Crash Course on Economy, Energy, and the Environment

Chris Martenson is not an economist. He is a trained research scientist, and a former Fortune 300 VP. Most importantly, though, he is a concerned citizen.

He thinks the next twenty years are going to look very different from the last twenty years. His site is an attempt to explain why.

You should start with the Crash Course. This series of videos is, he thinks, the clearest and most straightforward explanation of how our economy, energy systems and environment interact -- how we got to where we are today, and some reasonable expectations for the future.

Massive change is upon us. To understand the nature of this change, we need to understand the three “E”s – the Economy, Energy, and the Environment...

• The first “E” is the economy, which is the lens through which the Crash Course looks at everything, specifically exponential money, the first-ever collapse of a global credit binge, an aging population, and a national failure to save.
• The second “E” is energy. We will explore what Peak Oil implies for an economic system that is based on continual expansion.
• The third “E”, the environment, will be exerting its own unknowable but certainly significant economic burdens due to shrinking resources and other systemic pressures while the other two “E”s are clamoring for your money and attention.