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Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil
Charles A. S. Hall and John W. Day, Jr., American Scientist
In the 1970s a rising world population and the finite resources available to support it were hot topics. Interest faded—but it’s time to take another look
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In recent decades there has been considerable discussion in academia and the media about the environmental impacts of human activity, especially those related to climate change and biodiversity, but far less attention has been paid to the diminishing resource base for humans. Despite our inattention, resource depletion and population growth have been continuing relentlessly.
The most immediate of these issues appears to be a decline in oil reservoirs, a phenomenon commonly referred to as “peak oil” because global production appears to have reached a maximum and is now declining. However, a set of related resource and economic issues are continuing to come home to roost in ever greater numbers and impacts—so much so that author Richard Heinberg speaks of “peak everything.” We believe that these issues were set out well and basically accurately by a series of scientists in the middle of the last century and that events are demonstrating that their original ideas were mostly sound Many of these ideas were spelled out explictly in a landmark book called The Limits to Growth, published in 1972.
… For those few scientists who still cared about resource-scarcity issues, there was not any specific place to apply for grants at the National Science Foundation or even the Department of Energy (except for studies to improve energy efficiency), so most of our best energy analysts worked on these issues on the weekend, after retirement or pro bono. With very few exceptions graduate training in energy analysis or limits to growth withered. The concept of limits did live on in various environmental issues such as disappearing rain forests and coral reefs, and global climate change. But these were normally treated as their own specific problems, rather than as a more general issue about the relationship between population and resources.
… There is a common perception, even among knowledgeable environmental scientists, that the limits-to-growth model was a colossal failure, since obviously its predictions of extreme pollution and population decline have not come true.But what is not well known is that the original output, based on the computer technology of the time, had a very misleading feature: There were no dates on the graph between the years 1900 and 2100. If one draws a timeline along the bottom of the graph for the halfway point of 2000, then the model results are almost exactly on course some 35 years later in 2008 (with a few appropriate assumptions).
… Thus a key issue for the future is the degree to which fossil and other fuels will continue to be abundant and cheap. Together oil and natural gas supply nearly two-thirds of the energy used in the world, and coal another 20 percent.
… The important remaining questions about peak oil are not about its existence, but rather, when it occurred for the world as a whole, what the shape of the peak will be and how steep the slope of the curve will be as we go down the other side. The other big question about oil is not how much is left in the ground (the answer is a lot) but how much can be extracted at a significant energy profit.
Charles A. S. Hall is a professor at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry of the State University of New York at Syracuse. John W. Day is a professor emeritus in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences of Louisiana State University. Both are systems ecologists with wide-ranging interests and experience in energy and resource management.
(May-June 2009)
Long article that summarizes the peak oil argument from an ecological perspective. Good for showing technically minded friends and relatives. The May-June issue of American Scientist is not yet posted on their website. -BA
UPDATE (April 23): The article is now online but behind a paywall HERE
Matt Simmons video
WorldEnergy TV
Matt Simmons explains why planning in the oil & gas industry has been, and continues to be, particularly difficult.
(April 2009)
The “peak oil disruptor” – 4 rules to address the “global energy transition”
Cam Burns, Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)
… Bryn Davidson was one of today’s disruptors (think Arnold saying Terminator). He works with his Dynamic Cities Project (a non-profit) to help cities adapt to peak oil and climate change, the intersection of which he calls the global energy transition, “because I see these as the two major forces that are going to drive the transition away from cheap fossil fuels.” He focuses on what’s at the intersection of these two issues.
Bryn described his start as a mechanical engineer in Alaska. He liked working on buildings and went on to study architecture. “Green buildings are only so good,” he noted. “What we need are green cities.” And cheap oil is one the problems, he noted, as it’s at the “very bones of our cities.” Bones is a good analogy. We’re talking fossils, after all.
… He described several futures: a “techno-markets” future, a “lean and local” future, as well as peak oil in terms of oil fields. Better than Bryn’s past (so to speak) was his “future,” a presentation on how to transition off oil. He had four rules.
Bryn’s Four Rules
First Rule: don’t invest in something that could become a stranded asset
Bryn described a town in Maryland that invested $60 million in a new airport as an economic stimulus strategy only to see oil prices go up and the local carrier drop the town as a destination. Don’t invest in “something that only makes sense in a future that looks like the past,” he cautioned.
Second Rule: focus on strategies that reduce emissions and oil constraints
Bryn described a courier company in Vancouver, called Novex (www.novex.ca), who’d been greening itself, helping its owner/operators invest in hybrid vehicles (to become the greenest fleet in America), and were so successful they began buying up other companies during a recent high oil price bump, because “they focused emissions and oil dependence.”
Third Rule: Have the highest energy productivity
Bryn described an organic food delivery company whose competitor is the average person who drives to the store to buy, say, carrots. “And that trip in your car to pick up that carrot is the highest [energy] portion [of the trip that the carrot takes],” he explained. The delivery company saw business go up when oil prices went up because, Bryn explained, people decided to use the delivery service to get their groceries. “When their [the delivery company] business grows, oil consumption regionally goes down,” he noted. “So they have a net positive impact on emissions and oil dependence because their energy productivity is much higher than their nearest competition’s.”
Fourth rule: Keep radical options open
Bryn also worked with Mountain Equipment Coop (MEC, Inc), the REI of Canada. He explained that he’d had a discussion with the management about climate change, and MEC’s management wanted a distribution system (for a West Coast facility) that could use rail in the future, as their east coast facility could. Rail, they felt, might be more resilient in terms of climate change and other factors. Ultimately, MEC sourced a piece of land with a rail spur that they might use in the future—”understanding that future could be very different than how we’re operating today,” Bryn noted.
(16 April 2009)
North Sea Protection: U.K. Oil Industry Seeks Aid
Guy Chazan and James Herron, Wall Street Journal
The U.K. oil industry is pressing for big tax breaks in next week’s government budget, warning that dozens of small oil companies operating in the North Sea will go bust without help, which in turn could accelerate a decline in U.K. oil and gas production.
The warnings come as smaller players in the industry reel from low crude prices, high costs and shrinking credit. Many are cutting investment and drilling fewer wells. . .
Malcolm Webb, head of Oil & Gas U.K., a trade association, said exploration on the U.K. Continental Shelf “could effectively collapse” unless the government introduces “targeted incentives” for the industry.
(17 April 2009)
At TOD, Leanan points out:
Those who don’t have a WSJ subscription can go through Google or read it here.
