Peak Oil
It’s tough to support the free market when you feel like you’re on the wrong side of it. After all I’m making the exact same money that I was making 8 years ago after switching careers 5 years ago and knowing more than ever; yet gas has doubled during that time, my property taxes have gone up by about half, and food and utilities have increased as well. But I can’t go to my client and demand more money. Why? Because they’ll replace me with a cheaper business analyst, most likely one on an H-1b.
But the market is functioning just as well as it always has. During that same 8 years plasma televisions have fallen by roughly 75% by my estimation (and I still don’t own one yet dangit!), and I paid less for the laptop I’m using while getting more power, storage and a wider display.
So oil is getting you down? Worried that it’s going to keep going up as we run out of it? Fabius Maximus takes a critical look at Peak Oil and writes:
...Oil prices rose from $1.80 in 1970 to $36.83 in 1980 (Arabian Light oil price, as posted at Ras Tanura). Reacting to that, global oil consumption peaked in 1979 at 66,048 million barrels/day, then dropped by 14% through 1983 — reaching the 1979 peak again only after 14 years, in 1993 (see the BP Statistical Review for details). During that period the global economy (GDP) increased at roughly 3%, slightly below the post-WWII average (using IMF data). A fourteen percent decline in consumption!At $120, oil prices are up 6x from the 1990’s average. Almost certainly that price shock has created substantial efforts to change energy use, whose results might have not yet appeared in the data. But they will appear, I suspect. Sooner than people expect.
Fabius Maximus:
Thanks for the link!
8 May 2008, 9:59 pmThe Razor » Blog Archive » What Can We Do to Lower Oil Consumption?:
[...] meet that demand? The answer depends on whether you believe in peak oil or not, and that question, discussed here, is beyond the scope of this article which focuses on the short (2 year) term. Demand could be [...]
15 July 2008, 6:27 pm