Peak oil - take 2
This entry was posted on 11/12/2007 1:21 AM and is filed under Tax Shifting,Global Peak Oil,OIL,Leadership,Action.
In September, I penned an entry Life After the Oil Crash - the website. Given soaring oil prices - surpassing $98 a barrel this week - let's spend some more time on this website.
It's going to happen. Maybe it already has -- global peak oil. From the website Life After the Oil Crash:
"'Is the modern banking system entirely dependent on ever-increasing amounts of cheap oil?'
Yes.
The global financial system is entirely dependent on a constantly increasing supply of oil and natural gas. The relationship between the supply of oil and natural gas and the workings of the global financial system is arguably the key issue to understanding and dealing with Peak Oil.....
Dr. Colin Campbell presents an understandable model of this complex (and often difficult to explain) relationship as follows:
It is becoming evident that the financial and investment community begins to accept the reality of Peak Oil, which ends the first half of the age of oil. They accept that banks created capital during this epoch by lending more than they had on deposit, being confident that tomorrow’s expansion, fueled by cheap oil-based energy, was adequate collateral for today’s debt. The decline of oil, the principal driver of economic growth, undermines the validity of that collateral which in turn erodes the valuation of most entities quoted on Stock Exchanges. The investment community however faces a dilemma. It desires to protect its own fortunes and those of its privileged clients while at the same time is reluctant to take action that might itself trigger the meltdown. It is a closely knit community so that it is hard for one to move without the others becoming aware of his actions.
The scene is set for the Second Great Depression, but the conservatism and outdated mindset of institutional investors, together with the momentum of the massive flows of institutional money they are required to place, may help to diminish the sense of panic that a vision of reality might impose. On the other hand, the very momentum of the flow may cause a greater deluge when the foundations of the dam finally crumble. It is a situation without precedent.
In October 2005, the normally conservative London Times acknowledged that the world's wealth may soon evaporate as we enter a technological and economic "Dark Age." In an article entitled "Waiting for the Lights to Go Out" Times columnist Bryan Appleyard reported:
Oil is running out; the climate is changing at a potentially catastrophic rate; wars over scarce resources are brewing; finally, most shocking of all, we don't seem to be having enough ideas about how to fix any of these things."
We fix "these things" by enacting a phased-in federal tax shift from income to non-renewable energy. Create the environment for our ingenuity and drive in the market to solve these problems.
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Go to (and bookmark) www.Life After the Oil Crash.net. Global Peak Oil - one more (huge) reason that we need to act now.
