Energy Blindness

Recorded on June 19, 2022

Nate offers a short monologue on why our culture is “energy blind” and the implications.

Link to Show Notes PDF

PDF Transcript

00:43 - The Great Simplification - Full Movie 

01:26 - Everything requires an energy conversion

02:14 - The average American house has 40 things draining energy all the time, and use 12-15% of our electricity

03:04 - A barrel of oil is worth ~5 years of human labor (Section 4.3)

04:38 - Energy is not accounted for in economics and production estimations

05:25 - We use energy as principal, but treat it like interest

05:37 - We use 100 billion barrel of oil equivalents of fossil hydrocarbons per year, globally

06:19 - We don’t include resource creation or pollution streams in our prices

06:44 - Massive wealth growth due to fossil hydrocarbons

07:04 - Average US citizen consumes 17 barrels of oil/yr, and 57 barrels of oil equivalents + additional goods we consume adds 17 barrels of oil per person/year

07:18 - The average American uses 3,100 lbs of coal/year

08:17 - Steve Keen

08:49 - We are drawing down energy 10 million times faster than it was created

09:08 - Global conventional oil extraction has plateaued the last 15 years

09:32 - Oil production has appeared to grow due to debt, QE, and shale oil

09:57 - Oil production likely peaked in late 2018

10:25 - Half (65%*) of US crude oil production is light, tight shale oil

10:35 - What is shale oil?

10:56 - If we were to stop drilling right now, production would drop 40% this year, 22% next year, and 17% after that

11:30 - The U.S. produces 11-12 million barrels oil/day, and uses 20 million barrels of oil/day

11:59 - 60-65% of remaining oil is in the 600 mile triangle in Saudi Arabia

12:27 - Oil underpins and predicts economic wealth

13:04 - Geographic distribution of oil

13:27 - The US has used more oil in the last 20 years than any other country ever

13:53 - Rebuildable energy

14:04 - Most renewable energy is electricity, which is only 20% of energy used globally

14:33 - Intermittence

14:47 - Russia reduced natural gas flows to Germany by 25%

16:15 - Fossil energy replaces human labor, which is energetically inefficient, by highly valuable for time (Graph) + Background analysis

17:37 - Gina McCarthy wants social media companies to crack down on anti-renewable content

19:02 - 40% of a barrel of oil is gasoline, the other 60% creates thousands of other products

20:16 - Ecology blindness

21:05 - Putin’s speech 06/17/22 and implications

22:07 - Japan imports all energy, and is creating monetary overlays to subsidize this

23:12 - Italy imports all energy

23:23 - Natural gas at $240/barrel in Europe