Article Recommendation: Interview with John Michael Greer

An short and interesting article with author John Micheal Greer, writer of ‘The Wealth of Nature‘. Greer is prolific writer on the subject of Peak Oil. However, his main focus has been on that particular strange breed of academics called ‘Economists’, who seem to be some of the biggest deniers of reality when it comes to resource depletion. (It seems they prefer to view the world through the prisms of whatever school of economic thought they belong to, generally tending to deny the highly significant influence of energy production when it comes to wealth-creation. I should know – my degree is BSc(Econ)! However, as my actual subject was International Politics, I wasn’t really very brilliant at understanding the economics side! Too complicated, truth be told!)

Greer mentions briefly about the motivations for his book, the influence of the maverick economist of the 50s and 60s E. F. Schumacher and the growing realisation that oil has not been subject to the same forces of supply and demand in recent years as it used to be. He mentions that production has effectively remained at the same level, whilst demand has increased and the price has rocketed. The economists are burying their hands in the soil over this one! I’m reminded of David Strahan’s book ‘The Last Oil Shock‘, which discussed the relationship between Peak Oil Theory and mainstream economics. He mentioned an interesting study as to what happened when you applied the Laws of Thermodynamics to the concept of economic growth. Truly shocking and disturbing in my opinion!

Check out the link below:

Interview with The Wealth of Nature Author John Michael Greer by Zachary Shahan, Planet Save

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