The End of growth-Richard Heinberg

Comment by Michael Grove on April 2, 2011 at 8:57

Richard Heinberg interviewed in Totnes:

“I think 2011 is going to be an interesting year… in the Chinese sense…” Part One

Comment by Michael Grove on April 5, 2011 at 14:53

An EXCITING YEAR - indeed !

Comment by Michael Grove on October 8, 2012 at 23:18

Here’s the situation in schematic. As economies in America and Europe stagnate due to high oil prices and too much debt, China’s exports to those countries dry up. Which means China needs less iron ore and coal from Australia.

No one is immune; the world is a system. And the system is undergoing a historic “correction.” Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid gave a bracing summary when he suggested the western financial world might be “totally unsustainable.”

If policy makers continue assuming that the ongoing global reset is merely another turning of the business cycle, then we lose whatever opportunity still remains to prevent financial crisis from becoming social crisis.

Unfortunately the idea that growth has limits is still a minority view. After all, in the “real” worlds of politics and economics, growth is essential to creating more jobs and increasing returns on investments. Questioning growth is like arguing against petrol at a Formula One race.

                                                                                                Richard Heinberg

 

Comment by Michael Grove on January 11, 2014 at 21:54

There is no formal blackout, but there is indeed an informal one. Peak oil is one of the defining

issues of our time, yet it is treated as if it were either an esoteric controversy among petroleum

engineers, or a conspiracy theory. This much is axiomatic: fossil fuels are finite resources, and 

we are extracting them using the “best-first” principle. We have bet our future on the continued

availability of cheap oil, gas, and coal, but that is quite obviously a very bad bet. So where are

the in-depth television, radio, and newspaper discussions of this? Very few programs and

articles appear. I think that’s partly because commercial media outlets depend on the fossil

fuel industry for advertising, and partly because the peak oil message is threatening to

people’s sense of social equilibrium—it makes them start to question the basic premises

of consumerism, among other things. 

Add a Comment