This is a big deal.
China has launched trading in its currency in the U.S. for the first time, an explicit endorsement by Beijing of the fast-growing market in the yuan and a significant step in the country’s plan to foster global trading in its currency.
Repeat this scenario after me: RUSSIA SELLING OIL TO CHINA IN YUAN INSTEAD OF DOLLARS.
And right there, it’s going to be a brand new world.
Jon Stewart slays the past eight presidents for platitudes about moving past foreign oil. Lest you think the current president is serious, ask yourself how his administration reconciles his multi-billion dollar national investment in car companies and highways while also pushing the urgency of getting away from oil.
Also, make sure you stay with this video until the end which details the great number of fantastical technologies that will somehow replace the most dense, transportable, efficient form of energy we have ever discovered. And note how these futurist presidents keep kicking the can of energy independence up the road from 1980 to 1985, 2000, 2010, 2025, 2300, the year 5000.
Understanding the future is about not being glib about the difficulty of the challenges that face us, and yet still moving forward.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| An Energy-Independent Future | ||||
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“To run a pricing market for a non-renewable resource off rationing short-term supply and demand makes no sense.” – Gregor MacDonald
One of the worst traps in thinking about the future is assuming that your images of 20, 30, or 50 years ago are still likely, or even possible, in the future. Gregor illustrates this beautifully in his post “Jett Rink’s Speedboat,” about how today’s major oil finds will never lead back to some cheap oil pseudo-paradise of the 1950s and 60s. They cannot. Because this world is so very different.
Notice also his comments on how hyperbolic oil companies are becoming from oil field “discoveries” that sound dauntingly difficult – and how the market responds anyway.
One of the world’s top energy analysts, Gregor MacDonald is firmly calling out the boondoggle of biofuels, saying that young plant growth will never have enough energy content to replace oil in a meaningful way. Now, that doesn’t mean he sees no brighter future for alternatives:
After spending nearly ten years myself studying energy, coal, uranium, natural gas, solar, wind, government policy, and of course the master commodity, oil, I have pretty much come up with a working model for how I think the next decade or two will play out. As for biofuels, they will play no significant role in the world’s energy mix. And while all the other fossil fuels show some possibilities for enhanced use–and here I am thinking mainly of natural gas and coal–I remain committed to oil as the miracle, concentrated energy source that can be increasingly leveraged to build out a future energy architecture. That future energy architecture in my view will have at its core solar energy. Which is kind of a nice story, poetically speaking, because oil itself is ancient solar energy.
Many people right now, most notably James Howard Kunstler, see our economy woes as a reaction to the end of cheap oil. Any growth scenarios in macroeconomics must be seen in the light of the future of energy supply. And if you don’t like growth, then start talking about subsistence and sustainability.
Either way, you’re dealing with coal, natural gas, and oil on the way to solar.
A retweet (if you will) from futurist Glen Hiemstra, I highly recommend this terrific analysis of why oil prices are so low, and what you can expect them to do given the macro-economic situation – courtesy of Gail the Actuary.
This is the kind of economic data we need to see more of – not housing starts, not sales of Korean-made televisions, not fake consumer spending juiced-up by fake home equity loans, but our real situation. And according to this, we haven’t made real economic progress in quite some time.
2009 is the year we start dealing with the real future, and not what we prefer to believe.
