technocrat
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“the net energy of oil extracted since 2005. Anyone know of an attempt to quantify it in those terms?”
On a country by country basis the increasing energy used for oil extraction is some component of the internal oil usage of the export land model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Land_ModelSurprisingly that wiki page shows very little editing over the past few years. It seems usual to the attribute the increase in internal usage to rising standard of living, air conditioning, etc. and not to falling EROEI.
Another consideration, if country A has10:1 EROEI then it can extract 11 barrels and export 10 to country B. Country B can run that through its 2:1 fields to produce 20 barrels, using 5 of those internally and exporting 15. So country B gets the effect of 15 barrels of consumption on GDP and is a net exporter to boot. But this all falls apart without the high EROEI imports from country A.
Of course there would be dispute, but no more so from assigning fictitious resources to various activities and a lot less once people learn that sustainable power comes from the Sun. Energy conversions are not difficult, google joules if you are impaired.
Leaky Mexican border? Those who don’l like it enough can donate energy to plug it. Fundamentally more rational than allocating money in hopeful efforts.
Not a technocrat myself, just an objective reader of ideas. Energy chits don’t require centralized control, enter last year’s energy production, divide by population, issue chits. The population decides how to use the energy in whatever sized group and political form they choose, people, towns, cities, countries can decide to grow crops, build roads, manufacture arms, etc. Kickstarter methods could be used for global efforts like space travel, cold fusion, etc. It’s the free market without money, some make good decisions, some bad, and humanity evolves in a sustainable fashion.
Nothing to do with any political system but methinks favors democracy since each person has an equal energy “vote”. Certainly not communism in which the central committee decides how many tractors to build.
I am surprised technocratic approaches are not discussed more. The central idea is to replace money by a yearly equal allotment of energy chits which expire if not used within the year. Society can be thus constrained to operate on a sustainable energy flow while retaining the theoretical efficiencies of a free market.
Those with money have every incentive to suppress such blatant anti-capitalism but the ideas were much in public view in the 1930s. Energy chits would seem a natural extension of the human labor “bank accounts” used in some intentional communities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement
Much of the original study guide was written by M.King Hubbert:
https://archive.org/details/TechnocracyStudyCourseUnabridged[Edit: How in heck did it pick up my gravitar? That’s Ludwig Boltzmann and yes I am an entropy-hugger]
