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Life in a Post-Carbon World
Nicholas von Hoffman, The Nation
…The big fact is that the major oilfields around the globe are getting tired and are in decline. In due course, unless somebody finds a lot of undiscovered oil, Browne [of BP] and his corporate confreres will have an ever-diminishing amount of oil to sell at an ever-increasing price. Additional assistance in driving up the price of oil may come from politicians in the United States and Great Britain and Israel. Since 9/11, prices at the pump have doubled. If these three countries go ahead with their hearts’ desire, an attack on Iran, gasoline at $7 a gallon sounds about right.
Because more people (China and India) with more money want more of a lessening supply of oil, prices will go into zoom mode before long. But how long is before long? It could be three years, it could be ten or it could be fifteen years–or just when your grandchildren will be going to college or hitting the job market.
For all kinds of reasons, the age of cheap, plentiful oil is coming to a rapid close. And that is a greater, surer and more profound threat to Western civilization as we know it than Al Qaeda multiplied by a hundred.
…The economic and therefore the political consequences, even if we are somewhat prepared, will be shocking in ways only a few presently understand. Most of us have been nurtured to believe that after a few adjustments are made by way of “energy conservation” and the “miracle of technology,” we shall be on our merry way as before. We buy it when George Bush remarks, almost absent-mindedly, that America is addicted to oil but that he and his allies have the biofuel methadone needed to kick the habit. Well, methadone doesn’t work on heroin junkies, and it won’t work on oil junkies either.
If we are to survive, much less prosper, in a time when oil will vie in price with Cristal, we must not only think outside the box; we must get rid of the box. We must do something Americans have never imagined: Give up on economic growth. We must abandon the long-held idea that we can grow our way out of every problem, that growth is the path to achieve every national goal.
…We can begin to move from being the Can Do Society to the Make Do Society. It means, at the minimum, that our apples will no longer be grown in Chile and our underwear will no longer be manufactured in Indonesia. Beyond that it means that businesses that are dependent on the use of staggering amounts of energy, like Wal-Mart, will either have to redesign themselves or enter the history books.
It means that while America can still be the home of the free and the brave, the free and the brave are not going to be living a life of waste and excess. The old model is out of date. Either we start working on a new one right now or in too short a time the free and the brave will be fighting one another for a whiff of air-conditioning in the summer or a place by the fire on the cold nights to come.
(15 Aug 2006)
The most explicit description of peak oil that has appeared in the liberal-left Nation magazine. Unfortunately, this article is “web-only.” Columnist Nicholas von Hoffman is a long-time political commentator, known for his fiery views. -BA
The more precious commodity in 2050: Water or oil?
Eric Berger, Houston Chronicle
I’m sure most readers here are familiar with the concept of peak oil, and there’s another article today on the increasing concern over the scarcity of fresh water. So I thought I would ask a simple question: by mid-century which commodity will be most precious — oil or water?
The case for oil: This seems like the natural choice, with oil prices unlikely to fall below $70 a barrel any time soon. And if you subscribe to peak oil, which I somewhat do, then demand will soon exceed production capacity, perhaps within the next five years.
Today we consume four times as much oil as we discover, and demand is growing at about 2 percent per year. Finding additional supplies to increase the production rate is a real problem as most major oil fields are well-matured. Already 54 of the 65 most important oil-producing countries have declining production.
Water is everywhere. There’s plenty of it in the oceans, but you need power for desalinization plants. Where will that come from? You guessed it — oil.
(17 Aug 2006)
The article appears on Berger’s blog “SciGuy, a sciented blog.” Interesting that reporter Berger linked to an article on peakoil.com and assumed his readers were familiar with the concept of peak oil. The message appears to be getting out. -BA
Bye Bye Petroleum
B Leamy, Corporate Watch
With demand for oil soaring yet supply stable at best, the idea that oil stocks have ‘peaked’ is increasingly influential. So what are the latest theories around peak oil?
