Peak oil – Apr 27

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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

What happens when we’ve used the last drop?
Christopher Harvie, New Scotsman
SIXTY years ago the Orkney poet Edwin Muir wrote some lines which, in the panic surrounding the Grangemouth strike, feel like a premonition. They point to a world not too far in the future where our reliance on oil has become all too clear, and the way we live our lives all too fragile.

And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters crouched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
They’ll molder away and be like other loam.

Something of his prediction seems to be forming itself. The petrol age, scarcely making much of an impact when he wrote, now seems hastening towards its end.

Around the year 2000, the Californian Delphi research institute was predicting the $15 oil barrel for about 2010. We are now over $100 and there’s talk of a ‘stabilisation price’ as high as $300. This doesn’t just reflect the problems of forecasting; once a commodity like oil is in crisis, any notion of expectations goes out of the window.

Professor Christopher Harvie is the author of Fool’s Gold, a history of the North Sea oil industry. He is an SNP regional MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife
(27 April 2008)

Running on empty
Mark Hertsgaard, The Nation
It used to be that only environmentalists and paranoids warned about running out of oil. Not anymore. As climate change did over the past few years, peak oil seems poised to become the next big idea commanding the attention of governments, businesses and citizens the world over. The arrival of $119-a-barrel crude and $4-a-gallon gasoline this spring are but the most obvious signs that global oil production has or soon will peak. With global demand inexorably rising, a limited supply will bring higher, more volatile prices and eventually shortages that could provoke–to quote the title of the must-see peak oil documentary–the end of suburbia. If the era of cheap, abundant oil is indeed coming to a close, the world’s economy and, paradoxically, the fight against climate change could be in deep trouble.

Though largely unnoticed by the world media, a decisive moment in the peak oil debate came last September, when James Schlesinger declared that the “peakists” were right. You don’t get closer to the American establishment and energy business than Schlesinger, who has served as chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, head of the CIA, Defense Secretary, Energy Secretary and adviser to countless oil companies.

… activists in scores of towns and cities around the world are trying to prepare their communities for the transition to a post-oil economy. Rather than wait for national governments and multinational corporations to save them, these ordinary citizens are examining how their communities can produce their own energy, food, buildings and other essentials using local resources rather than materials that arrive from afar via oil-based transport. “Economic relocalization will be one of the inevitable impacts of the end of cheap transportation fuels,” argues peak oil theorist Richard Heinberg. In Britain this movement has taken the form of “transition towns,” which seek, in the words of organizer Rob Hopkins, “to design a conscious pathway down from the oil peak.” Drawing on the experience of his hometown of Totnes, in Devon, Hopkins has just published The Transition Handbook, which explains how other towns can also begin preparing for the post-oil future.

Some of the transition movement’s ideas–printing local currency, forming solar buying clubs, building “cob” houses made of mud–may seem quaint, inconvenient or naïve. But nothing is more naïve than assuming that the endless oil that modern societies grew addicted to over the past fifty years will last forever.

The Nation’s environment correspondent, is a fellow of The Nation Institute and the author of five books that have been translated into sixteen languages, including “Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future.” His next book is “Living Through the Storm: Our Future Under Global Warming.”
(24 April 2008)

Running on empty
J. Robinson West, Public Interest
SOUND BITES and sloganeering just won’t cut it anymore. Energy security-defined as reliable supplies at reasonable cost obtained in an environmentally sustainable manner-is no longer assured. All the presidential candidates loudly proclaim that they will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and, as a bonus, curb carbon emissions. Yet these same politicians, for the most part, have overlooked a serious problem. In so doing, they risk missing an important opportunity.

We are on the verge of an oil-production crunch-in which the growth in the global demand for oil will outpace supply. This is expected to occur, if present trends continue, after 2012.

It is important to note that the world is not “running out” of oil. This is, rather, a problem of production capacity, due, in part, to disappointing exploration results in recent years as well as inadequate investment by producing countries.

