I am perplexed; I really cannot understand how the world’s economists and commentators on the present precarious global financial situation have not come to the conclusion that must be obvious to all persons who have followed peak oil.
snip
The debt information is pretty suggestive of what is going on, and that is, the reason the world has been able to keep increasing GDP since 2005 is because it has been borrowing from the future to fund the addiction to economic growth. But this situation cannot continue without serious problems in terms of repayment. And we have imminent peak oil, with the consensus dawning that soon after 2011 oil supply is highly likely to start declining with decline rates anywhere between 2% and 8% per annum.
The 64 trillion dollar question is what will happen to world GDP? Robert Hirsh in his 2008 Energy Policy paper has suggested that GDP will decline at around the same rate as oil supply, so if oil supply declines at 4% per annum then world GDP will also decline at 4% per annum. If the current ratio is anything to go on, then 4% decline in oil may produce an 8% decline in GDP, but the situation is not likely to be symmetric or for that matter linear. With a large debt hanging around it is also likely that the world monetary system is at risk of imploding (see Gail Tverberg’s recent posts on debt repayments in a situation of decreasing wealth. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6439).
I would think that the people that control the money, might have a little information on the oil situation. I know intelligence think tanks have for decades. When we have the biggest bubble in the history of the world pop precisely at the moment world oil production peaks my little tin foil antenna charges up. A collapse of the world banking system acts pretty well as forced conservation plan in the face of oil shortages.
I wonder what our masters have planned next for us
