ie the gold standard was backed by bullion reserves.

The US were not the ones exchanging oil for dollars: they were creating and exchanging dollars for oil.

It wasn't that the the US was on an "Oil Standard" - it's that the rest of the world (and the oil nations in particular) has been on the Dollar Standard, and kept reserves in dollars, thereby giving the US a free ride on the seignorage on the dollars.

The solution IMHO is that we get on to an energy standard backed by an energy-based value unit, and "pools" of energy, whether carbon-based or renewable.

This would allow the monetisation (and hence inescapable taxation/levying) of the energy content of carbon, not the completely fatuous concept of monetising the carbon content of emissions, or carbon credits.

These are both "deficit-based" solutions brought to us by the same people who brought us the Credit Crunch, and as the guy said...

"...if you want to keep a donkey healthy you don't regulate what comes out of it, you regulate what goes in...".

"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky