I haven't posted much by Peter Zeihan in recent months, because much of his work has disappeared behind a paywall. I know many readers disagree with his perspective on geopolitics and economics, but I think he brings out a demographic emphasis that many other analysts lack.
In this video interview, about an hour and twenty minutes long, he postulates that many things that we've taken for granted, or assumed to be true, are not certain any longer. Change is accelerating, and our perspectives need to take that into account. If you want to look for specific issues, this is how the video breaks down:
0:00 Is China Really on the Brink?
6:19 Has China Been Lying About Their Data?
11:08 Can AI Save Us From Population Decline?
17:21 Can We Survive Demographic Collapse?
25:19 How Politics is Impacting Population Data
34:23 The Future of Global Energy
41:03 Are Electric Vehicles Truly Sustainable?
51:24 Where the Green Movement is Really Headed
01:03:40 How Technology is Impacting Modern Warfare
01:08:40 Could China Ignite the Next Global Conflict?
01:15:09 The Power Alliances Reshaping the World
01:18:50 Where to Find Peter
The video loaded correctly when I tested this before publishing this post. If it doesn't (as sometimes happens), you can find it on YouTube. Highly recommended - in particular, the second segment mentioned above.
Do you agree with his points? If you don't, where do you think he's going wrong? Let us know in Comments, and let's discuss.
Peter
6 comments:
He's wrong about carbon, both graphite and GloBull worming. He's also not up to date on batteries. Donut Labs solid state battery comes to mind.
About the Donut Labs claim:
https://www.science.org/content/article/whistleblower-alleges-finnish-startup-s-vaunted-solid-state-battery-isn-t-what-it
There is and never was any issue with human generation of carbon since it is simply a critical chem / fertilizer for all plants. The entire global production of plant material is balanced on the current rarity of carbon and plants finding ways to obtain more. Chew on that, literally, as the plants of the world suck any increase down and increase their biomass.
These facts will mean humans we will be using more coal since it simply is the cheapest & unlimited source of grid energy available for us energy hungry beasts. The only issues that count (and always have) is cleaning up after its extraction & byproducts in a responsibly and minimal impact remedial planning. Certainly an easier and cheaper permanent cost than dealing with fission byproducts that last for thousand of years and the inevitable repeats of Fukushima & Chernobyl. Human civilization is brief and collapse inevitable but radioisotopes are forever.
I am in agreement with most of the points that Zeihan raises.
My biggest disagreement is with his support for "Carbon Neutral" goals. I see him as completely wrong in this area.
These goals are completely pointless except as an open-ended justification for a great number of government scams and grifting operations. Those include all subsidies for solar and wind power generation of electricity.
Those "renewable" sources are too costly by three orders of magnitude to be used at large scale for powering an industrial civilization. They are unreliable as baseload sources, causing serious grid instabilities as the sun and wind change. They have value only in limited and specialized conditions.
Industrial civilization needs baseline energy sources which are cheap, reliable, and can scale up massively without losing efficiency. That started out in the 1800's with coal and then transitioned to oil. These will remain the essential energy sources for the foreseeable future (if there is one for industrial civilization).
There may be a transition to nuclear power. That will require obsessive focus on cleanliness and pollution controls to work if it can be made to work.
Thorium-based reactors, which can burn and destroy radioactive byproducts, look like the best path forward in this direction. It is proven technology, but unclear whether it can scale up very well. Perhaps small modular reactor designs may work with this.
He is at worst thought provoking. He may be right about everything, time may tell. But interesting? Yes. Worthwhile, for sure.
The United States is busily blowing up the world economy and ending life as we know it and Zeihan emerges from his bathhouse to point the finger at Muh Chyna. It's all so tiresome.
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