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Around two hundred scientists, economists, analysts and academics attended the 5th International Workshop on Oil and Gas Depletion in Italy this month. Organized by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), this event moved on from their previous conferences, which concentrated mostly on providing evidence and attempting to forecast an actual date. This year, most of the invited speakers considered that the argument had now been won and were instead focusing more on possibilities for mitigating the consequences of the coming end of cheap oil.
Colin Campbell, honorary chairman of ASPO international, began the conference with a prediction that peak oil would bring a succession of price spikes followed by global recession. He warned that current financial structures would be threatened, as the power to control money shifts, and suggested that a new era of geopolitics would emerge, with energy rich Russia ascending while energy depleted US and Europe compete with China for finite resources.
Charles Hall, a professor at the State University of New York, told those gathered that oil production is beginning to experience diminishing energy returns as crude becomes harder and more expensive to find. A yield of 100 barrels for every barrel invested was typical in 1930; the ratio had dropped to 30 to 1 by the 1970s and has now plummeted to 15 to 1 or less. ‘It doesn’t matter how much you find if it costs you a barrel to get that barrel’, he said.
Commenting on the conference, Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review, said, ‘What is becoming ever clearer is that Peak Oil is just one component of a range of challenges confronting our societies and our way of life – climate change, food supply, water resources and energy resources.’
Dennis Meadows, author of Limits to Growth, told ASPO-5 that almost all of his 35 year old predictions of ecological collapse are coming true. ‘We’re facing a lot of peaks and oil is just one of them….’
Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World was on hand to promote his new book, or more importantly, to promote what he hopes is a plan for a sensible energy future in the form of the ‘Oil Depletion Protocol’. This protocol was originally put forward in 2002 by the prominent petroleum geologist Dr Colin Campbell and aims to obtain agreements from countries to reduce oil imports and exports by a specified amount each year, about 2.6 percent. By doing so signatory nations would help mitigate the negative consequences of an over-reliance on cheap oil and help prepare for a global decline in the world’s oil supply….
Chris Skrebowski, the editor of Petroleum Review, said, ‘collectively, we’re still in denial.’ Based on projections focusing on oil flows instead of reserves, he boldly stated that, ‘We have 1,500 days until peak and tomorrow we’ll have one day less.’
(17 Aug 2006)
The Politics of Dancing
Matthew Herbert’s latest masterpiece sounds off against the oil industry
Brad Knutson, New City Chicago
Legendary English electronic producer and composer Matthew Herbert is back in Chicago this week supporting his latest masterpiece, “Scale.” Released earlier this summer, critics have gushed that it may be Herbert’s most accessible and pop-friendly album to date, while at the same time still furthering his reputation as the master of collage and music concrete. So how does one who samples coffin doors, gas pumps, meteorites and bombing aircraft come up with one of the best dance albums of the year?
Q:..your latest album, “Scale,” is a statement against the oil companies and our relentless pursuit of fossil fuels. It’s a timely subject, but one that the world has been struggling with for quite a while. What made you decide to pursue this topic at this particular moment?
A: Personally, it was part of my research for “Plat du Jour,” my previous record, which was all about the food industry. I’ve been reading about oil for a long time but went a little further and realized the biggest consumer of oil is the food industry. We associate oil with cars and high prices in our gas tanks, but actually it’s the entire structure of our civilization in the West. I’ve always been aware of it, but it wasn’t until “Plat du Jour” that I realized quite how entirely we rely on it. Then reading further, it seemed we may have actually reached “peak oil,” in which case we’ve got quite a big adjustment immediately ahead of us.
(17 Aug 2006)
Michael Ruppert: A Permanent Goodbye to the United States
(“By the Light of a Burning Bridge”)
Michael C. Ruppert, From The Wilderness
CARACAS – It was about a week before I left the United States forever that I watched Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. tell Charlie Rose something all of us already know in our hearts. “Today,” he said, “the United States is hated around the world far worse than it was at the height of the Vietnam War.” I remember the Vietnam War. I will never forget it.
