Economic Growth = Energy Growth x Efficiency Growth.
Per Capita energy peaked in 1979. Setting in motion a Malthusian Catastrophe of the economy known as the Olduvai Gorge Theory. Our monolithic dependence on oil is similar to the Ireland's 1840 dependence on a single potato strain.
We have a choice, illustrated in the following two graphs:
- Left Graph: 80-90% die-off and a post-industrial agrarian world.
- Right Graph: Re-tool infrastructure for transportation, power generation and food production. Change the lifeblood of our economy from oil to ingenuity. Repeat the successful re-tooling of communications infrastructure, allow personal responsibility, free markets and small businesses to innovate:
1. Victory Gardens - personal responsibility for self-reliance.
2. JPods and other Performance Standards transportation systems to increase efficiency 10 to 100 times.
3. Feed-in Tariffs - allowing small businesses to generate and sell electricity to increase efficiency 10 to 100 times.
Following these measures through a solar budget will give us twice the per capita energy of the World War II generation and manage it with tooling that is 10 to 100 times more efficient than current centrally planned infrastructure. Consider power and low cost of the Internet and cell phones. No one guessed these improvements would progress so quickly when AT&T was de-monopolized in 1984.