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"He knew that the multinationals and state oil companies had netted most of the world's big petroleum fish 50 years ago and that the world's major oil fields, like the world's major fisheries, were all in a state of depletion. With the big, easy fish gone, industry was now chasing "junk crude" in the tar sands or the ugly, difficult and tough stuff at the bottom of the barrel. While sanity might renew ocean fishing, the depletion of cheap oil era was irreversible.
"What that means," he once said, "in the starkest possible terms, is that we are no longer going to be able to grow. It's like a human being who passes a certain age in life. Getting older does not mean the same thing as death. It means progressively diminishing capacity, a rapid decline, followed by a long tail.""
A shame that he's gone. Stephen Leeb is another good author on oil and it's coming shortage. Leeb is so convinced that we're about to pass a tipping point of no return that he recently wrote a book called Game Over. In this book he says that every day counts now as far as getting on with alternatives, which have some built in limitations as far as reaching fruition.
In the OP's article, Simmons gave the Chinese good advice. My advice to the Chinese would be to outlaw the private automobile, but they seem to be doing everything they can to build millions of them per year, and to lock up more of the dwindling oil reserves to fuel them. China has been busy chasing oil all over Africa these days, and have concluded major deals in Iraq, which is especially ironic given that it was 4000+ of our young men and women who died there to assure the west had access to oil.
Here in the USA need to get on with cars powered by rechargeable batteries and natural gas, plus lots of electrically powered mass transit. Smart people are moving to areas of their city which are served by light rail or subway systems. I've seen this in DC for decades and now in Denver.
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Wow, I cannot believe there aren't more posts on this thread!! What a great article, and thanks for posting it.
"Simmons, of course, recognized that petroleum was the industrial oxygen that built modern civilization over the last 100 years. No economy can grow its GDP without burning more oil.As a consequence he warned that the end of cheap oil would challenge every aspect of our economy as well as 100 years of lazy, oil-induced thinking. He also didn't believe that unconventional bottom-of-the-barrel replacements such as bitumen or shale gas could offset the decline."
For me, that is a key statement. I'm reading, "The Bridge at the Edge of the World", by James Speth. The book discusses how the planet's environment, and how we protect and manage it is linked to the economy.
It's made me wonder if about economic growth. How will we continue to grow our economy without calculating the true costs (all of the costs) of our energy needs for a global population that continues to explode?
This statement by Simmons reiterates a few of the things I've begun to ask:
"What that means," he once said, "in the starkest possible terms, is that we are no longer going to be able to grow. It's like a human being who passes a certain age in life. Getting older does not mean the same thing as death. It means progressively diminishing capacity, a rapid decline, followed by a long tail."
Simmons' thinking seemed to be light years ahead of the mainstream.....or at least what we read in mainstream media. What a loss.
Question is, are we going to rise to the challenge and continue to advance civilization and technology, or will we stick our heads in the sand until its too late?
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