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Tag Archives: oil
Energy Leveraging: An Explanation for China’s Success and the World’s Unemployment
If an employer wants to maximize profits, it will want to leverage its use of high-priced energy sources. From an employer’s point of view, there are basically three kinds of energy, from most to least expensive: Human energy Petroleum energy Everything … Continue reading
Posted in Energy policy, Financial Implications
Tagged China, employment, energy, fossil fuels, oil, oil prices, recession, unemployment
116 Comments
Why Natural Gas isn’t Likely to be the World’s Energy Savior
We keep hearing about the many benefits of natural gas–how burning it releases less CO2 than oil or coal, and how it burns with few impurities, so does not have the pollution problems of coal. We also hear about the … Continue reading
Posted in Alternatives to Oil
Tagged coal, fracking, natural gas, natural gas exports, oil
91 Comments
The Long-Term Tie Between Energy Supply, Population, and the Economy
The tie between energy supply, population, and the economy goes back to the hunter-gatherer period. Hunter-gatherers managed to multiply their population at least 4-fold, and perhaps by as much as 25-fold, by using energy techniques which allowed them to expand … Continue reading
Posted in Alternatives to Oil, Book draft, Food issues, Introductory Post
Tagged coal, deforestation, economy, electricity, energy supply, erosion, GDP, hunter-gatherer, Hydroelectric, oil, peat, petroleum, population, soil fertility, top soil
158 Comments
Reaching financial limits–What kinds of solutions are available?
We live in a finite world. At this point, we seem to be reaching limits in several different areas: Cheap oil. Our economy runs on cheap oil, but there is a limit to the amount of cheap oil that can … Continue reading
Can we expect the economy to keep growing?
If we read the financial pages, economic growth seems to be viewed as the “normal” situation to which economies inevitably return. But is it really? If we look back over the past 50 years, or even over the past 100 … Continue reading
Posted in Book draft, Financial Implications
Tagged collapse, economic growth, oil, oil price, recession
124 Comments
