[Peakoil-website-changes] [DokuWiki] page changed: senate_oil_inquiry_submission

[peakoil at act-peakoil.org]

A page in your DokuWiki was added or changed. Here are the details:

Date        : 2006/02/24 06:56
Browser     : Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050513 Debian/1.7.8-1
IP-Address  : 10.0.0.1
Hostname    : nermal
Old Revision: http://act-peakoil.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=senate_oil_inquiry_submission&rev=1140694214
New Revision: http://act-peakoil.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=senate_oil_inquiry_submission
Edit Summary: 
User        : 

@@ -182,10 +182,19 @@
  
  === Transport ===
  
  ==== Debt-dependent financial system ====
- Changing the way money works.
  
+ 
+ Debts have been taken out on the assumption that they will be repaid out of future profits. Future profits by and large rely on cheap oil to make a return on the capital investment e.g. hotel operators on a tourist route rely on tourists with cheap petrol to put in their cars. As debts become unrepayable, a cascade of business failures and bankruptcies would occur.
+ 
+ Peak Oil would be far more manageable if there were not the risk of an economic collapse -– a “Greater Depression”. Unfortunately not nearly enough has been done to prepare for Peak Oil and as a result, not just will things be physically harder to do, but economic uncertainty and chaos threaten to make efforts futile.
+ 
+ It is arguable that world-wide over the last century the ease with which money has been created through borrowing has accelerated resource consumption. Being in debt has in effect been rewarded as central banks have inflated the money supply. This has became more pronounced as the US abandoned the gold standard. The system is not sustainable if there is not enough profit to pay off debt plus interest. So economic growth is mandatory – a later year's activity must be greater than this year's.
+ 
+ For a discussion of the monetary system see (Heinberg, 2003). M. King Hubbert, originator of the “Hubbert Peak” pointed out the incompatibility between ecological system based on matter and energy, which are effectively finite, and the monetary system based on interest, which are infinite and therefore not adapted to the former (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Party's_Over:_Oil,_War,_and_the_Fate_of_Industrial_Societies#Ch._3:_Lights_Out:_Approaching_the_Historic_Interval.E2.80.99s_End)
+ 
+ **Recommendation: the inquiry examine the role of the monetary system in promoting excessive resource consumption, as opposed to technological and societal improvements.**
  
  ==== Geopolitical implications ====
  
  



-- 
This mail was generated by DokuWiki at
http://act-peakoil.org/dokuwiki/