SoT, the long run equilibrium price of oil is more like $40 a barrel than $100. Above $40, there are all sorts of competitors and technologies which become economic.
Look at the huge shift from SUVs for example. 2 tons of steel is not needed to move 70 kg of human. Insulation is as good to keep air warm as constantly heating it as fast as the heat escapes. Cyberspace can move information a lot easier than carrying a piece of paper can do.
Photovoltaics, cellulose, coal, methane, ElM's beloved ethanol, and other energy sources all want their day in the sun and at some oil price they become competitive for each application.
For years my job was to know about fuels and prices and advise BP on fuel technologies, research and development.
Oil simply can't go to $200 a barrel other than in a short squeeze type situation, war, or other supply disruption. The long run marginal cost of production of energy is something like $40 a barrel in 2008 dollars [or maybe 2007 dollars = all that stimulus "quantitative easing" has messed things up].
The universe is made of energy, as you can see by studying the sun for a while. The question is just a matter of what it costs to get that cosmos of umpty peta quadrillion tons of energy from galaxies and everywhere into a form we like.
It would be perfectly reasonable to relocate to the inside of a giant rotating sphere fueled by fusion reactions. Not actually launch whole humans - just DNA, or maybe just cyberspace, leaving wet chemistry back on Earth.
Humans are just chimps writ large, probably destined to end our share of the evolutionary process as carbon bearing creatures on the surface of the planet which produced us. Some of us sooner than others.
Mqurice |
