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Peak Oil
Waiting for the lights to go out
Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times
The greatest getting-and-spending spree in the history of the world is about to end. The 200-year boom that gave citizens of the industrial world levels of wealth, health and longevity beyond anything previously known to humanity is threatened on every side. Oil is running out; the climate is changing at a potentially catastrophic rate; wars over scarce resources are brewing; finally, most shocking of all, we don’t seem to be having enough ideas about how to fix any of these things.
It’s been said before, of course: people are always saying the world will end and it never does. Maybe it won’t this time, either. But, frankly, it’s not looking good. Almost daily, new evidence is emerging that progress can no longer be taken for granted, that a new Dark Age is lying in wait for ourselves and our children.
To understand how this could happen, it is necessary to grasp just how extraordinary, how utterly unprecedented are the privileges we in the developed world enjoy now. Born today, you could expect to live 25 to 30 years longer than your Victorian forebears, up to 45 years longer than your medieval ancestors and at least 55 years longer than your Stone Age precursors. It is highly unlikely that your birth will kill you or your mother or that, in later life, you will suffer typhoid, plague, smallpox, dysentery, polio, or dentistry without anaesthetic. You will enjoy a standard of living that would have glazed the eyes of the Emperor Nero, thanks to the 2% annual economic growth rate sustained by the developed world since the industrial revolution. You will have access to greater knowledge than Aristotle could begin to imagine, and to technical resources that would stupefy Leonardo da Vinci.
…Jonathan Huebner is an amiable, very polite and very correct physicist who works at the Pentagon’s Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California. He took the job in 1985, when he was 26. An older scientist told him how lucky he was. In the course of his career, he could expect to see huge scientific and technological advances. But by 1990, Huebner had begun to suspect the old man was wrong.
…Puzzled, he undertook some research of his own…What he found was that the rate of innovation peaked in 1873 and has been declining ever since. In fact, our current rate of innovation — which Huebner puts at seven important technological developments per billion people per year — is about the same as it was in 1600. By 2024 it will have slumped to the same level as it was in the Dark Ages, the period between the end of the Roman empire and the start of the Middle Ages. …Huebner offers two possible explanations: economics and the size of the human brain.
…The question thus becomes: is our liberal-democratic-capitalist way of doing things, like cities, an irreversible improvement in the human condition, or is it like the Roman empire, a shooting star of wealth and success, soon to be extinguished?
…Some suggest that this institutional breakdown is now happening in the developed world, in the form of a “democratic deficit”. This is happening at a number of levels. There is the supranational. In this, either large corporations or large institutions — the EU, the World Bank — gradually remove large areas of decision-making from the electorate, hollowing out local democracies. Or there is the national level. Here, massively increased political sophistication results in the manipulation, almost hypnotising, of electorates.
(16 October 2005)
An intriguing, long essay on the viability of our civilzation. The last part gives a quick summary of Peak Oil with mentions of Matthew Simmons, Jan Lundberg and die-off. Prof G at The Oil Drum finds the article a little too much for him, but provocative.
Author Appleyard is a writer for the Sunday Times and an articulate critic of science (short bio). Some links:
Review of “Understanding the Present: Science and the Soul of Modern Man” (Link to Amazon)
Review of “Aliens: Why They Are Here”
George Bush and the meaning of life (essay)
Nature in its infinite power asks an awkward question (essay)
Appleyard’s Millenium (essays)
-BA
Book: When Technology Fails (A Manual for Self Reliance and Planetary Survival)
“MIT Engineer Helps America to be Prepared”
Matthew Stein
Hurricane Katrina, the Tsunami in Asia, and 9/11 really bring it home. How many of us are prepared for disruptions of this magnitude? How will you cope if the water stops flowing out of your tap? Or when gasoline and electricity are unavailable? When the doctors are overloaded, can you deal with common medical emergencies? In today’s world of super-
storms, terrorist acts, “peak oil”, global warming, record breaking floods, severe droughts, rolling blackouts, and earthquakes, it is likely that most of us will see significant disruptions in the flow of electricity and goods at some point in our lives. “When Technology Fails” can help anyone to prepare and cope with what may lie ahead.
