Businessweek: Peak Oil to Dark Age.

[K. A. Pital]

People seem to think that returning to 18/19th century living is somehow an okay contraction.

Cos, good old days! Ladies and gentlemen!

You forgot one more thing, AV. There are far more people overall, but there also are far more older people, who are un-adaptable and should such a dire change arise, would be the first to bite the dust due to complete lack of 18th century survival skills.

[J]

Oh, by the way. The US, EU and UN are all calling on OPEC to crank up output before the end of summer, or dire economic ramifications will arise. OPEC, for whatever reason, isn't complying. Either it is able, but not willing. Or it is willing, but not able.

Given their statements that the delivery contracts for Asia & Europe will fall short, combined with an oil tanker glut, let's just say I'd strongly lean towards the latter.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

People seem to think that returning to 18/19th century living is somehow an okay contraction. It isn't. For two reasons:

1. There are FAR more people around today, even in developed nations with low birth rates and stable populations.

2. We don't HAVE the infrastructure or the know-how of those eras. This is like saying it's okay to take a 17th century person and throw them into the 21st century. The reverse is equally daunting psychologically, never mind the challenges in maintaining any semblance of modern society during this regress.

Oh, by the way. The US, EU and UN are all calling on OPEC to crank up output before the end of summer, or dire economic ramifications will arise. OPEC, for whatever reason, isn't complying. Either it is able, but not willing. Or it is willing, but not able.

In a large part the contraction to that level, Valdemar, will be because of the additional population. Which in most areas--I know Britain is a major exception--can be handled, albeit with suffering.

And, yes, there will be more serious disruptions than that in the short term (5, 10, 15 years, not more than twenty). That is to be expected.

Even then it's healthy to remember that even things getting this bad is largely the result of human shortsidedness.

We'll deal with it.

People will suffer, that's for certain, but suffering has been the lot of the average human for most of human existence.

[Admiral Valdemar]

It's not so much the living, which we can easily do if we have the infrastructure and training. It's the transition that gets you. The biggest economic crises have only ever had contraction for a few quarters at most, before slow growth came in, which is still bad. Having to increasingly cut back on expenditure and the economy year after year is going to be very tough. The opposite is the status quo that makes society move forward.

[Surlethe]

A little expansion on Valdemar's point: we as a society are used to constant exponential growth. If the US economy dips beneath 2% growth over the previous year, it's a recession; this means that even polynomial growth (in the long run), let alone linear growth or, God forbid, shrinkage, meets the definition of a recession.

In the space of a few years, we're going to go from exponential growth to exponential contraction that is ostensibly asymptotic to 70% of our current GDP. That's what's going to hit so hard.