[lbo-talk] Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico, and Politics Get the Blame

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 3/12/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 12, 2007, at 3:22 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > On 3/12/07, Julio Huato <juliohuato at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> The future is not a replica of the past.
> >
> > Right.  But the question is, will global capitalism stay in business?
> > If the answer is yes, it is safe to bet that oil consumption at the
> > global level will continue to rise into the foreseeable future: "In
> > the IEO2006 reference case, world oil demand grows from 80 million
> > barrels per day in 2003 to 98 million barrels per day in 2015 and 118
> > million barrels per day in 2030. Demand increases strongly despite
> > world oil prices that are 35 percent higher in 2025 than in last
> > year's outlook. Much of the growth in oil consumption is projected for
> > the nations of non-OECD Asia, where strong economic growth is
> > expected. Non-OECD Asia (including China and India) accounts for 43
> > percent of the total increase in world oil use over the projection
> > period" ("International Energy Outlook 2006,"
> > <http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/oil.html>).
>
> "By 'uncertain' knowledge, let me explain, I do not mean merely to
> distinguish what is known for certain from what is only probable. The
> game of roulette is not subject, in this sense, to uncertainty; nor
> is the prospect of a victory bond being drawn.... Even the weather is
> only moderately uncertain. The sense in which I am using the term is
> that in which the prospect of a European war is uncertain, or the
> price of copper and the rate of interest twenty years hence, or the
> obsolescence of a new invention, or the position of private wealth-
> owners in the social system in 1970. About these matters there is no
> scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability
> whatever. We simply do not know."

It is certainly impossible to calculate "the position of private
wealth-owners in the social system" forty years from now, but barring
an apocalyptic end of civilization as we know it, if fossil-fueled
industrialization is to end sometime in the near future, it has to be
replaced by an alternative into which a great deal of investment is
already being made today, in a fashion that coal was overtaken by oil.

 Is such investment being made now?
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
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