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Peak Oil
Mad Max meets American Gothic
Is there a friendlier option for the post-peak future?
Bill McKibben, Orion
Can you feel the mood shifting? I can. A year of spiking speculation about peak oil and the death of suburbia has rattled lots of Americans. Plenty of people suddenly feel that real, civilization-shaking change might be around the next corner. And plenty of them also feel frozen in the headlights, unsure what, if anything, to do about it. Other than wait.
…Who knows if we’re actually going to see oil production peak sometime soon? Not me. I’ve read persuasive arguments that we will from writers like Michael Klare and James Howard Kunstler and Paul Roberts. I’ve also read confident counterarguments from people who’ve been right in the past, like Daniel Yergin of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Oil depletion is not a straightforward physical law, like the fact that the molecular structure of carbon dioxide traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. Instead it’s a detective story that turns on questions like, are the Saudis lying about how fast oil is being depleted in their giant field at Ghawar? My suspicion had always been that we’d run out of sinks before sources—that is, run out of atmosphere before oil wells—but it’s beginning to look like the race will be tight.
…In any event, the real question is what to do in the face of uncertainty. In policy terms, the answer is easy, since cushioning the end of oil would require precisely the same steps as slowing down climate change: raising gas mileage, converting to hybrid cars, building trains, imposing carbon taxes, giving tax breaks for insulation.
But in personal terms? That’s how peak oil affects the imagination, after all. You can’t hear about it without starting to wonder, what’s my life going to be like? Authors have provided helpful guesses about which regions of the country to move to (New England good, suburban Atlanta bad) or what items to install on your homestead. The trouble with such advice, however, is that it’s altogether too personal, too private. If the nightmare of a globally warmed world is, say, a storm-raked, mosquito-ridden, sea-besieged city on a tropical shore, then the nightmare of a post-oil world is a lone family holed up on its new farm using its cache of firearms to guard its stockpile of food. You can imagine it coming to that—Mad Max meets American Gothic. It’s hard to underestimate the degree of rage that might accompany the end of the cheap-fuel culture in a country as entitled as ours. But the loner option is full of unhappiness, no matter what. At best it offers survival.
The no-regrets options are different, and seductive. They all involve communities learning to fend more powerfully for themselves—communities ratcheting down their dependence on the overstretched and oil-dependent lines of supply that mark a globalized economy, and ratcheting up the semiforgotten, close-to-home economies that might prove more stable in an energy-starved world. Some of this work is already underway, but it will be given a new urgency if the price of oil just keeps on leaping.
(November/December 2005)
Recommended by Big Gav in Peak Energy – Australia. Also in this month’s Orion: Conservation refugees: when protecting nature means kicking people out.
Coming to grips with the end of cheap energy
Katherine Reynolds Lewis, Newhouse News Service
Heating your house this winter will probably cost twice as much as last year. We all know how painful it can be to fill up the car with gas lately. Everyone is anxious for energy prices to return to normal.
Here’s a scary thought: What if this is the new normal?
“Three-dollar-a-gallon gasoline is going to be the good old days,” predicts Robert Hirsch, a senior energy program adviser for SAIC, a professional services company.
Hirsch is one of an increasingly vocal group of researchers who believe the era of cheap energy is ending. Oil production, these experts argue, simply cannot keep pace with explosive growth in energy consumption, notably in the developing world. In the future, they say, gasoline could easily cost $10 a gallon and the current American lifestyle will be an anachronism.
“This is likely to be something catastrophic, not like any energy problem we’ve had before,” said Hirsch, co-author of a February report on world oil production for the U.S. Energy Department. “This one looks like it’ll last a decade and longer. That really says that one has to expect dramatic changes in life as we have known it.”
(3 November 2005)
Have we reached the mainstream yet? A financial advice columnist is telling newspaper readers how to prepare for peak oil. -BA
Slippery slope:
Peak oil activism in Minneapolis
Michael Metzger, Southwest Journal (Minneapolis, MN)
Southwest ‘Peak oil’ activists have long insisted that Minneapolis plan for an age of scarce petroleum; amid recent price hikes, the rest of us might finally pay attention/
…In Southwest [Minneapolis], peak oil-theory advocates meet every month at the vegan restaurant Ecopolitan, 2409 Lyndale Ave. S., to talk about the coming end of the age of oil. Each of these handful of people is convinced that oil production worldwide has peaked, or soon will, and that the planet is about to be thrust into a difficult post-peak era involving economic crises caused by dramatically higher oil prices, resulting in drastic changes to the American dream and way of life.
At one time, they might have been dismissed with a laugh as Chicken Littles with too much time on their hands. But many of their ideas are in the mainstream, as Americans pump $3 gasoline into post-chic SUVs and speculate about our government’s motives for attacking and occupying oil-rich Iraq. Suddenly, it’s not quite as funny or far-fetched to think of worldwide oil production peaking and declining.
