The Illustrated Hitchhikers Guide to WHERE TO FROM HERE FOR ALL OF US

TheOilDrum: As the economy shrinks, what will that look like? I too think the shape of the curve will be governed by the price of oil occasionally increasing and destroying any recovery.

SHOOT: The Staircase Model and Maslow's Hierarchy in particular [below] are worth an extra long look.

clipped from www.theoildrum.com For Gail's points on dieoff, it's useful to visualize how much of our food comes from fossil sources. This graph, from Graham Zabel, uses one methodology to attempt to quantify it. It will be a challenge feeding everyone. We now live on a very, very crowded planet. As the economy shrinks, what will that look like? I too think the shape of the curve will be governed by the price of oil occasionally increasing and destroying any recovery. If it is the end of growth (I think it is), how steep will that curve be? Will it be a crash as depicted in the orange line below? Or will we make choices and take actions that give us the green line? Finally, I think it's useful to consider Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to understand how our lives (and in particular our livelihoods) will be different on the downslope of oil and all fossil fuels. As you point out, entire job categories are likely to disappear or shrink radically as we (i.e. the world economy) become poorer.