Monday, October 27, 2014

Post-peak Italy: the decline continues



Oil consumption in Italy in million tons. From "MondoElettrico"


Italy's free fall continues. The most recent data indicate that oil consumption keeps going down. Oil and gas together have peaked around 2004 and continue the downward trend, as shown in the graph below, (From "Resource Crisis")


Italy is in full collapse, with all economic and financial indicators in decline. Industries are closing down and restaurants are opening; the system is trying to adapt by tapping the remaining available resources in the form of foreign tourists. Outside the main touristic centers, however, the crisis is clearly detectable. Shops are closing down, traffic is slowing down, unemployed people are everywhere and you can't miss their presence among friends and acquaintances; especially young people.

At the same time, there is a sensation of ghostliness around, as if everything we are seeing were unreal, happening somewhere else and to someone else. It is as if it were something you watch on TV, but not in real life. The debate in the press and on the web is detached from anything connected with the loss of the capability of the country to move and produce goods. When the crisis is mentioned, different culprits periodically appear in the first pages of the newspapers: the Euro, the European Union, politicians, immigrants, government employees, bureaucracy, lazy workers, terrorism, femicide, Angela Merkel, Valdimir Putin, Silvio Berlusconi, and more. It is a cycle that never stops, it keeps turning, every time pointing at something - new or old - that the government will target to solve the crisis once and for all. 

And it keeps going. 













Who

Ugo Bardi is a member of the Club of Rome, faculty member of the University of Florence, and the author of "Extracted" (Chelsea Green 2014), "The Seneca Effect" (Springer 2017), and Before the Collapse (Springer 2019)