{"id":58195,"date":"2021-06-08T10:43:58","date_gmt":"2021-06-08T15:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58195"},"modified":"2021-06-08T10:43:58","modified_gmt":"2021-06-08T15:43:58","slug":"202-the-shape-of-things-to-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58195","title":{"rendered":"#202. The shape of things to\u00a0come"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com\/2021\/06\/07\/202-the-shape-of-things-to-come\/?fbclid=IwAR3z_ByUHsEKF2OcVAifFLZccqZoTXUiQ1GTuHFhqBjwjM0ivNYj48akuro\">#202. The shape of things to\u00a0come<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>As, when and if the coronavirus pandemic recedes into the past, there\u2019s a widespread assumption that we\u2019ll see the welcome return of a \u2018normality\u2019 defined to include \u201cgrowth\u201d in the economy. The big change looking forward will, we\u2019re assured, be the replacement of climate-harming oil, gas and coal with renewable energy sources, primarily solar- and wind-power.<\/p>\n<p>This aside, almost everything else is going to be \u2018more of the same\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, this consensus narrative of the future is based on the big two fallacies of our age. One of these is that\u00a0<em>the economy is a financial system<\/em>, such that we\u2019re assured of growth in perpetuity by our control of the human artefact of money.<\/p>\n<p>The other is that there are\u00a0<em>no limits to the capabilities of technology<\/em>, potentialities often extrapolated to and beyond the constraints of physics.<\/p>\n<p>We cannot know quite how much of this is believed by governments, or whether they \u2018know, but don\u2019t say\u2019, that most of it is implausible. Businesses and the general public seem to have bought into this narrative.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Energy reality<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The facts of the situation, as we understand them here, are that\u00a0<strong>the supply and the ECoE-cost of energy determine material prosperity<\/strong>, and that\u00a0<strong>this equation has been turning against us over an extended period<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>ECoEs \u2013 the Energy Costs of Energy \u2013 have been rising relentlessly, passing (during the late 1990s and early 2000s) levels at which Western prosperity ceases to grow, and then starts to contract. The EM (emerging market) economies have now reached the ECoE thresholds at which their prosperity, too, turns downwards.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>#202. The shape of things to\u00a0come As, when and if the coronavirus pandemic recedes into the past, there\u2019s a widespread assumption that we\u2019ll see the welcome return of a \u2018normality\u2019 defined to include \u201cgrowth\u201d in the economy. The big change looking forward will, we\u2019re assured, be the replacement of climate-harming oil, gas and coal with [&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":[18462,29326,607,31315,31314],"class_list":["post-58195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-normal","tag-normalcy","tag-pandemic","tag-surplus-energy-economics","tag-tim-morgan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58195","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=58195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58196,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58195\/revisions\/58196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}