[A-List] RE: Iraq and the Problem of Peak Oil (fwd)

[Stan Goff]

I cannot recommend too strongly Alf Hornborg's book, "The Power of the
Machine - Global Inequalities of Economy, Technology, and the
Environment" (AltaMira Press, 2001).

"...Calling world trade exploitative, I insist, is more than a value
judgment.  It is an inference based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
If production is a dissipative process (Georgescu-Roegen 1971), and a
prerequisite for industrial production is the exchange of finished
products for raw materials and fuels, then it follows that industrialism
implies a social transfer of entropy.  The sum of industrial products
represents greater entropy than the sum of fuels and raw materials for
which they are exchanged.  The net transfer of 'negative entropy' to
industrial centers is the basis for technoeconomic 'growth', or
'development.'  In other words, we must begin to understand machines as
thoroughly social phenomena.  They are the result of asymmetric, global
transfers of resources...  Prices must be inversely related to the
productive potential of the traded products.  This becomes apparent once
we realize that production is dissipative rather than generative.  It is
simply the consequence of what the idea of money implies in a universe
complying with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Any stage in the
production process aiming to enhance the utility of the substances thus
transformed will reduce the sum of their productive potential (e.g., the
availability of energy)..."

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Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 10:47 AM
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Subject: RE: [A-List] RE: Iraq and the Problem of Peak Oil (fwd)

Peak Oil = The End of Economics?

Here are 2 stories that I think are noteworhty.

'OPEC head: We have no extra oil'  Aug 3rd, 2004

"The oil price is very high, it's crazy. There is no additional supply,"
said OPEC president ...