Peak Oil, AI, and the Straw

Mar 8

Recorded March 5 2024

Description

In this Frankly, Nate shares his perspective on the new all-time high in oil production in the context of AI’s growing influence in the financial markets and technology space. While ‘all liquids’ just hit an all time high, the varying categories of what is considered oil obfuscates a long plateau that is starting to decline. However, given AI’s expanding reach, it may not only invent ways of getting a higher percentage of Original Oil In Place to our economies, but also increase demand for energy worldwide. In similar fashion to shale fracking, MMT, and debt, AI will increasingly widen the resource extraction/ecosystem damage “straw”. Artificial intelligence is potentially a wonderful tool, but it is lower down the hierarchy than money/power maximization and thus will accelerate, not diminish climate change and other environmental damages. Can we resist the cleverness of AI and its ability to drain sources to the very last drop to instead navigate the road to the Great Simplification with wisdom?

Special thanks to Art Berman, John Rowan, Kyle Saunders, Tristan Harris, and Daniel Schmachtenberger.

Show Notes:

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Slides used in this presentation

00:22 - Oil Production Highs

00:45 - NVIDIA stock price and market cap, S&P 500 Energy

01:32 - Energy and GDP correlation (figure 2)

02:25 - Energy vs Human energy output (section 4.3)

03:15 - The Carbon Pulse

03:40 - Productivity growth is declining since oil production growth has been slowing

04:20 - Peak Oil

04:40 - M. King Hubbard