Matt Simmons, the leading investment banker to the oil industry, who has worked tirelessly to lift public awareness of Peak Oil, also raised the specter of shortages, telling the audience that market allocation problems in the near future would almost certainly induce “hoarding behavior” among the public that would cripple the economy, lead to enforced rationing, and shock the nation.

Quelle: PEAK UNIVERSE

Ich behaupte einfach mal, dass die liberal-soziale Marktwirtschaft in einer solchen Situation vor die grösste Zerreissprobe in ihrer Geschichte gestellt wird. Entweder wird der Markt das „kleine Problem“ mit Bravour lösen – oder mit Getöse untergehen. Schauen wir mal.

Wer sich mit der ganzen Rationierungsgeschichte des Ersten und Zweiten Weltkriegs auskennt, weiss, dass keine schönen Zeiten folgen werden. Wichtig ist, dass die Rationierung so rasch als möglich eingeführt wird – und plötzlich wird „Mehr Staat, mehr Freiheit“ wieder populär:

We have had rationing during the second world war, it was difficult but we made it work, it is something I think every nation that is oil consuming and oil importing nation will have to do. It is easy to say rationing but then it is very difficult to decide how you are going to ration the fuel that you get. There will be priorities like the military, there will be priorities like the farmers, there will be priorities like getting food from the farmers to the processors and to people, and the bottom of the chain will be folks like us that drive to work or drive for convenience purposes and will probably going to get a lot less of what is available.

Quelle: Robert Hirsch : « Avec le pic pétrolier, la croissance est condamnée » (VO)

Modelle der Ökonomen haben alles im Griff

So what you really saying is that peak oil means peak economy ?

Robert Hirsch : When oil goes into decline yes. World GDP will decline, I am perfectly convinced of that. In talking to economists, they believe very much in their models and their models are econometric so they don’t deal directly with shortage, they deal with oil price and their models can handle oil prices changing relatively slowly but to a person, economist that I have talked to and I have talked to a number of very significant economists, they admit that their models cannot handle significant changes, rapid changes, shock changes, and that is what peak oil is likely to be.

Nebenbei: The Guardian rezitiert heute eine Studie, die behauptet, dass Peak Oil bereits hinter uns liegt.