After Peak People and Peak Oil, there will still be as much oil as anyone wants to buy. They won't need much as what they do will require very little. So the oil cost per person will go down even as oil prices rise. Nobody buys oil for fun. They drive cars for fun, but cars need less and less oil as time goes by and technology develops. Soon they won't be allowed to drive cars other than in special secure environments away from other people and roads.
Deliveries are increasingly made by courier van rather than by driving to a mall. That will get cheaper as couriers become more efficient and their deliveries are every 50 metres instead of here and there, while stuck in traffic jams. Traffic jams will go away too. Peak Roads is pretty well now. Roads will start shrinking as vehicles become more efficient and so do roads.
The number of lanes on motorways for example will reduce, being converted to bicycle, recreational or some other function such as growing crops or landing light aircraft [single passenger autopilot vehicles].
Gold is made out of oil so they are pretty much equivalent [near enough for government work].
There won't be a shortage of gold either. Gold can be made from mercury or lead or even iron though that's a bit more difficult. Knock a proton out of mercury or 3 out of lead, and hey presto, gold. If you overshoot and knock 2 out of mercury or 4 out of lead, you get platinum, which is no bad thing so be confident. With iron, just glue 3 together and top up with a proton and bingo, more platinum. Make a mistake by adding two protons and no worries, you'll get more gold.
There is no shortage of iron, lead, mercury, or hydrogen to act as feedstocks.
The process can be part of a power station with the excess heat used to drive steam turbines for electricity with waste heat used for lower temperature heating.
The trick is to add the protons together, or strip them away, by getting their wave functions perfectly timed so they just pop out with a bit of extra energy added, or slip in, depending on what's wanted. You can cheat by using anti-matter protons to neutralize one, generating bonus heat. It's a probabilistic business and works a bit like cold fusion [invented by Stanley Pons and Marty Fleischmann though cold fusion never amounted to much because they didn't get their technique right - they just bunged hydrogens together and hoped for the best].
Mqurice |
