Our Finite World

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/10/18/spike-in-energy-prices-suggests-that-sharp-changes-are-ahead/ An analysis of what is going terribly wrong in the world economy to cause these spikes, and a bit of a look at what might be ahead. The world economy requires stability. As long as energy supplies are abundant, stability is easy to achieve. But, as energy supplies get scarce, we add complexity to try to work around the adverse impacts of price spikes. These workarounds are not permanent fixes, however. Eventually, the economy becomes too brittle. It cannot respond to the temporary disruption in energy consumption caused by the economy's reaction to the pandemic. The situation is alarming. Analyses of the value of wind and solar greatly overvalue these resources because the economy really needs stability of energy supply. The economy now seems to be headed toward the early stages of collapse. This occurs because we seem to be reaching limits on oil, coal and natural gas almost simultaneously, and renewables are not of much value.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/08/30/the-afghanistan-fiasco-and-todays-high-level-of-conflict-reflect-an-energy-problem/ Even though it is not obvious, the United States is up against energy limits. It needed to pull back from Afghanistan to try to have enough energy to continue in its other roles, such as providing benefits for its growing army of retirees, and building infrastructure to mitigate the COVID-19 downturn. The way energy limits play out is not at all intuitive. Most people assume that we will run out of oil, leading to a spike in oil prices. We will then transition to renewables. As I see it, this understanding is completely wrong. Limited energy supply first leads to a need for simplification: Stepping back from Afghanistan would be one such type of simplification. It would save energy supplies and reduce the need for greater tax revenue or added debt.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/08/05/covid-19-vaccines-dont-really-work-as-hoped/ In early August, the CDC announced a surprising finding: “Delta infection resulted in similarly high SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated people.” Public officials had known from the early days of vaccine development that vaccinated people could catch COVID-19, but the assumption had been made that they were not going to be spreaders of COVID-19. It turns out that the delta variant is sufficiently different from the original Wuhan version of the virus that the vaccines work much less well.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/07/15/to-be-sustainable-green-energy-must-generate-adequate-taxable-revenue/ This is an article I wrote because a Biophysical Economics group that I am part of is looking at the question of whether EROEI calculations are sufficient to give good answers with respect to Green Energy. In this post, I try to explain in lay people terms that what really is needed is taxable income generated by Green Energy products. Right now, Green Energy products are heavily subsidized, making them look profitable. If an economy is truly to be sustainable for the long run, Green Energy cannot depend on subsidies, indirectly from fossil fuels. Instead, Green Energy needs to be able to generate huge amounts of "net energy" for use by the rest of the economy. It does this by producing high amounts of taxable income, which the governments can tax and distribute to other parts of the economy where it is needed. We are already having difficulty producing enough energy for the world's population. I am skeptical that Green Energy is up to the task it needs to perform, if it is expected to replace fossil fuels.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/06/18/how-energy-transition-models-go-wrong/ I have written many posts relating to the fact that we live in a finite world. At some point, our ability to extract resources becomes constrained. At the same time, population keeps increasing. The usual outcome when population is too high for resources is “overshoot and collapse.” But this is not a topic that the politicians or central bankers or oligarchs who attend the World Economic Forum dare to talk about. Instead, world leaders find a different problem, namely climate change, to emphasize above other problems. Conveniently, climate change seems to have some of the same solutions as “running out of fossil fuels.” So, a person might think that an energy transition designed to try to fix climate change would work equally well to try to fix running out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, this isn't really the way it works. In this post, I will lay out some of the issues involved.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/05/27/dont-expect-the-world-economy-to-resume-its-prior-growth-pattern-after-covid-19/ Most people seem to think that the world economy is going through a temporary disruption, caused by a novel coronavirus. As soon as COVID-19 goes away, they expect the economy will be back to normal. I think that this assessment is overly optimistic. The way I see the situation, the world economy was already having severe growth problems, caused indirectly by resource problems, even before COVID-19 hit.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/05/04/how-the-worlds-energy-problem-has-been-hidden/ The media tends to report stories that the powers that be want them to report. Often, these represent a favorable view of the future. The real story recently has turned quite "dark." There are already water shortages that are leading to food shortages. More energy of the right type could in theory fix the problem. When energy shortages such as this have occurred in the past, they have tended to lead to wars and pandemics. People aren't expecting this result, however. They are looking for high prices, so they tend to miss what really is happening. Media tend to miss the real story.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/04/11/we-cant-expect-covid-19-to-go-away-we-should-plan-accordingly/ Can the world achieve “herd immunity” with respect to COVID-19? Anthony Fauci has said that 80% of the population needs to be vaccinated in order to reach herd immunity. My view is that using vaccines is unlikely to achieve this result, something I discussed in my August 2020 post, We Need to Change Our COVID-19 Strategy. Now, the news arm of the prestigious journal Nature has published a similar view: Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible. In this post, I explain why, in my view, COVID-19 seems likely to become endemic, like the flu. The vaccines won't be enough to make it go away completely. I will also look at the issue of how we should respond to the almost certain cases of COVID-19 that we will experience in the future.

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/03/20/headed-for-a-collapsing-debt-bubble/