On 2008-06-15 14:05:46 +0100, Peter Scott said:

David Taylor wrote:
On 2008-06-14, Bill Wright wrote:
"David Taylor" wrote in message
...
Yes, eventually replacements (wind/tidal/solar/nuclear/geothermal) will
become cheaper than oil. The question is how fast they will be able to
be introduced, and how fast the price of oil will rise.
The laws of supply and demand will solve everything.

IIRC, Supply and Demand applies to things with elastic demand.

Energy usage has some elastic components, but a lot is required to
keep the world going. Food is certainly a necessity, and if the cost of
food starts to rise, demand will not drop. If sufficient alternate
energy generation can't be brought online quickly enough, the cost of
energy and food will rise to a point where people can't afford to eat.

There is of course some indication that this is already beginning to
happen, although that appears to be related to the availability of land
to grow food on...

We're into territory where the primitive 'rules' of the market no
longer apply. The point about elasticity is well made. Without massive
production of nitrogen fertiliser we would not be feeding the world
now. The sorts of decisions that need to be made must be made outside
the crude profit model.

For example massive investment is needed in public transport

Why? It is way too inflexible

, water purification and reuse, energy production particularly
small-scale solar-based energy production

Why? Large scale nuclear production is a far more practicable solution


and so on. Most of this is now in private hands in the UK. I'm not
making a political point, just practical. Companies cannot be forced,
only bribed.

That's how the free market essentially works when looking at it in one
way - i.e. that there needs to government intervention.

The German government has made a lot of money available to make solar
generation more economic, hence it has a very high uptake of
photo-voltaics. However I for one don't want to hand out my taxes to
shareholders of private companies, so impasse.


Not really. Reduce the taxes so that individuals can make their own
investment decisions. Cut out the (incompetent government) middle man.