Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Buying Time

The least painful strategy for dealing with the depletion of a resource consists of simultaneously using less (allowing the current supply to last longer) while searching for alternative sources and replacements that will meet the same needs.

My projections indicate that if the world were to reduce its ecological footprint (corresponding closely to annual energy use) by five percent per year for 50 years, the Ideality index would drop to 40 (from 63) over that period; the IP index would fall to about 14 (from nearly 21); we would lose no population; and we would still have over 40 percent of our current oil reserves (part of over 80 percent of our fossil fuel reserves) to help find alternatives.

We would buy ourselves only 30 years if we reduced the ecological footprint by only four percent per year over that period. The Ideality index would drop to only 51, the IP index would drop to 18, and we would have practically the same amount of fuel reserves available.

1 comment:

Bradley Jarvis said...

Actually we would have about 60 percent of our oil left.