Peak Oil & Economic Crisis - A Century of Challenges - Nicole Foss aka Stoneleigh - Q and A

http://localfuture.org Nicole M. Foss is co-editor of The Automatic Earth, where she writes under the name Stoneleigh. She and her writing partner have been chronicling and interpreting the on-going credit crunch as the most pressing aspect of our current multi-faceted predicament. The site integrates finance, energy, environment, psychology, population and real politik in order to explain why we find ourselves in a state of crisis and what we can do about it. Prior to the establishment of TAE, she was editor of The Oil Drum Canada, where she wrote on peak oil and finance.

Most recently, Foss ran the Agri-Energy Producers' Association of Ontario, where she focused on farm-based biogas projects and grid connections for renewable energy. While living in the UK she was a Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, where she specialized in nuclear safety in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, and conducted research into electricity policy at the EU level.

Her academic qualifications include a BSc in biology from Carleton University in Canada (where she focused primarily on neuroscience and psychology), a post-graduate diploma in air and water pollution control, an LLM in international law in development from the University of Warwick in the UK. She was granted the University Medal for the top science graduate in 1988 and the law school prize for the top law school graduate in 1997.

Foss believes that resource limits (peak oil) and the collapse of global Ponzi finance are a "perfect storm" of converging phenomena that threaten to trigger wealth destruction, social discontent, and global conflict. The consequences for unprepared individuals and families could be dire.

In her presentation, Foss discusses the many converging factors that are contributing to the predicament we face today, and how individuals can build a "lifeboat" to cope with the difficult years ahead. She explains how our current financial system is an unsustainable credit bubble grounded in "Ponzi dynamics," or the logic of the pyramid scheme. She warns that most people are woefully unprepared to face the consequences of the devastating deflation that is now unfolding.

What makes this crisis different from past financial calamities?

Foss argues that this crisis has developed in the context of the fossil fuel age, an age which will prove to be a relatively brief period of human history. She says that we have already seen oil reach a global production peak, and other fossil fuels are not far behind; and while there is still plenty of fossil fuel in the ground, production will fall, meaning that there will be less and less energy available to power the economy at prices afford to pay.

She continues that societies have gone through boom and bust cycles before, examples include: the Tulip Mania, the South Sea Bubble and the "Real" Great Depression of the 1870s; but most people in the Western world today will face this crisis without the knowledge or means to provide the basics of their own survival. Our industrial system has nearly destroyed the individual capacity for self-reliance.

Foss argues that individuals and communities that take steps now to prepare stand a much better chance to thrive in a changing world.

This is the full question and answer session following a keynote talk delivered to the 2010 International Conference on Sustainability: Energy, Economy, and Environment organized by Local Future nonprofit and directed by Aaron Wissner.

To view the Ms. Foss's full 80 minute talk "A Century of Challenges", visit:

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• peak
• oil
• peakoil
• peak oil
• economic
• collapse
• crisis
• finance
• Ponzi
• market
• bubble
• local
• future
• energy
• localfuture
• local future
• sustainability
• conference
• aaron
• wissner
• analysis
• economy

[drkevincampbell]

Great info as usual from the smartest woman on the planet.

[grahamhg]

@TheProphetNabob Yaaaaaaawwwwwn. Wait for oil production decline to set in, we're still coasting on flat production. Obviously she's always going to be off by a year or two with predictions.

Of course you can carry on with the denial if you want.

[mphello]

I really like her fractal model of the economy. I think she is 80% right (certainly, on peak oil, nuclear power, transitioning out of oil), but that doesn't mean she proves any of her predictions regarding the intricacies of the economy. She's just hypothesizing at that point, because money flow is determined by non-deterministic humans, whereas global warming, decay of nuclear power plants, etc are deterministic.

[Photog60]

Ms Foss is a brilliant person. The financial collapse came very close in 2007 and yet very little has changed. The Republicans want less regulation and want to eliminate or reduce the IRS, energy dept, education grants, etc. The real reductions are in Medicade (no funding) and Military with emphisis on Military. SS is self funded and needs some long term adjustment. Medicare too.

When Nicole is right is within a 1 - 4 year time frame based on the oil depletion curve. Hope I'm wrong.

[TheProphetNabob]

There's a small problem with all this adulation of Foss:

She is conspicuously, emphatically wrong.

Where's the stock market crash that was supposed to occur in Fall '10 at 10,000 points?

Where's the "deflationary depression" she's been touting for years?

Where's her buddy ilargi's "oil price crash"?

Market: up 96% from 09 low.

Oil over $100.

Initial unemployment claims DOWN.

GDP: rising.

Keep listening to those cranks, folks!

[strasheep]

this woman is brilliant.

[andersottesen]

?

Sound money works. Even with 1 ounce of gold per 1 dollar, you end up with coins such as 1/10 of a cent, and a 1/100 of a cent. Thus you would have enough money to make trades.

Increasing population: Gold is mined and stored. It is not used. So each year the gold supply grows, and thus the money supply also grows. If the economy grows more than the gold supply, the larger population would still be able to afford the same stuff, as production is increased, and prices and wages would decrease.