Kevin Chavis of Whittier has a bigger stake than most in peak oil.
The 23-year-old was understandably reluctant to spend a lot of time discussing peak oil theory when he was contacted for this article. A sergeant in the Minnesota National Guard, he was headed back to his communications post north of Baghdad the next morning. But he took a few minutes away from the little time he had left to spend with his girlfriend to talk about the opportunities he says peak oil will present when it arrives.
(4 November 2005)
Long article about a local PO group.
Vermont independence convention: confronting the empire
maslauskas, SF Bay Area Indymedia
On October 28 a statewide convention on state secession and running on the theme “Vermont Independence: An Impossible Dream or a Vision of the Future?” was held in the State House in Montpelier, VT. The last time a convention similar to this was held took place in North Carolina in 1861 when the state decided to secede from the US.
The group that organized the convention in Vermont was the Second Vermont Republic (SVR), formed in large part during the last few years. The SVR, according to its web site, “is a peaceful, democratic, grassroots solidarity movement committed to the return of Vermont to its rightful status as an independent republic as was the case in 1791 and to support Vermont’s future development as a separate, sustainable nation-state.”
Vermont was once a sovereign nation-state between the years 1777 and 1791 (a little known fact in US history) and Second Vermont Republicans are figuring out how to cut Vermont loose from the Empire so it can build on its more democratic and communitarian way of life.
Over three hundred people from Vermont and from various areas in the States and Canada filed into the State House that brisk Vermont morning, walking past “Ethan Allen” (aka Jim Hogue) dressed in full continental regalia, sitting atop a horse. A fellow Vermonter, also in continental garb, was holding the famed green and blue flag of the Green Mountain Boys which has also been adopted by the SVR.
…The keynote address was given by author of “The Long Emergency”, Howard Kunstler. He gave a damning speech against certain aspects of the current system, especially that of suburbia.
“Suburbs represent the greatest misrepresentation of allocation of funds in the history of the world,” Kunstler cried out to the cheering throngs in the State House. Similar to Naylor, he made allusions to the decadent, corrupt and failed system in the USSR and the overwhelming similarities it has with the US. “I’ve traveled all over the country. Travel it! You’ll see a country that looks like a former soviet republic… go to Elmira and Utica, NY! You’ll see what I mean!”
Kunstler warned of the coming days ahead where America, even during peak oil and its aftermath, will continue to be a car-dependent society. The result? Suburbs will crumble, the federal government will become impotent and people will be forced to live in small-scale societies, much like what Vermonters have been used to over the years. He said that in the future, there will be “a clearer distinction between town and country… we won’t be able to afford to abide by building codes… [and] turbulence will be the rule.”
His book “The Long Emergency” gives a fuller description of the end of the American Empire during peak oil. Hopefully, Vermonters are making the right moves in getting out of the Empire while they can and scaling down in size to avoid future destruction and disaster.
(4 November 2005)
The peak oil crisis: importing energy
Tom Whipple, Falls Church News-Press
Lurking just beyond public perception is the 800-pound gorilla of peak oil issues.
Who gets to import how much after worldwide depletion sets in?
Currently, distribution of the world’s oil production is relatively simple. Whoever wants oil, and has the money to pay for it, can buy as much as they want. No questions. No limits. Historically there have been a few exceptions, such as during World War II or the Arab Oil embargo, but in general if you have the money, importing oil has not been a problem.
Last month, the gorilla began to stir in the form of a report prepared by the folks up at the University of Alberta in Canada . It seems 68 percent of the crude oil and 55 percent of the natural gas produced in Canada is being exported to the US . Under the fine print of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Canadians are obligated to continue shipping this portion of their oil and gas production to us even after they go into depletion and can no longer produce enough to satisfy their own needs.
Not unexpectedly, a number of Canadian writers have started to ask why on earth 32 million Canadians should be obligated to send over half of their oil and gas production to help meet the energy appetite of 300 million Americans.
(3-9 November 2005)
French environment minister publishes peak oil book
lorenzo, peakoil-dot-com
Former French minister for the environment, mathematics professor and Green MP in Paris, Yves Cochet, has just published a major book, called Pétrole Apocalypse. It’s being debated in this month’s Le Monde Diplomatique.
According to the author, the book supposedly reveals some inside facts about oil depletion, which border on revealing state secrets, which the man got to know during his time in office in the French government.
Someone of us should pick it up and check it out! Published by Fayard, here.
Yves Crochet is also very active in the so-called “Décroissance” mouvement, which is aiming for a planned economic decline to sustainable levels.
(5 November 2005)
The book seems to be getting a lot of comment on French-language blogs and websites, including Liberation and an interview on RFI.
Also see the publisher’s website, which has a short summary in French.