Why I wrote this book:
You might wonder what an MIT engineer is doing writing about the failure of technology. I doubt that we will see technology fail in one single blow, but believe that we will see increasing environmental and political instabilities that will cause disruptions in the flow of electricity and goods to large numbers of people. I do not consider myself a survivalist and had never considered writing a book even remotely like this until I “received” a complete title, scope and holographic outline for this book in an instantaneous flash while meditating just before Thanksgiving of 1997…
Ten things you can do for the earth
The greatest threats to our future
About the Author
Reviews (including comments by Matt Savinar and Carla Emery):
If you remember Stuart Brand’s famous Whole Earth Catalogs, you have an idea of the format and style of the book. It is a kind of encyclopedic reference book that just happens to be an exciting read as well. It’s subject-like the catalogs from decades ago-is survival. The tone is purely practical, and the language is always either totally understandable or fully explained.
–Joseph Bean – Maui Weekly
(October 2005)
Not your usual book on survival strategies. The book was mentioned at the end of Bryan Appleyard’s essay mentioned above. Author Stein is a peaknik, citing several books on PO among his recommended books. He suggests developing “a survivor personality: Survivors spend almost no time getting upset. They have a good sense of humour and laugh at mistakes.” -BA
South Africa & the Oil Price Crisis
FEASTA (Ireland)
A new Feasta document, South Africa & the Oil Price Crisis, examines a way in which the poor in many African countries could be protected if, as oil and gas get scarcer, their cost goes higher and higher over the years ahead. It can now be downloaded from the website in PDF format. (It is 710 K, so probably best handled by right-clicking on the link with your mouse and then selecting “save target to disk”). It is being printed in South Africa and will be circulated at the national conference there which opens on October 17th.
From the report:
Although oil prices are already causing extreme hardship to the poor in many African countries they are likely go higher still. South Africa could use its prestige and power to work with its neighbours to prevent living standards getting even worse.
Higher oil prices have not only widened the gap between richer and poorer people. They have also widened the gap between richer and poorer countries… Attempts to protect the poor by subsidising their fuel are proving financially ruinous for many governments around the world and violence has broken out as several schemes have been scrapped. This paper looks at a way in which the poor could be protected if, as oil and gas get scarcer, their cost goes higher and higher over the years ahead.
…
Executive Summary
The package of measures proposed in this paper would help solve several global problems. These are:
Problem 1: High energy prices are hitting the poor.
Solution – give everyone on earth an individual energy ration coupon which they can sell for whatever it is worth when they receive it. When the energy price is high, the value of each ration coupon will be high too, so that they get enough money to buy a minimum amount of energy.
Problem 2: Some countries are much better placed to manage on limited supplies of fossil energy than others. Giving each person around the world the same energy allowance would be unfair.
Solution: don’t give all the energy ration coupons out to individuals during the early years of the system when the allocation would be quite high Keep some coupons back and put them in a Convergence Fund, to be used by governments to help their countries adapt.
Problem 3: The earth’s climate is warming dangerously.
Solution: reduce the number of energy ration coupons issued year by year until total emissions from energy use are no longer contributing to the greenhouse effect.
Problem 4: Extra energy is required for economic growth and if a country’s economy fails to grow, investment will stop and unemployment soar.
