Understanding our finite world

Gail Tverberg.

Allowing the reality that we live in a finite world to influence or impact on our thinking is equally forbidden as is publically discussing the meaning of life.

The latter has privately troubled philosophers and thinkers for millennia, but the finitude of our world is still not considered much by anyone, from world leaders to those next door.

However, an actuary interested in finite world issues – oil depletion, natural gas depletion, water shortages and climate change, Gail Tverberg had made something of a study of finitude.

In a story headed: “Why a finite world is a problem”, she helps us understand that oil limits looks very different from common expectations, with high prices leading to recession and low prices resulting in inadequate supply.

Gail gives eleven clear and irrefutable reasons why our finite world is a problem.

A simple equation, that being misunderstood will change the world

Gail Tverberg.

The energy equation is simple, but few, it seems, understand it.

It is about the amount of energy expended, or investment, to achieve return on that investment – it’s about energy returned on energy invested (EROI).

And of course, since the agricultural revolution, an effect accelerated when we understood how to exploit fossil fuels, we have replaced human energy with the immensely energy-rich fossil fuels and built a way of life that is clearly unsustainable.

Writing on “Our Finite World”, a member of the American Academy of Actuaries, Gail Tverberg, who is also an M. S. from the University of Illinois, Chicago in Mathematics, fears for the collapse of society.

Her latest piece: “Diminishing returns, energy return on energy invested, and collapse” helps us understand global financial dynamic is unfolding.

In conclusion she says: “We cannot simply go backward, because methods that worked in the past, such as using draft horses and buggy whips, will no longer be available without a long development period.

“We are truly facing and unprecedented situation – on that is very hard to prepare for”, she writes.