… It is time for politicians to start planning now, with a cold, sober and uncompromising approach. Can we, however, have any confidence that this will happen? We have already seen how, when fuel prices have risen sharply, enraged consumers have resisted added costs for energy and environmental programs and politicians have been tempted to offer quick fixes to reduce the pain.
(25 April 2008)
“The National Interest (NI) is a prominent conservative American bi-monthly international affairs journal published by the Nixon Center.” (Wikipedia).

Countdown to the end
Lyssa Beyer, The Spectator
(Student newspaper of University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire)
—
When I first read James Howard Kunstler’s novel, “The Long Emergency,” it was for a course at the university. I’m not going to lie, his views scared me a bit.

Last Thursday, I sat in Zorn Arena, listening to Kunstler speak, and although some of his thoughts still sent chills down my back and butterflies spinning in my stomach, I was a little more open to listening. Yes, some of his ideas and predictions for our future might be blunt, mean and downright rude to think about – but others need to be addressed.

Kunstler’s book details many factors of the ongoing global oil crisis we now face, which will, Kunstler says, lead to the inevitable destruction of American society and way of life. When this happens, Kunstler also alludes to the dwindling of globalism and the inability of suburban life forms to exist.

I really didn’t want to listen. I want my American dream. I want my white-picket fence, a big backyard where the kids can play and the dog can run free while I watch from the house with my loving husband. I want my big, fat paycheck to buy expensive, fancy furniture. I want to entertain guests with my fancy china. I want to take jet planes all around the world where I can lay in pristine sands of paradise beaches. And, I want my big, fancy cars so I can drive into town when I need some groceries or want to spend a day at the spa – that is, of course, how all Americans dreams turn out, right?

And the reason these dreams won’t come true isn’t just because this fantasy American dream is hardly attainable, but it’s because of deeper and darker forces that America needs to start paying attention to.

… I thought of the power this places in my hands as a journalist – the driving force of journalism is really the learning and sharing of information, the uncovering of the truth. As reporters, journalists and media in general, we should be focusing on caring more about these important issues – instead of MSNBC contemplating whether Barack Obama did indeed give Hillary Clinton the finger (in my opinion, he was just scratching his face, but I could be crazy). MSNBC anchors were later laughing about the fact they had nothing better to talk about. Well, they’re just not looking hard enough. Or, maybe they just choose to blindly stare through the $3.59 per gallon we’re all paying.

I won’t begin to say that I am an expert on any of the issues involved in the evaporation of oil, but I am urging people who are to start talking about them in a way that would prove useful. Kunstler offered four “tasks” the public could focus on, including locally growing agriculture, creating a closer-to-home education system, creating our own products to reduce the need for imports and rearranging our living situation differently.

Beyer is a senior print journalism and Spanish major and online editor of The Spectator.
(24 April 2008)

Right-wing pundits, Jeremy Leggett, Bill Clinton, and peak oil
Charlie Smith, Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
For years, right-wing journalists have been dismissing peak-oil theory as a bunch of hogwash.

The Economist magazine’s environment and energy correspondent Vijay Vaitheeswaran poked fun at a group of petroleum geologists that he dubbed the “Depletion Doomsday Gang” in his 2003 book Power to the People.

It prophesized an energy-rich future that would transform the world.

Back then, oil was trading at around US$25 per barrel.

Today, Vancouver Sun editorial board member Harvey Enchin joined the chorus of peak-oil critics, citing the fall of the U.S. dollar and the discovery of a giant offshore oil field as some of the reasons why we shouldn’t be concerned.

He cited the peak-oil critics’ favourite source, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which regularly issues reports trashing peak-oil theory.

If the Brazilian discovery is confirmed, it would amount to about a year’s supply of world oil consumption.

Let’s hope these right wingers aren’t as wrong about peak oil as they were about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

On the other side is an impressive list of people with serious concerns about the possibility that global oil production has peaked.
(25 April 2008)
Peak oil and is an equal opportunity employer, as is peak-oil bashing.