…In my book Crossing the Rubicon I wrote that events that took place in the five years following those attacks would determine the course of human history for centuries to come. We now stand at the brink of that fateful anniversary.
…My country is dead. Its people have surrendered to tyranny, and in so doing, they have become tyranny’s primary support group; its base constituency; its chief defender. Every day they offer their endorsement of tyranny by banking in its banks and spending their borrowed money with the corporations that run it. The great Neocon strategy of George H.W. Bush has triumphed. Convince the American people that they can’t live without the “good things”, then sit back and watch as they endorse the progressively more outrageous crimes you commit as you throw them bones with ever-less meat on them. All the while, lock them into debt. Destroy the middle class, the only political base that need be feared. Make them accept, because of their own shared guilt, ever-more repressive police state measures. Do whatever you want.
…My shame today is that it took a set of circumstances where my life was in danger to make me make the right choice, a choice I would now like to say was totally a matter of conscience, but it was not. The truth is that I was prompted to do what I should have done long ago out of a well-justified desire to save my life.
In this life I have chosen not to die a martyr’s death. As I am learning every day, there are more difficult and demanding ways to write the final chapters of one’s life. I left the United States with one large suitcase, my laptop, and a backpack. I left behind my precious library, most of my clothing, my personal possessions, my guns, and a house full of furniture. I brought with me less than eight thousand dollars in cash and gold to start the final segment of my life.
..A different world is possible. A better world is possible. It took the imminent threat of my own death at the hands of my government to make me fully admit to my innermost self what I have known for years. Having failed to change my country’s direction after 30 years of effort, I had to stop living in the problem and start living in the solution. If I did not, my soul would have died just as surely as my body would have died after the recent burglary that savaged our offices.
I do not know where I will spend the rest of my days. Maybe in Venezuela, maybe in Mexico with the Zapatistas, maybe in Bolivia, maybe in France, Germany, or even Russia. But because Venezuela has become the singular world leader in resisting US domination under the courageous, intelligent, and inspired leadership of Hugo Chavez, I want to begin the rest of my days here.
Being freer to speak, to learn, to experience and to witness real solutions being discovered and implemented by peoples willing to take risks and who understand the challenges, I will be better able to report usefully to FTW readers and the world in future books and articles.
…The burglary that took place at the new FTW offices in Ashland, Oregon on Sunday, June 25th of this year was the equivalent of my Kristalnacht, a replay of the night in 1938 when Nazi storm troopers, aided by an increasingly cowed and cowardly citizenry, raided synagogues all over Germany and smashed every piece of glass and every window they could find. German Jews not in denial who could (literally) read the writing on the walls (Juden Raus!) fled for their lives in the short time remaining before The Holocaust. Those who denied the meaning of that very specific warning remained in Germany, and their fate was sealed.
…As for the burglary itself, there will be another time and another place, when I can and will say more about what happened. Certain important events have yet to unfold, and I’m holding other key facts until the time is right. There are facts about the timing of the burglary that may eventually connect to events here in Venezuela. But for now, suffice it to say that it was the final outrage in almost three decades of attempts to silence my voice and the eight-year-old voice of From The Wilderness.
It is almost certain that the burglary was perpetrated, at minimum, based upon inside information provided by recently fired or resigned FTW staff members.
…To the end of my days I will never forget the indescribable beauty of the Rogue Valley in the brief time I was allowed to live there. I will always remember the wonderful, spiritual and courageous friends who came to our aid in time of need and who still remain close friends and supporters of FTW.
But at 55, as I looked at the smashed computers and realized that I had humiliated the government one too many times, I understood two things. I was too old to go on fighting these increasingly ugly and dangerous battles. And there was nothing left in the United States worth fighting for.
(16 Aug 2006)
Michael Ruppert makes the difficult decision to become a political exile. The original article is much longer. It is also reprinted in VHeadline. Ruppert has written extensively about peak oil and 9/11. -BA
