Planck Foundation




ENERGY POLITICS


ENERGY IS PROSPERITY


Energy is the invisible force behind and facilitator of prosperity. Cheap energy delivers high prosperity. Expensive energy delivers low prosperity. Prosperity needs besides cheap energy also stable capital, good/actual education (creating the equal changes), international peace/stability (war is just waste of labour and resources, both with or without destruction) and a stable/fair/transparent functioning legal system. Governments should realize this and protect all these five facets of prosperity. But is starts with affordable energy (or stops if that's no longer available). Just as governments has taken credit markets for granted (while every analyst knew that no trees every grow into heaven and the last growth spurts are the most toxic ones), they also take energy markets for granted (while every economist with a little knowledge on the basic supply and demand mechanisms knows that the times of cheap and abundant energy are over). We have faced the collapse of our credit/capital system in 2008 (we just have postponed it a year of so, by piling up more credit on by too much credit derailing models). We will facet the collapse of our energy system very soon if we don't act right now. You can credit yourself out of a credit crisis, by watering currency values. But you can't energize yourself out of an energy crisis. When energy becomes too expensive. Everything goes not smooth any more. Cheap energy is the lubricant of economies. Expensive energy just slows down economies by less fluidity of any economic movement. The prosperity motor slows down severely, as efficiency improvement couldn't cope up/against the price rise of energy/resources, which will lead to less actual purchase power and smaller sized economies. We have seen this with our very own eyes in 2008. The real reason behind the credit crunch was that too expensive energy/resources prices eat out the debt repay capacities all around the world. This iceberg came to surface in the weakest loans of the most credited markets of the world. Peak Energy is the point where supply goes down and prices therefore go up. We have faced PeakCredit, PeakEnergy, PeakResources and thereby PeakProduction, PeakMobility, PeakTransport and PeakGlobalization. There's an urgency that redesign our economies from a high energy / high prosperity model to a low energy / high prosperity model. We need sustainable prosperity in the new realities the 21st century will confront us with (expensive energy and resources). Both the Global Resources Analysis and the Global Future Analysis describes these problems and there solutions. They can be downloaded for free on the Internet. The US writer James Howard Kunstler describes perfect the positive growing effects of cheap and abundant energy on economies till 1992 (and also as contrary mirror situation the negative declining effects of expensive and scarce energy on economies since than). Taking care of the future of both ourselves and our children requires a new energy system. If we don't adjust to new these realities and our energy system collapses, our economic system will collapse, thereby our financial system will collapse, thereby our governmental system will collapse. The right time for some serious thinking/action on energy in not tomorrow, but today. Not for the environment, just for prosperity. Sustainable prosperity is what we need. We will have it tomorrow if we start today. Energy is Prosperity is a very valid statement.


Author: Gijs Graafland


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