The peak oil side counts among its ranks: military analysts, policy wonks, permaculturalists, a-political technical professionals, self-proclaimed hippies, Marxists, conservative Republicans, investment advisors, feminists, concerned retirees, ecologists, Archdruids, as well as just regular people (the overwhelming majority). As far as I can tell, the only things they have in common are curiosity and a willingness to face up to unpalatable truths.
-BA

The New York Times’ Hidden Hand On Oil’s Agenda
Raymond J. Learsy, Huffington Post
Ironically, last Sunday the New York Times’ front page headlined ” Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand”. On the front page of the Week in Review section Jad Mouawad set out to instruct us that oil’s future is murky (“The Big Thirst”).

If ever a commentator on a given issue is freighted with prescribed points of view the New York Times’ reporter Jad Mouawad would be a standout candidate for the oil patch’s “golden goose” award for espousing the preprogrammed pieties that are wont to make us continue our soporific acceptance of the greatest heist, and transfer of wealth in human history. Where there are arguments to be contrived and oil patch rationalizations to excuse the heist inherent in today’s oil prices or to explain them away, leave it to the New York Times and Mouwad to convey the imprimatur of what once passed for serious journalism to this greatest of all con games.

Mr. Mouawad and his New York Times have been writing ceaselessly and irresponsibly on the issue of oil.
(25 April 2008)
Poor Jad Mouawad and the New York Times. Over the years they had been roundly criticized by the peak oil community (including Energy Bulletin) for their lackluster reporting on peak oil. No sooner had they published a decent piece suggesting that maybe supplies of oil were an issue, then they are attacked by Raymond Learsy at the Huffington Post.

-BA

Retrospective – 2008
Michael C. Ruppert, From The Wilderness (FTW)
I have owed you this update for a long time. Things have evolved so much and so relentlessly that there was no solid ground on which to plant my feet, take a look around and tell you what I saw with a steady gaze. I can do that now.

I know it’s not necessary for me to point out to ever-loyal FTW supporters how right we got it in our eight and a half years. A look at economics, energy and geopolitics today mirrors – almost exactly – everything I and the FTW writing staff predicted from 2001 through the end of 2006. Oil is over $100 a barrel. Global oil production has never exceeded the levels of late 2005.

… In the most frightening article we ever published, “Eating Fossil Fuels” (October 3, 2003), the great Dale Allen Pfeiffer starkly described the umbilical between oil and food. We are just at the threshold of what he told us was coming. Read it if you dare.

… I do have a life now; a really good one. I am happier than I have been in the thirty years since, as a young Los Angeles police officer, I discovered that CIA was bringing drugs into the country. I am also living less than a quarter mile from where I was living then. I am two miles from where I graduated High School; four miles from my beloved UCLA.

Why am I not in Oregon? Why am I not preparing to live a sustainable life? The answers will make sense to you but not until I tell you how I got here.

The first thing that had to happen on my return was that I had to recover. There were serious medical and (yes) psychological issues.

… I have evolved too and I can’t help but remember something I said in maybe my last twenty-five lectures and in too many private conversations in twelve countries. “I believe that the Universe is saying to the human race – as Peak Oil and Global Warming threaten all life on the planet – you must either evolve or perish. Grow up or die.” Just recently I wrote to Matthew Simmons, “You know, the worse things get, the calmer I become.”

The first thing I did when I got back from Ashland was find a “dawg” to rescue. His name is “Rags” because he had mange and that’s what it looked like he was wearing. I have been nursing him back to health and I swear that he is the happiest and best pooch that God ever created.

Don’t ask me to speak, to lecture, or to investigate. I will not. Don’t send me your questions. I will not come. I will not answer.

I left you a map. Read it.

… Thank you God for everything You have given me. Thank you for everything You have taken away. And thank you for everything You have left me. As for me and Rags, we’ll be somewhere in the wilderness doing our thing, our tails wagging mightily and defiantly until the end.
(24 March 2008)