Submitted on September 29th, 2008 by Hmm (not verified)
Yes, the principle is good, and we definitely need to move that way. But fundamentally, we need to cut our usage of energy across the board, and probably accept a lower standard of living in many ways. We have been living on someone else's savings for the last hundred years or so, and soon we will have to live on what we can produce.
One way to think about it is the Energy Return on Energy Investment - all the new methods take more input energy than oil, but this is at a time when demand is increasing and oil production is not keeping pace. We don't have spare energy for "investing" in producing more energy. We all have to cut our usage to make this work. Oh, and we need to stop producing so many greenhouse gases.
Like others, I think that the speaker is trying to hit the headlines, but essentially he is on the same side - usage of energy from oil has to go down. He actually seems more pessimistic than Peak Oilers in some sense - he thinks that Climate Change will cause the world to fall apart before dwindling oil supplies have a significant impact.
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But the point is that they are less efficient than oil...
Submitted on September 29th, 2008 by Hmm (not verified)Yes, the principle is good, and we definitely need to move that way. But fundamentally, we need to cut our usage of energy across the board, and probably accept a lower standard of living in many ways. We have been living on someone else's savings for the last hundred years or so, and soon we will have to live on what we can produce.
One way to think about it is the Energy Return on Energy Investment - all the new methods take more input energy than oil, but this is at a time when demand is increasing and oil production is not keeping pace. We don't have spare energy for "investing" in producing more energy. We all have to cut our usage to make this work. Oh, and we need to stop producing so many greenhouse gases.
Like others, I think that the speaker is trying to hit the headlines, but essentially he is on the same side - usage of energy from oil has to go down. He actually seems more pessimistic than Peak Oilers in some sense - he thinks that Climate Change will cause the world to fall apart before dwindling oil supplies have a significant impact.