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Tom Mast interview
Our faith-based energy policy
Victor Tan Chen, PULSE / In The Fray
The science radio show Explorations recently rebroadcast an interview with energy expert Tom Mast that is worth listening to if you’re more than a tad concerned about rising gas prices and heating costs. Mast, a mechanical engineer who has worked in the oil industry for decades and is author of the book Over a Barrel: A Simple Guide to the Oil Shortage, offers the best analysis I’ve heard about what today’s high oil prices mean and what we should be doing about it. Instead of getting caught up in secondary questions like automobile fuel efficiency or drilling for oil in Alaska, Mast focuses on the key problems: the supply of oil is finite; the world will experience oil shortages within a decade or two; and the current crop of energy alternatives are either too unreliable or too polluting to replace oil.
(5 November 2005)
The original article has a link to the audio of the Mast interview.
A way out of Iraq: relocalize economic life
Aaron G. Lehmer, Post Carbon Institute
Any lingering delusions about the nobility of the Iraq War were shattered in late October with former State Dept. Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson’s admission that the Bush team had seriously considered launching military operations to seize oilfields throughout the Middle East. Thankfully, only Iraq has managed to be the test case for such insanity — at least for now.
Wilkerson has been getting a lot of media buzz in recent months — along with plenty of pummeling from right-wing pundits — for calling former boss Colin Powell’s WMD speech to the United Nations “the lowest point” in his life. Wilkerson’s latest comments reveal just how precarious the White House regards America’s present energy situation.
At a recent foreign policy event put on by the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., the retired colonel stated: “No one ever likes to talk about SUVs and oil and consumption. Well, we have an economy and a society that is built on the consumption of those resources. We better get fast at work changing the foundation — and I don’t see us fast at work on that, by the way, another failure of this administration, in my mind — or we better be ready to take those assets.”
That last statement revealed Wilkerson’s kinship with the late George Kennan, a chief foreign policy architect during the Cold War. Acknowledging that the U.S.’s disproportionate control over and access to the world’s wealth at the time was without historical parallel, he argued that America’s real task was “to maintain this position of disparity,” by force if necessary.
(1 November 2005)
UK DTI: Government to launch new study on oil depletion
energy365
The UK government is planning an inquiry into the longevity of global oil supplies as campaigners warn of an approaching crisis, the head of the Department of Trade and Industry’s energy markets unit said yesterday. “We can expect that an investigation will be announced within the next few weeks” aimed at allowing a more open discussion on the arrival of “peak oil,” the point at which worldwide oil production begins to decline, suggested the DTI’s Claire Durkin.
In a speech to an industry gathering at London’s Energy Institute, Durkin said that although the peak is widely acknowledged as inevitable it isn’t an immediate prospect. “There is no imminent danger of global oil production peaking,” she said, as new technologies and growing supplies outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting countries will meet market requirements.
Nonetheless, even if conventional oil can be relied on for the next 30-60 years, more attention needs to be paid to energy conservation and renewable fuels.
The speech comes as a diffuse coalition of geologists, economists and activists have been warning that global production could decline as early as 2007 as major oilfields mature. The government’s acknowledgement of the problem was seen as an encouraging sea change by Chris Skrebowski, editor of the Energy Institute’s Petroleum Review and proponent of the peak oil argument. “The Americans are waking up to peak oil, so now the UK is following their lead, but the government doesn’t want to talk about it in case they scare people,” Skreboswki said.
(3 November 2005)
Peak oil workshop for community leaders Dec 2-4 in Illinois (small PDF)
Megan Quinn, Community Solutions
An intensive training for 20-25 prospective peak oil community leaders which will provide
the tools, strategies, resources and practical experiences to educate your community on
peak oil and work with them to implement local solutions.
Download application. Download course outline.
(November 2005)
Life After Cheap Oil — Apollo and Beyond
Tim Montague, Rachel’s Weekly #828
… An important step has been taken to get us off oil. The Apollo Alliance — a coalition of labor unions, environmental groups and urban leaders, now in its third year, is taking a stand for a cleaner-energy economy intended to free us from foreign oil by 2015. This will happen through greater energy efficiency, economic innovation and reinvigorated manufacturing, transportation and energy industries.
…But is Apollo enough? Let’s assume the Apollo Alliance is successful and by 2015 we have weaned ourselves from the grip of foreign and domestic oil. We’ve greened the economy, created high- wage manufacturing jobs — even saved the U.S. auto industry — and greatly improved our overall energy efficiency. What then? Green-house-gas-free alternative energy will be meeting perhaps 40% percent of our energy needs at best. We will still be relying on coal-burning power plants — currently meeting 23% of our energy needs but slated to rise to 40% in the coming decades — and natural gas, pumping massive quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, not to mention the sulfur, mercury, and other toxicants released from coal.
…The oil problem that Apollo is tackling is the low hanging fruit — an important step, no doubt, but one that doesn’t answer the bigger question: How do we reconcile a world with 7 billion people all clamoring for a western lifestyle? Even environmentalists aren’t talking much about this because it forces us to look at our false premise of endless economic growth. It’s heresy to question perpetual growth, but — sooner rather than later — we must have that conversation.
(13 October 2005)
Tools with a life of their own (no link to article)
Richard Heinberg, Museletter
…the discussion about mechanization’s collateral damage has intensified relatively recently, due to the fact the scale of technology’s intrusion into our lives and its toll upon the environment have grown enormously in just the past two centures.
