Every generation has its taboo, and ours is this: that the resource upon which our lives have been built is running out. We don’t talk about it because we cannot imagine it. This is a civilization in denial.1
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The available stocks of oil to be discovered and used are fast running out |
The effects of this will be two-fold. The first is that production levels themselves will peak, making the extraction of remaining oil supplies far more difficult and expensive. The second is that, even if we find ways to wring every available drop of oil from the earth, the resource itself will actually run out.
Like a tragedy, the crisis we face is set to inexorably unfold. It is a denouement that is likely to herald the end of modern industrial civilization as we know it, which is perhaps why, as environmentalist George Monbiot says, we collectively choose to deny that it is taking place.
Disaster Just Around the Corner
The depth of the crisis is revealed most clearly in the statistics. Despite closely guarded company secrets about potential new supplies, most experts agree that total world oil reserves originally amounted to about two trillion barrels. We have already consumed 900 billion barrels, leaving around 1.1 trillion barrels left2. With just over half the world’s oil supply still available for exploitation, doomsday scenarios may seem unjustified. But in reality, disaster is just around the corner.
The first problem is that newly discovered oil reserves are far easier and cheaper to exploit than diminishing reserves because the flow rate falls as soon as production starts. Extraction companies can use techniques such as applying water pressure to maintain flow, but these are only temporary solutions. This means that production peaks when approximately half the supplies have been consumed: exactly the position we appear to be in today. Thereafter, the extraction of oil becomes far more difficult and costly. As a result, supply becomes more erratic and oil prices go through the roof – with inevitable competition and conflict as nations and interest groups fight over those dwindling resources that remain.
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The USA – and other Great Powers – seem set to pursue explicit ‘oil wars’ in their attempts to secure available supplies through armed intervention if necessary. |
The second problem is, however, even worse. In our highly industrialized – and industrializing – world, the demand for oil is increasing not declining. We currently consume around 80 million barrels of oil a day, but this is set to rise to around 112 million barrels a day as the appetite of the world’s population for oil, particularly in fast-developing China, continues to grow.3 This means that, even if extracting the remaining oil were simple and cheap, there is only enough oil left to satisfy current levels of demand for another 40 years. Again, at first glance, this may appear a comfortable cushion, but in reality the problem is imminent. It means that anyone under the age of 40 will see the availability of oil dwindle and fall within their lifetimes. By the time the babies being born today reach middle age, their world will be one in which oil will be extremely scarce.
Or Already Here?
While debate continues to rage about exactly when the world’s production of oil will actually peak, it is possible that, quietly and with little fanfare, the actual event has already occurred. Richard Hardman, trustee of the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre and a former president of the UK Geological Society, says, “there is a growing consensus that we are heading for an imminent peak [in oil production], if not already past it”.4
Kenneth Deffeyes, a geophysicist at Princeton University, agrees. “I am 99 percent confident that 2004 will be the top of the mathematically smoothed curve of oil production,” says Deffeyes. Indeed, he believes the highest single year may already have passed. “2000 may stand as a blip above the curve and be in the Guinness Book of World Records.”5
Such figures are inevitably disputed. The US Department of Energy calculates that oil production won’t peak until 2037. Later dates for the oil peak are also favored by companies such as Exxon and Shell.6 But many experts question these figures since they rely on a range of untested variables, including the exploitation of ‘dirtier’ sources of oil with as yet unused technology, or because they are based on projected demand rather than projected supply calculations. But even if the optimists are correct, the problem will only be delayed for another 20 or 30 years. The fact remains that our demand for oil can no longer be met by supply. In such circumstances, the only question left to ask is: what are we going to do to adapt?
Miscalculations
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The motor car has had a bigger impact on our living and working patterns than anything else |
We consume energy for four major purposes: to generate electricity, for heating, for agricultural and industrial production and for transport. While alternative sources of energy are available for the generation of electricity and heating, the agricultural, industrial and transport infrastructure is completely dependent on oil, and no alternatives appear to be on hand to take its place. The effects of a lack of oil on these aspects of our way of life will therefore be dramatic.