An entry on the website of the book’s author begins:
Les cours du baril de pétrole augmentent. Le Premier ministre français parle aujourd’hui de choc pétrolier. Des mesures sont prises pour éviter la faillite des agriculteurs, des pêcheurs et des transporteurs routiers. Que se passe-t-il ? Le choc que nous connaissons n’est pas de même nature que ceux de 1973 et de 1979. Cette fois-ci, il n’y aura plus de retour à un pétrole bon marché. La nouveauté de la situation actuelle tient, pour l’essentiel, à trois facteurs – géologique, économique et géopolitique – qui n’étaient pas présents jadis et qui contribuent à l’augmentation des prix du pétrole et, par propagation, de toutes les énergies. L’inflation contaminera tous les autres secteurs d’activités, sur tous les continents.
La vie après le pétrole
De la pénurie aux énergies nouvelles
Jean-Luc Wingert, publicity website
Alors que les quantités mondiales de pétrole consommées sont de plus en plus importantes, celles qui sont découvertes le sont de moins en moins : actuellement, nous découvrons chaque année deux à trois fois moins de pétrole que nous en consommons. Cette tendance ne peut se prolonger indéfiniment… Et si le pétrole a déjà connu plusieurs crises, il semble que celle qui nous attend soit d’une ampleur inédite et arrive bien plus tôt que nous ne l’imaginons généralement…Comment la situation peut-elle évoluer ? Quand risquons-nous d’être confrontés à une pénurie ? Qu’est-ce que le pic de production du pétrole ? Et surtout, comment et avec quelles énergies alternatives appréhender, anticiper et vivre cet « après-pétrole » ? Voici les questions auxquelles La Vie après le pétrole tente de répondre de manière didactique et accessible notamment grâce à des schémas commentés et des encadrés.
Jean-Luc Wingert est ingénieur conseil, spécialiste des questions énergétiques.
Jean Laherrère, le préfacier, géologue et géophysicien, est consultant de renomée mondiale sur les problèmatiques de réserves et d’exploration concernant le pétrole et le gaz naturel.
(no date)
Another book on peak oil appearing in France.
Dry Dipstick launches “Beyond Peak” website
Mick Winter, press release
Napa Valley, California – DryDipstick.com, a popular Peak Oil metadirectory of information on the impending decrease in oil production, today launches a sister website “Beyond Peak,” located at www.beyondpeak.com.
The new website focuses on preparation for, and dealing with, the effects of Peak Oil, economic collapse, and a host of other looming disruptions, any one of which could cause serious problems in our society.
Mick Winter, founder of both Dry Dipstick and Beyond Peak, says: “Many visitors to Dry Dipstick have told us, ‘Okay, we get Peak Oil. Now what can we do about it?'”
We’ve created “Beyond Peak” to give hundreds of answers to that single question. The website provides access to the information, resources and tools that people need to move their families, neighborhoods and communities closer to sustainable, self-sufficient living.”
(5 November 2005)
What Shell and BP say about energy supply
Phil Hart, An Introduction to Peak Oil (blog)
“The world is not running out of oil and gas” [BP]
“We can continue to meet our growing demand for energy” [Shell]
BP and Shell are repeating this statement loud and clear. There is no doubt about their public position. However, they are also making it clear that the challenges to meet energy demand are becoming much greater.
(20 October 2005)
The empty promise of technology
Dan Crawford, The Republic (Canada)
…Blind faith is most notable in society’s glorification of technology. This has created a consensus that technology can conquer any obstacle. But for many, when questioned as to how something works, they either openly confess they have no idea or offer up an explanation based on imagination.
Ignorance can best be seen in the reliance we have placed in our societal infrastructure without the knowledge of how it works. …Take electricity for example. Where does it originate from? Are there factories that “make” this commodity? Is the electricity from a coal generation plant different than that produced at a nuclear power plant?
…Things get interesting because, when we take a good look around and reduce all of the technologies we use into their simpler terms, we invariably end up back at fossil fuels. Which brings me to this question: If we are such a technologically-advanced civilization, why are we so dependent on fossil fuels?
My answer is that maybe we aren’t that advanced after all.
(October 27 to November 9, 2005 issue)
Virginia: Energy situation in America
Tony Noerpel, Progressive Action League. (Virginia)
Summary of peak oil from a new advocacy group, the Loudoun County Committee for a Sustainable Society, now starting work in Virgina
(17 October 2005)
Expert: World’s oil running out
Answer lies with renewable energy, professor says
Bill Medley, Evansville Courier & Press
Increasing consumption rates coupled with a growing population will eventually result in the complete depletion of the world’s oil reserves, an expert told an energy industry group Friday.
Albert Bartlett, a retired physics professor from the University of Colorado, delivered that message to members of the Illinois Oil and Gas Association at the group’s fall meeting at Casino Aztar.
“The growth of population and the growth of rates of consumption cannot be sustained,” Bartlett said. “It isn’t debatable, unless you want to debate arithmetic.”
Through numerous charts, graphs and formulas, Bartlett debunked pronouncements from various experts over the years who attempted to estimate the amount of oil or coal left in the Earth.
(5 November 2005)
