{"id":63368,"date":"2022-08-24T07:41:17","date_gmt":"2022-08-24T12:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63368"},"modified":"2022-08-24T07:41:17","modified_gmt":"2022-08-24T12:41:17","slug":"why-no-politician-is-willing-to-tell-us-the-real-energy-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63368","title":{"rendered":"Why No Politician Is Willing to Tell Us the Real Energy Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why No Politician Is Willing to Tell Us the Real Energy Story<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

No politician wants to tell us the real story of fossil fuel depletion. The real story is that we are already running short of oil, coal and natural gas because the direct and indirect costs of extraction are reaching a point where the selling price of food and other basic necessities needs to be unacceptably high to make the overall economic system work. At the same time, wind and solar and other \u201cclean energy\u201d sources are nowhere nearly able to substitute for the quantity of fossil fuels being lost.<\/p>\n

This unfortunate energy story is essentially a physics problem. Energy per capita and, in fact, resources per capita, must stay high enough for an economy\u2019s growing population. When this does not happen, history shows that civilizations tend to collapse.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Figure 1. World fossil fuel energy consumption per capita, based on data of BP\u2019s\u00a02022 Statistical Review of World Energy<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Politicians cannot possibly admit that today\u2019s world economy is headed for collapse, in a way similar to that of prior civilizations. Instead, they need to provide the illusion that they are in charge. The self-organizing system somehow leads politicians to put forward reasons why the changes ahead might be desirable (to avert climate change), or at least temporary (because of sanctions against Russia).<\/p>\n

In this post, I will try to try to explain at least a few of the issues involved.<\/p>\n

[1] Citizens around the world can sense that something is very wrong. It looks like the economy may be headed for a serious recession in the near term.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Figure 2. Index of consumer sentiment and news heard of company changes as reported by the\u00a0University of Michigan Survey of Consumers<\/a>, based on preliminary indications for August 2022.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why No Politician Is Willing to Tell Us the Real Energy Story No politician wants to tell us the real story of fossil fuel depletion. The real story is that we are already running short of oil, coal and natural gas because the direct and indirect costs of extraction are reaching a point where the […]<\/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":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-liberty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63368","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=63368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63369,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63368\/revisions\/63369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}