As one example, let us take the relationships between transport, housing and work. The motor car, arguably, has had a bigger impact on our living and working patterns than anything else. In the USA, entire cities are designed around the car; in much of the rest of the world, the situation is little different, as living in modern suburbs is simply impossible without regular access to a car: to get to work, to go food shopping, to get the children to and from school. Indeed, in the USA, the pursuit of the ‘American Dream’ is unthinkable without such transport.
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Oil prices now seem set on an inexorable rise, leading to ever more explicit competition for its use. |
When, in the early twentieth century car manufacturer Henry Ford declared that “history is bunk”, he was staking his vision of the future on an endless supply of cheap crude. Without it, our modernist consumerist aspirations are impossible to realize. If people cannot get to work, the heart of the modern economy will collapse. The same is true for our dependency on industrialized agriculture and the cheap transport of food, and for our ever-increasing addiction to cheap flights. Without the capacity to access such goods and services, the modern ‘globalized’ economy simply cannot operate.
As many commentators have pointed out, Western governments appear to be able to get away with doing almost anything, as long as they can guarantee the prosperity of their populations.7 Without a sustainable transport infrastructure, such prosperity will no longer be guaranteed. The result could be the return of ‘history’ with a vengeance as the Western working classes once again struggle to make ends meet. Similar scenarios are likely across the world, as aspirant workers everywhere suffer acute withdrawal symptoms from their oil ‘fix’.
Adaptation a Must
In fact, as environmentalists have long been arguing, what is needed is a drastic adaptation by the workers of the world if we are to survive the disappearance of oil. Working, living and production patterns will have to draw on a range of non-oil based energy supplies, and become far more localized than they are at present. Such adaptations are, as environmentalists also point out, necessary if we are to combat global warming. As the stark truths about the availability of oil hit home, such lifestyle changes will become inevitable. But at the moment, there is very little sign that anybody – beyond a few eco-hippies – are either willing or able to make such adjustments, for either themselves, their descendents, or for the planet itself.8
As a result, we are likely to witness not planned moves to increasingly sustainable ways of living, but destabilization and chaos as we struggle to adjust, both to the reality of diminishing oil availability, and with our refusal to acknowledge and deal with it.
Oil prices now seem set on an inexorable rise, leading to ever more explicit competition for its use.9 The USA – and other Great Powers – seem set to pursue more or less explicit ‘oil wars’, such as the invasion of Iraq, in their attempts to secure available supplies through armed intervention if necessary. The ‘American Dream’, however, continues to remain the aspiration of choice for most across the world, lured by the seemingly endless temptations of consumerism and ‘freedom’, with the inevitable knock-on effects for those excluded from the global economy. At the same time, our relentless consumption of those supplies of oil that do remain will continue to have a major impact on global warming, with all the disastrous, documented effects climate change is likely to cause.
Our modern ways of being and doing appear to be on the verge of extinction. Whether the end of the oil extravaganza becomes the wake up call for the development of more sustainable ways of living, or the trigger for descent into barbarism and chaos, however, remains to be seen.
* Kate Prendergast is a British freelance researcher and journalist with a particular interest in African politics and development. Your emails will be forwarded to her by contacting the editor at: [email protected]
1- George Monbiot, The Bottom of the Barrel, the Guardian, December 2 2003
2– Bob Holmes and Nicola Jones. Brace yourself for the end of cheap oil. New Scientist, vol 179, issue 2406, 2nd August 2003
3- Ibid
4- Ibid
5- Ibid
6- Ibid
7– Neal Horsley, George W. Bush Is Not Stupid, Christian Gallery News Service, July 5, 2004
8- George Monbiot, Living With The Age of Entropy, the Guardian, 23 August 2004
