Date: Tue Jun 27 2006 13:55
trotsky (Bizarro@Kuenstler) ID#248269:
Copyright © 2002 trotsky/Kitco Inc. All rights reserved
""Nobody is talking about the much more likely prospect that we'll have to reduce motoring drastically, and make other arrangements for virtually every aspect of daily life, from how we get food, to how we do business, to how we inhabit the landscape."
oh please...Kuenstler's apocalyptic whining is really getting old. nobody's talking about that because it's not worth talking about. if changes need to be made, the market will inform us of that by raising the price of oil sufficiently. as long as the market doesn't do that, we have no reliable signal to induce change, iow, it would be a wasted effort. besides, contrary to the interventionists ( and make no mistake, ALL the peak oil doomster prophets are urging and pining for massive state interventionism ) i would reserve judgment on whether running out of oil means the end of modern civilization. if it does, there's nothing that can be done about it anyway. otoh, if the market can find a solution, it WILL be found. this is like the whale oil crisis of the 1830s - 1850's ( the price of whale oil, then the major lamp fuel , rose by 540% during the period ) . it was solved by the invention of kerosene in 1856. by 1896 the price of whale oil had fallen 35% BELOW its 1831 low ( the beginning of the crisis ) .
needless to say, this major 19th century energy crisis ( note that in the 1860's the biggest worry was 'peak coal' ) was solved without a single attempt by government to intervene in it.
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