People Who Love Asphalt Hate the Earth

Sourche: www.themisanthropocene.com

I doubt that any group of people will be able to afford the infrastructure needed to keep the whole system going. One thing that is needed is roads. For roads, a functioning government is needed, that is able to collect taxes. Also, maintaining roads requires oil products (to operate the equipment; to recycle asphalt, if this is used). How will the price of oil products be raised high enough to encourage anyone to extract them? Also, refineries have high overhead costs. Can they operate, if only a small amount of oil is to be refined? It is also not clear the oil pipelines can operate below a “minimum operating level.”

I think we are kidding ourselves, to think we can keep the system going, even if the rich have every intent and desire to have such a system for themselves. The rich will see most (or all) of their wealth disappear, as it is it no longer has value in the new way of doing things. - Gail Tverberg