I was interested in the implicit assumption that GDP grows as the square of oil (energy?) supply.
I am perplexed; I really cannot understand how the world’s economists and commentators on the present precarious global financial situation have not come to the conclusion that must be obvious to all persons who have followed peak oil. Money is not a disembodied quantity; it is related to the real world by means of what people can exchange it for. In particular the relation between energy and money must be very tight to the extent that money pretty well must be a token for energy and therefore for oil.
Except possibly for bare land, all items of trade, food, minerals, motor cars and other consumer goods rely on energy for their manufacture, and crude oil forms the largest share of the world’s energy mix, followed by coal and gas. Thus, if we plot world energy supply against world GDP, we should get a close relationship. Oil is currently around 35% of world energy supply. Figure 1 below gives a plot of world GDP against world oil supply. The GDP figures come from economist Angus Maddison, but other sources would give similar results.
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The debt information is pretty suggestive of what is going on, and that is, the reason the world has been able to keep increasing GDP since 2005 is because it has been borrowing from the future to fund the addiction to economic growth. But this situation cannot continue without serious problems in terms of repayment. And we have imminent peak oil, with the consensus dawning that soon after 2011 oil supply is highly likely to start declining with decline rates anywhere between 2% and 8% per annum.
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