World Economy & Peak Oil.
December 8th, 2010 According to various sources I have seen on line we have either reached peak oil and are now on the down slope or we will be there shortly, somewhere between 2006 and 2020. This obsession with the private automobile will have to come to an end sooner than later. One hundred years ago only the wealthy few had automobiles. Most people took the trolly, the train or walked. Country folks rode horses or used a horse drawn buggy. Soon enough the automobile will be the domain of government services and the rich again, the rest of us will be priced out of driving due to the increased cost of fuel, but that may not be for another century.
Oil which reached $90 a barrel recently is set to return to the $100 a barrel range as production in China, India, Brazil and Germany leads the world in the economic recovery. The rest of Europe and the USA are still behind and when their demand kicks in oil prices will soon enough be back in the $140 a barrel range, perhaps by mid decade. Specialists claim the world economy won¡¯t stand for $100 a barrel oil. But unless major new sources are developed, the laws of supply and demand will push prices up as capacity limits are reached.
The excess capacity in the world economic system has led to a major surplus of labor especially in the developed world as growth is going on in countries with lower labor costs putting downward pressure on the wages of people in the more highly industrialized countries.
Will the world system be able to provide full employment soon? Predictions are not for another 4 or 5 years and that is with the norm of 4-5% unemployment. Chances are that there will be endemic underemployment in the highly industrialized countries, while the low wage industrializing countries play catch up. The question is how long before the bottom falls out in the fossil fuel supply? That will upset every economic planners game. Switching to nuclear is expensive and time consuming. The waste is still a problem that even the French have still to solve. Coal may provide for the needs of the world for a century or so, if we can find a means of cleaning it up sufficiently.
Ultimately renewable energy, conservation and reduction of usage, such as the end of the private automobile as a means of basic transportation in urban areas must be implemented. That means the transportation infrastructure must be improved. A return to the days of the train and the trolly certainly would be a step in the right direction. Forward into the past.
From Terraviva
30 Million Lost Jobs Drag Down Global Economic Recovery
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 7, 2010 (IPS) - The global economic recovery is being stymied by a hefty rise in unemployment in industrial economies, including the United States, Japan and Western Europe, according a new U.N. report released here.
The lack of remunerative employment growth - and the loss of at least 30 million jobs between 2007 and 2009 - ¡°is probably the weakest link in the recovery¡±, it says.
The study, titled ¡®World Economic Situation and Prospects 2011¡ä (WESP) released by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), says only a few developed economies, such as Australia and Germany, have seen a discernable improvement in labour markets.
Rob Vos, director of DESA¡¯s Development Policy and Analysis Division, told IPS that unemployment rates in developed countries did not come down in 2010, and in some cases, such as the United States and Japan, actually increased.
¡°We expect unemployment rates in developed economies to remain high during 2011 and 2012, at best only slightly declining from 2010 levels in the baseline scenario,¡± he added.
The U.S. Labour Department said last week the outlook for the labour market looks ¡°bleak¡±.
In the United States, over 15 million people are out of work - and among them about 6.3 million have been jobless for six months or longer.
In its report released last week, DESA points out the longer term employment consequences of the present financial crisis are already becoming visible. ¡°Workers have been without a job for more time, and in some countries, youth unemployment has reached alarming heights,¡± it says.
The global economy will need to create at least another 22 million new jobs in order to return to the pre-crisis level of global employment, according to the study.
Dean Baker, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, told IPS the United States has to create at least 90,000-100,000 jobs a month just to keep the unemployment rate from rising.
It is almost certainly not growing at this rate at present, he said.
In 2011, however, the stimulus will be substantially weakened. In addition, state and local governments are making substantial cutbacks because of serious deficits. And housing prices are beginning to fall again, he pointed out.
¡°All of these factors will be a drag on growth. So, I expect the unemployment rate to rise somewhat in the year ahead,¡± Baker predicted.
Still, says Vos, in many developing countries unemployment rates have come down more quickly as a result of a much stronger economic recovery and employment is back up to pre- crisis levels. For example, many jobs lost in manufacturing and construction have since been recovered.
¡°The world needs to recover at least another 22 million of the jobs that were lost during the crisis, but at the present speed of job creation (especially with the sluggishness of output growth in developed economies) this may take another four or five years,¡± he cautioned.
http://ipsnews.net/newsTVE.asp?idnews=53798
This is from the Falls Church News Press
The Peak Oil Crisis: The Future of Government
By Tom Whipple
Wednesday, December 08 2010 01:50:22 PM
In case you missed it, a couple of weeks back the International Energy Agency in Paris got around to disclosing that the all-time peak of global conventional oil production occurred back in 2006. Despite that fact that this declaration was tantamount to announcing the end of the 250-year-old industrial age, few in the mainstream media noted the event and it was left to obscure corners of cyber space to ponder the meaning of it all.
It is also worth noting that oil is back in the vicinity of $90 a barrel and even Wall Street economists, who are paid to be eternally optimistic, are starting to talk about oil going for$110-120 a barrel in the next year or so.
As we all know by now, a new crowd has descended on Washington vowing to make everything right again by cutting taxes, reducing the size and the role of some parts of the government. Above all the folks are committed to getting government regulation off our backs so that free enterprise, the entrepreneurial spirit, merchant capitalism, or what have you can flourish as it did in the past.
What all those calling for reduced government fail to grasp, however, is that 200 years of cheap abundant fossil fuel energy has transformed this country into something completely different. Take food as an example, 200 years ago, some 90+ percent of us were involved in its raising or otherwise procuring food ¡ª or we would simply not eat. Now, thanks to cheap fossil fuels, less than 3 percent of us are engaged in agricultural endeavors and I suspect only a fraction of our ¡°farmers¡± still have all the requisite skills to feed themselves and their families in the style to which they have become accustomed. Take away the diesel for the tractors and farming is going to become mighty different. Has anyone yoked an ox lately?
We are trapped in a very complex civilization that is rapidly losing the sources of energy and numerous other raw materials that built and maintained it.
In short, 200 years of abundant energy have allowed us to build an extremely complex civilization based on dozens of interrelated systems without which we can no longer live - at least not in the style to which we have become accustomed. Food production and distribution, water, sewage, solid waste removal, communications, healthcare, transportation, public safety, education ¡ª the list of systems vital-to-life and general wellbeing goes on and on.
If current trends continue, somewhere in the next five years a critical mass of us will realize that new foundations for civilization, and new ways of life must be found and implemented if we are going to survive with a modicum of comfort, economic, and political stability. Until then there will be many false prophets calling for a return to a civilization which is no longer possible.
http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/7980-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-future-of-government.html
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