For Your Consideration.

A piece not by some journo but actually by a professional geologist and oil extraction expert, Arthur Berman, who, in his latest piece, makes two crucial observations which fall well in line with a number of theses about US elites I, together with number of others, continue to make for years. 

Most people, policy makers and economists are energy blind and cannot, therefore, fully grasp the gravity or the consequences of what is happening.

Bingo! I can add, I wrote two books on that (yes, I will continue to repeat it to drive point home), they are also military blind, geopolitics blind and real economy blind. Then, Berman commits a sacrilege by stating that:

                            Energy is the Economy 

And if that wasn't enough to spook all kinds of market analysts who think that stock prices are real economy and that bread grows on trees and iPhones are pinnacle of the technology, Berman delivers a knockout punch:

Gross domestic product (GDP) is proportional to oil consumption (Figure 4). That’s because oil is the economy. Every aspect of production and use of goods and services requires burning fossil energy. There are approximately 4.5 years of human labor in a barrel of oil (N. J. Hagens, personal communication and The Oil Drum). No other energy source comes close to that level of energy density.

I can add even more, do not forget electric energy, it matters together with oil. And, as we know, the electric energy can be produced without oil, such as hydro and nuclear. So, while statement on proportionality is correct, oil is one OF, not the only, metrics of energy consumption in relation to GDP. Here is, my friends, just one (out of very many) metric from World Bank (from 2011 no less) which shows an "adjusted" relations of GDPs when consumption of energy is considered (in this case per capita):

Speaks volumes, doesn't it? Especially when one considers this truism that Energy IS Economy. Of course for 2020 this updated overall (gross, not per capita) consumption data speaks volumes:

Which gives an idea of the REAL relation of REAL economies globally per their actual sizes. It also gives the insight into ACTUAL stakes of the geopolitical realignment by singling out the elite group of leading industrial and military powers who are reshuffling themselves. It also gives a good insight into why Germany or France are not global but regional players and why they will not be able to form serious military-economic-political block of global import alone. So really simple, so... realistic. Anyhow, consider this piece by Berman for your reading.