Kunstler part 1

James Howard Kunstler at the Prairie Festival 2007 in Salina, Kansas, USA for The Land Institute. www.landinstitute.org
James Howard Kunstler is the author of fourteen books including The Long Emergency, The Geography of Nowhere, and The City in Mind. His work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and Rolling Stone. His next book is a novel set in the American post-oil future: World Made By Hand will be published March 2008.

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[EarthaKit2]

Lovely! "Failure of the American Public" - so now the utter corruption of the Elite, is being blamed on us, "peasants!" When our protests and emails and phone calls to our leaders were ignored before and brushed aside.

We're good for something after all! Ethics and honesty and morality and intergrity are NLY for the American Public!

When things go wrong, like the case of S&L and Enron, pass it on to the American Public.

[thereisnotruth]

Well, the public as a whole is always ultimately responsible for the systematic and predicable failures, successes, and atrocities of their society/government.

I would argue the true solution lays with this realization and embracing anarchist principles of self determination, cooperation, and direct action in order to sculpt a humane society.

[tgold1968]

@hitssquad Fission and shale are in their nascent stages. Our current economy did not develop around these as energy inputs. Presumably, because they are too costly to bring to market, or to refine into usable product. For example, I've heard it stated that, by volume, shale oil has about the same energy density as a potato. At present, the EROEI for is not enough to justify putting it to use. This is why it continues to sit idle.

[hitssquad]

@tgold ""consumption-growth" ... Do you mean security-growth?"

No. Consumption inherently reduces security. If you have food in your house, and you then consume some of it, you are left with less food security. Security is what people trade when they engage in economic transactions.

[tgold1968]

@hitssquad "security from want and need". Not sure I grasp this. Do you mean to say security from want and need is a driver of economic activity? It is possible to have security from want and need under conditions of economic stasis; the link to growth is not absolute.

"consumption-growth" ... Do you mean security-growth?

"People make money"... the original comment was about investment. Income and/or value from cost (or resource) savings are about the consumption.

[tgold1968]

@hitssquad It'd be as finite as the uranium.

[tgold1968]

@hitssquad To get back to your original question: yes, it would... because (as you seem to be suggesting) liquid fuels have "value added" in that they are liquid and portable, and pack tremendous energy density by volume.

Sure, I suppose EROEI could be negative, but it'd seem like an awful waste of perfectly good uranium energy (which, itself, requires energy to extract and process) for a product that is less energy-rich.

But you have a point...energy in and of itself has little value.

[tgold1968]

@hitssquad "sustainable development" was only coined at Brundltand. Subsequent work was needed to take it from concept to something definable in terms of people, profits, and planet, and usable to all kinds of organizations.

Conceptually and simply, "the capacity to endure" is a popular description of sustainability. But again... that is just the concept. It's sorta like saying the USA is the "land of the free and home of the brave" while ignoring the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

[hitssquad]

@tgold

"It was increasing supplies of cheap and abundant oil that created the developed economies of the world (the status quo)."

How could that be relevant today, now that we have 32.4 billion years of fission fuel, and the ability to cheaply produce oil from 2.1 quadrillion barrels (70,000 years' worth) of shale oil?

google. com/search?q=duncan+swanson+2.­1+quadrillion+oil

[hitssquad]

@tgold "none [...] have the same [eroei] as the "easy stuff"."

What makes you think eroei would need to be above even zero in order for a hydrocarbon resource to be nearly as valuable as today? It isn't the energy that's valuable. We know that because we currently pay less than one cent for the uranium equivalent of the energy in a barrel of oil.

uxc. com/review/uxc_Prices. aspx

[hitssquad]

@tgold "elaborate"

Security from want and need. Security has been growing for 2 million years, and at 2%/y since 1820.

"Financial arbitrage is one example [of investment with a positive ROI without consumption].

No, it isn't, because there might be consumption-growth underlying it.

"increased consumption [...] is rudimentary to securities and derivatives valuation"

No, it isn't. The opposite is true. People make money by enabling others to reduce their net consumptions of resources.

[tgold1968]

@hitssquad I should clarify my previous comment by stating that it is not so much the finite nature of the resource, but the difficulty of its extraction. "peak oil" as it is bandied about is really about "peak cheap oil". The point being: none of the alternate means of getting oil have the same return on energy input as the "easy stuff". It was increasing supplies of cheap and abundant oil that created the developed economies of the world (the status quo).