energy to burn

So there's more bad news.

Someone who's fairly intelligent and well-read told me this past weekend (when I was mentioning to him Randy L's comments in my previous post here regarding peak oil, etc) that there really is no energy shortage; that what we have is an idea shortage. There's enough energy to go around. We just need to come up with economical ways to harness it. I suppose some will say there are none.

To that Randy L responds with:
That would seem to be the real problem. I'm no expert that's for sure, but from the studies I've been reading, the problem we're facing is a transition from an energy source that has the highest ERoEI (Energy Returned on EnergyInvested) quotient than any other substance discovered yet.

And the problem is two-fold: 1) None of the options (except hydrogen, but we are nowhere near being able to harness its potential, see next point) can come close to matching oil's ERoEI. In fact as oil becomes more difficult and expensive to find and extract, even its ERoEI will cancel itself out, so that some oil will necessarily be left in the ground. And 2) Retrofitting our industrial economy and society to run on other forms of energy will take several decades, as well as a cohesive and concerted effort on the part of EVERYBODY in order to pull it off in the short period of time we have before oil becomes prohibitively expensive and scarce. And there is the crunch. That's what some folks are trying to say.

Oil doesn't need to run out before the demand for it drives its cost into the stratosphere. And the technology and infrastructure we need to make a smooth transition to these other, more renewable, sources is simply not in place. And regardless, these latter sources will necessitate consuming less energy because they can only produce so much.

Do you hear any of the current candidates for the presidential office even hinting at any of this? It seems that only a World War can usually convince ordinary businesses and citizens to voluntarily cut back and make the sacrifices necessary for such a transition. Maybe that's what we're tryingto do in the Middle East. Cause once China wakes up to peak oil and realizes its dreams of joining the industrial utopia party are going to be severely curtailed, who knows what might go down?

In any case, our economic model for the last hundred and fifty years has been one of infinite growth and wealth on a finite planet, and the sheer number of human beings that this industrial oil bubble has allowed to exist will not be possible to sustain once we head down the other side of that bell curve. And that is a sobering thought.

As this whole thing unfolds, our lives will become more intensely and profoundly local.