Friday, July 26, 2013


Sustainability in a Mark III Economy


 It's about time I said a word or two about energy returned over energy invested.

The Mark I economy had one useful good, which was called a potato for lack of better term.  If a citizen of that economy ate one potato a day, he survived and might be happy; otherwise, he perished.  This convinced me that it was necessary to share equally in a society where it was impossible to be happy while others were miserable or dying.  The Earth can barely produce one potato per person per day as it is.

The Mark II economy had five sectors as described at http://dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Structure.html, which makes it sufficiently complicated that I was able to deduce the results reiterated in the post of July 13th.

I would now like to further subdivide the five sectors sufficiently to demonstrate the methodology of ERoEI* as a Measure of Feasibility, the post of November 30, 2012, near the beginning of this blog.  For example, mining should be a separate sector; manufacturing should be divided into mining equipment manufacturing, as well as manufacturing for energy technology, agriculture, transportation, commerce, construction, consumer goods, and manufacturing itself.  Similar subdivisions are necessary in other sectors, but not agriculture, as we may continue to think of food as one thing, which might as well be potatoes.

This is a big job; and, it wouldn't break my heart if someone else carried it out and took all the credit.  What galls me is people taking so much credit for bad thinking, bad methodology, and bad science that supports the status quo and leaves the power and privilege to the owners of the country.

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