A recent gas crunch in Ontario and Quebec provides a little insight into how near capacity our oil and gas supply chain is. Any hiccups start creating an inability to meet demand. Stephen Leeb, an investment advisor and author of The Coming Economic Collapse believes that supply is currently around 102% of demand. We have very little surplus and this seems to go unnoticed by most. Oil companies seem to watch this very closely and take the opportunity to raise prices whenever possible. It seems like a good time to get off of oil as quickly as possible.
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Random Inspiration
The two processes are distinct - sometimes linked, sometimes not. For example, a child grows and develops simultaneously: a snowball or a cancer grows without developing; the planet earth develops without growing. Economies frequently grow and develop at the same time, but can do either separately. But since the economic is a sub-system of a finite and not growing eco-system, then as growths leads it to incorporate an ever larger fraction of the total system into itself, its behavior must more and more approximate the behavior of the total system which is development without growth. It is precisely the recognition that growth in scale ultimately becomes impossible - and already costs more than it is worth - that gives rise to the urgency of the concept of sustainable development. Sustainable development is development without growth in the scale of the economy beyond some point that is within biospheric carrying capacity.