Solution: change the way that the country’s currency is put into circulation so that it does not disappear if firms can’t expand. If its government spent its currency into use rather than allowing banks to create it, its people’s purchasing power and employment could be maintained even if growth stopped…
(October 2005)
Rep. Bartlett to speak Monday at forum (no link)
Cliff Cumber, Frederick News Post
U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-6th, will join more than 10 other members of Congress addressing a national policy conference Monday on Capitol Hill. The conference will discuss policies related to: the utilization of renewable energy in the United States; supplying domestic energy; enhancing national security; creating jobs and wealth; improving the environment and human health; reducing the risks of climate change facing the U.S. The forum is being organized by American Council on Renewable Energy, in conjunction with the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency caucuses of the House and Senate. Other speakers include two Bush administration cabinet secretaries and experts in electricity, fuels, transportation, buildings and other aspects of using renewable energy.
“Enhancing our energy efficiency is a key goal of the Bush Administration,” said Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns. “Renewable energy is an exciting growth frontier for American agriculture. An innovative energy policy provides an opportunity to strengthen both our national security and rural economy.”
Mr. Bartlett will speak from 6-6:10 p.m.
(14 October 2005)
Excerpt from Political NOTES.
Why oil prices are high and why we don’t care
Lester B. Lave, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Oil prices hit $70 per barrel and have remained high because we want what we want and don’t much care what it costs.
The rise from $1.50 to $3 per gallon shows that the demand for gasoline isn’t responsive to price. Traffic jams from New York to New Delhi prove that we want cars, buying them as soon as we have a bit of money. We are more upset about traffic jams than gas prices.
One reason that gas prices are not important is that they are a small portion of the cost of driving. The cost of owning a Ford Taurus over its 150,000 mile lifetime is estimated to be $60,000 in purchase price, insurance, repairs and taxes. At $1.50 per gallon, the total cost rises to $71,000, of which only 15 percent is gas. At $3 per gallon, the total cost goes to $82,000, of which 27 percent is gas. The point is that if you want a Taurus, or even a Hummer, the price of gasoline makes little difference in whether you can afford the vehicle.
…To take control of our energy supply, we need to invest in alternative energy, which means committing ourselves to pay high prices for energy, even if world oil prices fall.
…Ending oil imports requires us to stop complaining about $3 gasoline and commit to keeping gas at $3 in order to induce greater efficiency and production of alternative fuels.
Beyond the gains from energy efficiency, we have hard choices: Changing our consumption patterns or having smaller cars, lower incomes or fewer people. That is a discussion for another day.
(Lester B. Lave is the Harry B. and James H. Higgins professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, director of CMU’s Green Design Initiative and co-director of its Electricity Industry Center.)
(16 October 2005)
The House of Cards
Dan Benbow, Get Underground (“creative resistance designed for the emancipation of the human spirit”)
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, buried under the transitory media focus on the one-third of local National Guard protecting oil in Iraq and the related suffering of America’s urban poor on home soil were urgent articles about the damage Katrina had done to oil refineries located in the Gulf of Mexico. Gas prices that had already gone up 20% over the previous year were expected to go higher, possibly much higher.
Gas prices quickly rose to more than $3/gallon, about half what Western Europeans pay. Opportunistic lawmakers proposed suspension of the gas tax as paroxysms of panic surfaced in long gas lines reminiscent of the late ‘70’s, when the CIA’s 25-year experiment in replacing a popularly-elected leader with an oil supply-friendly dictator backfired in Iran. The panic died, the media turned the public eye back to the flavor of the moment, and the corporate predators once again slipped back into the shadows waving their bags of gold to the gods of deregulation.
Absent in the 24-hour news cycle was a serious public dialogue about the larger implications of Katrina, from America’s abandonment of its most vulnerable citizens to the folly of thinking man can develop anytime, anywhere by “taming the land” to the utter insanity of constructing an economy and a lifestyle around a finite resource.
(16 October 2005)
Covers the hurricanes, overreliance on oil, global warming, 9/11 and sustainability.
Heinberg interview on KBOO (AUDIO)
Morning Talk RadioZine, radio4all
Richard Heinberg shares recent findings regarding Peak Oil and the quest for sustainable fuel use in a more energy frugal political economy. Per Fagering is the interviewer in the KBOO studio in Portland Oregon
(12 October 2005)
