{"id":52701,"date":"2020-04-22T18:50:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T23:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52701"},"modified":"2020-04-22T18:50:34","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T23:50:34","slug":"covid-19-and-oil-at-1-is-there-a-way-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52701","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 and oil at $1: Is there a way forward?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ourfiniteworld.com\/2020\/04\/21\/covid-19-and-oil-at-1-is-there-a-way-forward\/\">COVID-19 and oil at $1: Is there a way&nbsp;forward?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many people are concerned today with the low price of oil. Others are concerned about slowing or stopping COVID-19. Is there any way forward?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I gave a few hints regarding what is ahead in my last post,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/ourfiniteworld.com\/2020\/03\/31\/economies-wont-be-able-to-recover-after-shutdowns\/\">Economies won\u2019t be able to recover after&nbsp;shutdowns<\/a>. We live in a world with a self-organizing economy, made up of components such as businesses, customers, governments and interest rates. Our basic problem is a finite world problem. World population has outgrown its resource base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some sort of economy might work with the current resource base, but not the present economy. The COVID-19 crisis and the lockdowns used to try to contain the crisis push the economy farther along the route toward collapse. In this post, I suggest the possibility that some core parts of the world economy might temporarily be saved if they can be made to operate fairly independently of each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let\u2019s look at some parts of the problem:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>[1] The world economy works like a pump.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To use a hand water pump, a person forces a lever down, and the desired output (water) appears. Human energy is required to power this pump.&nbsp;Other versions of water pumps use electricity, or burn gasoline or diesel. However the pump operates,&nbsp;<strong>there needs to be some form of energy input, for the desired output, water, to be produced.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An economy follows a similar pattern, except that the list of inputs and outputs is longer. With an economy, we need the following inputs, including energy inputs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Human energy<\/li><li>Supplemental energy, such as burned biomass, animal power, electricity, and fossil fuel.<\/li><li>Other resources, including fertile land, fresh water and raw materials of various kinds.<\/li><li>Capital goods, built in previous cycles of the \u201cpump.\u201d These might include factories and machines to put into the factories.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>COVID-19 and oil at $1: Is there a way&nbsp;forward? Many people are concerned today with the low price of oil. Others are concerned about slowing or stopping COVID-19. Is there any way forward? I gave a few hints regarding what is ahead in my last post,&nbsp;Economies won\u2019t be able to recover after&nbsp;shutdowns. We live in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[1233,29428,592,1232,29381],"class_list":["post-52701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-gail-tverberg","tag-lockdowns","tag-oil-price","tag-our-finite-world","tag-shutdowns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52701"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52703,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52701\/revisions\/52703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}