If you’re not familiar with the Peak Oil models that are predicting a declining supply of energy for Western economies, there’s a fantastic post over on The Oil Drum that not only explains the basics, but goes a step further than most presentations I’ve seen. In the long presentation (which is adapted from a series of powerpoint slides) the author not only show that Peak Oil is still an issue today despite declining crude prices, but is going to be exacerbated by the ongoing unwinding of the credit markets.
“Nearly all of the economic analyses we see today have as their basic premise a view that the current financial crisis is a temporary aberration. We will have a V or U shaped recovery, especially if enough stimulus is applied, and the economy will soon be back to Business as Usual.
I believe this assumption is basically incorrect. The current financial crisis is a direct result of peak oil. There may be oscillations in the economic situation, but generally, we can’t expect things to get much better. In fact, there is a very distinct possibility that things may get very much worse in the next few years.”
Read the full presentation here.
It’s not good news.
But it’s probably better for us in the church to start preparing to respond to the crisis than it is for us to try to find voices that will contradict the predictions and thus ignore the issues. So far pretty much everything the doomsayer models have been predicting over the past few years is coming true…
