Spike in energy prices suggests that sharp changes are ahead

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/10/18/spike-in-energy-prices-suggests-that-sharp-changes-are-ahead/

An analysis of what is going terribly wrong in the world economy to cause these spikes, and a bit of a look at what might be ahead.

The world economy requires stability. As long as energy supplies are abundant, stability is easy to achieve. But, as energy supplies get scarce, we add complexity to try to work around the adverse impacts of price spikes. These workarounds are not permanent fixes, however. Eventually, the economy becomes too brittle. It cannot respond to the temporary disruption in energy consumption caused by the economy's reaction to the pandemic. The situation is alarming. Analyses of the value of wind and solar greatly overvalue these resources because the economy really needs stability of energy supply. The economy now seems to be headed toward the early stages of collapse. This occurs because we seem to be reaching limits on oil, coal and natural gas almost simultaneously, and renewables are not of much value.