach energy limits. In this post, I discuss some highlights from a fairly long...
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Why Standard Economic Models Don’t Work–Our Economy is a Network
The story of energy and the economy seems to be an obvious common sense one: some sources of energy are becoming scarce or overly polluting, so we need to develop new ones. The new ones may be more...
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