What is precious?

Is gold precious?  How about the feeling of warmth or the satisfaction of knowing that a family is safe and well fed?  

When faced with the stress of basic needs of survival, sustenance and emotional happiness what do you value as precious?

I've written in this blog that you can print all the money you want, but you can't print oil.  The take away is that energy is so fundamental to human health, happiness and security that a hunk of gold has very little intrinsic value as compared to our environmental attributes.  

We should take a step back and contemplate what in our lives have real value, and to understand that potential value and tangible (real) value are elastic concepts that are predicated on the stability of our society.  In the face of energy shortfalls, declines and unstable availability we should contemplate the sustainable nature of such a system.  What makes sense to me is a rapid transition towards localized, diverse and ecologically sound sustainable strategies.  Long commutes to work don't make a lot of sense, millions of people living in densely populated areas, not much sense,  investing in hydrogen infrastructures - make sense.  Peace and tolerance makes sense... a three day work week makes sense too.  But let us not forget that people are precious too. 

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An oldie but none the less, an uncanny theory

 If Duncan knew about a futuristic decade long boost in oil production brought on by unconventional fracture and directional drilling he'd have predicted a longer window.  Kind of like right where we are now... most data available suggests we are in a global decline.  What happens next is going to be very interesting.

Sadly Richard passed away in 2006 so we can't blame him for missing that anomalous blip.    That blip however, clearly demonstrated that very low EROIs are now the new normal.  Another bell weather indicator if you pay attention to such things.

I wonder if the entrance to the lobby at the GM Corporate R&D Center still has the life sized portrait of Alfred Sloan in the lobby - and if it still says "Inventor of Planned Obsolescence"?  Gonna have to change that way of thinking!

Olduvai Theory

The road to Olduvai Gorge...

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