Some techno-critics have sought to explain this recent explosion in the power and variety of our tools by tying it to developments in philosophy (Cartesian dualism) or economics (capitalism). Strangely, few of the critics have discussed at any length the role of fossil fuels in the industrial revolution.
…The industrial revolution represented one of history’s basic infrastructural shifts; everything about human society changed as a result. This revolution did not come about primarily because of religious or political developments, but because a few prior inventions (steel, gears, and a primitive steam engine…) came together in the presence of an abundant new energy source: fossil fuels — first coal, then oil and natural gas.
…With the discourse on Peak Oil … has come a focus on energy as a determining factor in social evolution, at least as important as technology per se, or ideas, or political struggles. And with this shift has also come the sense that it is resource limits that will probably eventually drive basic, cultural change, rather than moral persuasion, mass enlightenment, or some new invention.
…Peak Oil will be a fundamental cultural watershed, at least as important as the industrial revolution or the development of agriculture.
…In the best instance, the next generations will find themselves in a low-energy regime in which moral lessons from the fossil-fuel era and its demise have been seared into cultural memory. Maybe they will be able to maintain local, renewables-based electrical grids, and maybe also some powered transportation, so that they will still have access to a few tools with lives of their own. Perhaps not.
…We humans tend to learn really tough lessons only be bitter experience. These are tough lessons indeed. If we learn them, perhaps the initially exhilirating but now bitter experience of addicting ourselves to fossil fuels and then having to go cold turkey will not have been entirely pointless.
(November 2005)
This is a short extract from the latest of Heinberg’s Museletters. The entire contents is available to subscribers (subscription information).
Richard Heinberg will be speaking on Nov. 15 in Grass Valley, Nevada County, California (see Nevada County’s Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy (APPLE) press release.
New peak oil sites
We’ve gotten word of several new sites devoted to peak oil:
OilPeaks-dot-com “When Oil Peaks You’ll Hear About It First. Everything You Need To Survive The Post-Petro World Is Here.”
Long Emergency: “Peak Oil will change the world as we know it, possibly with drastic social, economic, and political consequences in the coming years. The most important thing now is to become educated and stay informed on this subject.”
Index Research is beginning a series on oil and Russia: “Part I: Halliburton, BP and Russian Black Gold”
(November 2005)
Some suggestions for people thinking of starting a peak oil site:
- Do you really need to start your own site? Perhaps you can publish your work more effectively on an existing site. By so doing, you strengthen the PO community and save yourself the hassle of maintaining your own site.
- Try to find your own niche — a special subject that you want to work with, but that is not currently covered. A good bet would be to examine how your profession or interest will be impacted by Peak Oil. For example, peak oil and permaculture, peak oil and city planning, peak oil and mountain climbing.
- Provide a service to your readers. Over the long haul, interesting news and helpful information will bring you readers, whereas a steady diet of opinions and jokes may not.
-BA
Oil no longer the dressing for the ‘3,000 mile Caesar salad’
Russ Grayson, On Line Opinion (Australia)
When [NSW North Coast community educator] Tim Winton addressed a seminar on peak oil at the Byron Bay Community Centre this year, so many turned up that people had to sit on the floor and spilled out of the doors. This level of interest surprised Tim and indicates that, in this part of the world at least, peak oil is something that is starting to capture the public imagination. The audience had come to hear about the potential impact on the region and what they could do about it. Tim proposed that localism might offer some solutions.
“The economy will not grow if the energy supply does not,” Tim told the audience. “Yet, this can be seen as an opportunity. The Northern Rivers could become a world leader in what to do in a situation of scarcity and there are things we can do both personally and as a region. On the personal level, avoid debt. On the community level, invest in the regional economy. Reduce car-dependence and adopt pedestrian-friendly urban planning. Develop local sources of energy such as biofuels, solar and wind. Adopt energy conservation. We need to educate and make people more aware of the situation. Importantly, we need to work out how to do more through good design.”
A challenge like peak oil could be expected to generate a climate of doom and gloom, however this is not what is happening. There is optimism that the Northern Rivers region could become a leader in a peak oil future.
“Byron Bay has the climate for doing things sustainably and for leading Australia”, claims Sarah West, a Lennox Head environmental scientist who works with local town planner, Geolink, and who previously worked with Sydney Water. “Prices will go up as supply declines – and that includes water, goods, fuel and food. You might know that much of our food is transported great distances – this is the scenario of the ‘3,000 mile Caesar salad’. We can do much by deciding to buy local foods and locally-produced goods. We need to decentralise.”
Popular Green’s Mayor, Jan Barham, agrees and encourages residents to feel motivated rather than discouraged. “We live here because we are a bit smarter than the rest”, she says with an air of mock smugness, “and we stand up for what is right. There’s enough of us here to make a difference. You’re only going to show the world what’s possible when you have a bold community. Let’s stay positive.” Barham disagrees with avoiding conventional politics in the search for solutions: “Politics – it’s the only way I know to get things done in a reasonable time.”
(7 November 2005)
Oil: the beginning of the end
David Schechter, WCCO tv (Minneapolis)
There’s a simple idea that powers our vibrant world: We’ll never run out of oil.
Oil moves our cars, lifts our planes and feeds our families. But it turns out we’re wrong about oil. We are running out.
“We ought to give thanks for the last 100 years and realize that the next 100 isn’t going to be so easy,” said Kenneth Deffeyes, author of “Beyond Oil.”
Deffeyes is a professor emeritus of geology at Princeton University and a former geologist with Shell Oil. This Thanksgiving, he predicts the world’s supply of cheap oil will head into a permanent decline.
(6 November 2005)
