The Maximum Power Principle

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Energy is incredibly important in nature. Those organisms that have an energy surplus of their expense versus the income have evolutionary advantages. This is throughout the animal kingdom and it also applies to human systems. The same scaling law applies to the total human system, the global human economy on mass together where all countries grow their energy consumption about to the three-quarter power of their size. There is a 99% correlation between energy and GDP and around 100% correlation between materials and GDP.

In Part 2 of this Frankly Series, Nate breaks down why energy - and specifically oil - is currently the central foundation of our entire modern economic system. There are ecological and energetic laws that apply to all life, including humans and our economies. By accessing a huge surplus of dense carbon energy in the form of fossil sunlight, we’ve effectively turbo-boosted our economies, populations, and material wealth - but what happens if this fossil abundance were to go away? What are the systemic implications of an economy tethered to growth, tethered to carbon? Is it even possible for us to choose to stop using oil? How do these complex constraints on our global systems affect the options - and most likely outcomes - in a future with declining oil availability and rising climate insecurity?

For Show Notes and More: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/frankly-original/39-just-stop-oil-part-2-oil-is-the-economy

To Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-585aVUNz68