It was always about the oil

consciousnessofsheep.co.uk It was always about the oil

In the early-2010s there was a perverse repeat of the oil boom of the post-war years.

8 comments

I'm not completely able to make sense of what this is saying, but consciousnessofsheep.co.uk looks, in general, like misinformation to me. The only articles I've seen from them all tend to point to the idea that all this green energy stuff is a disaster, and the UK should be getting back to basics, burning fossil fuels, and in particular burning fossil fuels that they're buying from Russia.
There's a little bit of that in this article, when they touch on BRICS early on and discuss the real economy being the oil economy and everything else as fake. Mostly, like I said, I can't make sense of it. But I think posting things from this source is something that should be avoided in general.
- You're definitely misunderstanding the author. There is no going back to BAU since it's over, and neither are renewable energy sources capable of sustaining an advanced technological society the fruit of which we're currently still (your mileage might vary) enjoying. For multiple reasons UK is a particularly interesting, albeit depressing, collapse case study. The other Tim (Morgan https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/ ) is currently working on a SEEDS report for UK, which should turn out quite interesting. I'll be sure to post it here.
  In general, I think I have a pretty good picture of what is going on, though my expectation that everybody can synthesize their own sense from the submissions here is perhaps unwarranted. Still, don't give up on Tim Watkins just yet. He really isn't saying what you think he's saying.
  
  What is the author saying here? It sounds like he's saying that the real economy is the energy economy, and collapses in energy supply will ruin the economy whatever anyone does. I don't think that's actually true of the modern economy, since we're still burning fossil fuels with no real sign of stopping, and God help us. I think the main problem is hoarding resources by the super-wealthy. Maybe things will change as things drop back down from peak oil, but we're not at that point. We have plenty of energy and resources to feed everyone and solve our problems, for now, and the main underlying-reality threat to "the economy" is climate-change-induced crop failure, which we're actively encouraging in increasing ways every year. That's my take on what I think he is saying.
  Again, that's just based on skimming. Can you summarize his point? I wasn't saying that this article was endorsing fossil fuels, although it doesn't exactly not-endorse fossil fuels. I'm just saying that I've seen more than one article from this source which fall back to that suspicious argument. Enough to notice a pattern.
  To check myself, I clicked on two random articles from the top of the main page right now, and I got:
  https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/11/13/can-we-live-like-windy-miller/
  https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/11/15/inevitably/
  The second is British politics stuff which I am not well-informed enough to understand, but the first is exactly what I said a lot of this source's articles were.
  
  Thanks for countering the misinformation, I’ve become too cynical to fight back effectively.

Tim Watkins is a proponent of De-Growth. The comment below is deleterious and misinformed.
- Oh, geez. I didn't realize I was deleterious.

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