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How many potatoes is that?
Was a common refrain from the english tourists in Spain, asking the price of something in Pesetas.
What was worse was "ex patriates" who actually lived in Spain, contantly converting the price of everything back into Pounds in order to see if it was a "good buy" or not.
"20 Ducados (cigarettes) are 50 pesetas, and a bottle of beer is 60", I would tell people, converting that to 25p and 30p doesn't make it any cheaper, any better, or make you smoke or drink more.
However, there is no shortage of examples in the modern world of people working in one "currency" and thinking in another, and this is where many of the problems start, because the relative values of exchange rates between any two given "currencies" pretty much constantly fluctuates.
One such currency is the kWh, (and I use "kWh" as being symbolic of "energy") like all other currencies there isn't an actual, practical physical limit to the amount that can be in circulation at any one time.
Like all other currencies it is constantly being taken out of circulation at one end of the system (in the case of kWh when you actually consume the energy) and being put into circulation at the other.
Like all other currencies it is affected by market forces and demand and so on.
Unlike all other currencies, kWh, can be "issued" by just about anyone and everyone, to be sure there are a few large "mints" that between them outweigh everything else put together, but even so, everyone can "issue" kWh in one form or another.
Unlike all other currencies, kWh is a fiat currency, and a non fiat currency, at the same time, and the smaller independent "mints" are usually the ones issuing "fiat" kWh, for example a product that represents an investment of energy, but which can not be converted back into that energy, such as the laptop I am typing this on.
Unlike other currencies, nobody actually uses kWh as a currency, much less as a primary currency.
Nevertheless, just like the english tourist in Spain (back before the Euro) the actual currency that we all deal in is kWh, even though we always think in other currencies and always make payment in other currencies.
Back when Gulf War 1 kicked off, all the mega-yachts, despite flying the Red Ensign, worked their finances in US Dollars, and the war trashed the Dollar / Peseta exchange rate, so all work stopped because suddenly everything got "expensive".
Clearly nothing got expensive, all that happened was that one currency was devalued against another one.
In monetary terms "Inflation" is when the supply of money increases, and "deflation" is when the supply of money decreases, and in this case "supply of money" always refers to a specific single currency.
The 30 dollar 8 gigabyte USB sticks I bought a couple of weeks ago, and by extension everything in Wal-mart et al, is cheap because the currency of kWh has been subject to steady inflation for decades now, and so the exchange rate to our other currencies got more radical, so a few dollars bought a lot of kWh worth of stuff.
From the perspective of a technological civilisation, the surest and most accurate indicator of steady progress is steady inflation of the "currency" of kWh. The supply of kWh should increase, year on year, ideally from an increase in standards of living perspective this supply of kWh currency should increase at a greater rate than whatever fiat currency we happen to have in our wallets, if this happens everything gets cheaper year on year.
Technically there is no practical physical or engineering reason why inflation of the kWh currency cannot be maintained.
Practically maintaining this inflation requires spending, or investing, the actual fiat currencies in our wallets in newer methods of creating kWh currency.
Like all such technological processes, there are only two classes, progressive and regressive, wood beats dung, charcoal beats wood, anthracite beats charcoal, and oil beats anthracite.
ONLY a further progressive step can maintain inflation of the kWh currency, and the ONLY progressive step in existence with current technology is nuclear fission.
Solar, hydro, bio-mass, all these things are great, as an ADJUNCT to the main "mints" churning out the currency of kWh. However, as a replacement or substitute they are a regressive step.
They are a regressive step because they simply are not compact enough, a dollar coin is useful if you can carry fifty of them in your hand, it is useless if each one is the size of a manhole cover. Similarly an A0 "paper" dollar bill is useless as a primary instrument of exchange.
Carbon credits are essentially a chemical energy currency, taxing carbon is taxing energy, so creating carbon credits is in effect an attempt to split one currency, the kWh, into two currencies, the chemical kWh and the nuclear kWh (solar, wind and hydro are all ultimately nuclear forms of energy).
Nowhere in human history has splitting a currency ever resulted in anything but pain and confusion, which one of your guys will take US Fed Dollars, and which ones will take "Greenbacks" and how will I buy something that comprises parts from one of you and parts from another?
Just as the calorie is the basic unit of human food currency, (and a subset of the kWh) the kWh currency will never become a primary currency, the most you can ever do with it is barter, one unique deal at a time, nevertheless every human being on the planet is effectively trading in calories when they buy food, so we cannot expect the kWh currency to come out as the new World Currency.
We will always use other primary currencies, and do the "how many potatoes is that?" thing because we are actually exchanging kWh currency on each deal.
The US Dollar clearly illustrates this link, it is in many ways "tied" to the kWh currency, given that some of the largest "Mints" on the planet "price" their barrels of kWh currency in US Dollars.
However, the US Dollar can collapse just like the Weimar Mark, and essentially all that will happen is the exchange rate between the US Dollar and the kWh will soar, for anyone saying "how many potatoes is that?" and converting to US Dollars it may well feel like being a Zimbabwean tourist in Sweden, while Swedish visitors to Zimbabwe can buy a house for what a cup of coffee costs back home.
It is the iniquities of two different currencies being exchanged for one common currency that permits and creates such disparity, a kilo of locally grown bananas in Kenya and a kilo of locally grown (really, in geothermal greenhouses) bananas in Iceland have the same value in the kWh currency.
A (star of the silver screen) man I once new in Spain once said to me "When I first came here a Rum & Coke was 25 pesetas, I was here a month before I discovered the Coke was 20 pesetas, so I drank Rum."
A classic case of items from two different "exchange rates" being combined into a single product.
The problem we as a technological civilisation face is this.
The only way forward for us is constant inflation of the kWh currency, ideally at a rate faster than any inflation in our "In yer wallet" fiat currencies.
The only way to avoid deflation of the kWh currency (there is no "stagnation" middle ground) is to progressive method of "Minting" that kWh currency, and literally the ONLY option we have is nuclear fission.
The ONLY way to continue inflation of the kWh currency is to build enough nuclear fisson mints to supplant the fading output of the chemical hydrocarbon mints and eventually supercede them.
Failing to do this can have only one consequence.
Irrespective of the relative changes between the fiat currencies we carry in our wallets, whether the US Dollar tanks when the link between it and the kWh (hydrocarbons in barrels) currency is broken or not, ALL currencies exchange rates with the kWh currency absolutely MUST devalue with respect to the kWh currency, if the kWh currency deflates.
Unlike Gulf War 1 and the private mega-yachts, such a devaluation will be permanent and increasing with time, there will be no question of waiting it out.
The only possible "winning" scenario in such a situation is to dump ALL your devaluing fiat currency in your wallets and grab ALL the deflating kWh currency you can (by invading IRAx mebbe)
Even this is just a temporary respite against inexorably rising waters, it may be enough, if you throw everything you have in your new, bolstered by cornering the market in kWh currency, improved fiat currency and therefore the improved purchasing power it has, at building new nuclear fission powered mints.