The second most important story after the catastrophe of climate change is the quite related story of: What is the end game for the Age of Fire and Fossil Fuels?
This is no small question. The incredible energy density of fossil fuels has made possible a huge population that will be fighting over the table scraps as these fuels become more rare and expensive. Just remember, any fuel that is not renewable is by definition running out. The role of fuels like gasoline in the food supply is beyond important. And while activities like freezing food for preservation can powered by solar or wind with a few changes, the idea of a battery-powered tractor or combine is still mostly a fantasy.
Here in USA, the end of the Age of Petroleum promises to especially difficult. We have been a net energy importer since about 1970 and while we sold off the country's industrial crown jewels and some prime real estate to help pay the bills, such actions were but a drop in the bucket compared to the massive oceans of oil we import every day. In 2012, the trade deficit in oil was over $300 billion and while fracking has recently lowered that amount to less than $15 billion in 2016, fracking is a secondary recovery technique designed to extract the last remnants of a depleted oil field. Of course, selling off the industrial crown jewels means that we make less of our needs every year—we now make less than 2% of our shoes for goodness sakes.
But the pain has mostly been rendered invisible because of the agreements USA managed to get agreed to in the 1970s when Richard Nixon closed the gold window. The most important plus the USA got by being the superpower was the agreement that the medium of exchange for the petroleum trade would be the dollar.
But we should remember a few fundamentals about money so we can understand why the petrodollar is so important.
The form money takes seems important to some, but in fact this is the most irrelevant issue (sorry goldbugs). The important question is: What makes money valuable?
- Money is valuable if it can be exchanged for something else you want or need. Monetary cranks insist that paper or electronic money should be able to converted into something more intrinsically valuable like gold. Problem is, gold has very little intrinsic value compared to something like oil so the petrodollar is a FAR more stable store of value than gold could ever hope to be.
- Money is valuable if you need it to pay off persons who can make your life miserable. As Peter Cooper, the Greenback Party Presidential candidate, would say, "If you can pay your taxes with it, the money is good." Of course, the same can be said for money used to pay off mortgages, etc. Creditors use police powers to enforce their currency rules.
- The third way money is made valuable is when it is a monetization of human genius. When Japan's PM Abe tried to drive down the value of the Yen in 2012, he discovered that the factors usually blamed for driving down the value of a currency by the monetary pundits didn't work for the Yen. Turns out that if you can trade Yen for a Lexus (or thousand of other perfectly good examples), by gum it is worth something.