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Peak Oil Changes Everything
As the era of cheap liquid fuels draws to an end, everything about modern consumer society will change. Likewise, developing societies pursuing the benefits of globalization will struggle to grow economies in an era of scarce liquid fuels. The most localized, self-reliant communities will experience the least disruption.
Oil is a fixed asset of the planet, representing stored sunlight accumulated over a billion years as early marine algae, and other marine organisms (not dinosaurs) captured solar energy, formed carbon bonds, gathered nutrients, died, sank to the ocean floors, and lay buried under eons of sediment. Like any fixed resource, oil is limited, and its consumption will rise, peak, and decline.
World oil production increased for 150 years until the spring of 2005, when world crude oil production reached about 74.3 million barrels per day (mb/d), and total liquid fuels, including tar sands, liquefied gas, and biofuels reached about 85 mb/d. In spite of the efforts since, and tales of “trillions of barrels” of oil in undiscovered fields, liquid fuel production has remained at about 85.5 mb/d for three years, the longest sustained plateau in modern petroleum history. Discoveries of new fields peaked 40 years ago.
Meanwhile economies everywhere want to grow, so demand for oil soars worldwide. The gap between this surging demand and flat or declining production will drive price increases and shortages. That’s peak oil.
Peak experience
Peak oil is not a theory, but rather a simple observation of a common natural occurrence. Peak oil is only one symptom of an exponentially growing population, with exponentially growing demands, reaching worldwide limits of all resources.
“Peak oil has long been a reality for the oil industry,” says Anita M. Burke, former Shell International senior advisor on international Climate Change and Sustainability. “To believe anything else belies the facts of science.” In 2007, Dr. James Schlesinger, former US Defense and Energy Secretary stated flatly, “if you talk to industry leaders, they concede … we are facing a decline in liquid fuels. The battle is over. The peakists have won.”
Global warming, caused primarily by forest destruction and the burning of fossil fuels, now aggravates natural limits and the human turmoil that these limits provoke. One might think that peak oil will solve global warming because less oil means less carbon emissions. Sadly, this is not so because humanity took the best, cheapest, and easiest oil first, leaving dirty, acidic, expensive oil in marginal reserves that require vast amounts of energy to recover. In the 1930s, 100 barrels of oil cost about 1 barrel in equivalent energy to extract. That ratio is now about 20:1 and sinking fast. The Canadian tar sands produce barely 1:1 net energy. By the time someone burns tar sands oil in his or her vehicle, the industry has burned nearly an equal amount retrieving it.
When we account for the net energy left after production, and population growth, we discover that the world peak for net-oil per-capita occurred three decades ago, in 1979. Many oil suppliers – Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and others – recognizing the limits of the resource, are now keeping more of their oil for domestic use, and saving it for future growth. Regardless of energy alternatives – ethanol, nuclear, solar, wind, tidal – humanity will never again enjoy the current consumption rates of cheap, convenient fuels. This fact changes everything.
We witness the impact in the increasing scarcity and cost of food and other critical resources that rely on oil. Most trucking firms now add a fuel surcharge to hedge against fuel price increases. As fuel prices soar, airlines cancel flights or simply close down. In many cities, police add a gas charge to traffic tickets because police departments have already spent their annual fuel budget on high-priced gasoline.
The post-peak oil era will require new human development patterns and strategies that cope with limits to growth. Humanity has no new continents to exploit or planets to occupy. Frantic industrial nations may drill in the Arctic and dig into dirty tar sands, but none of this will increase or even match the past abundance of cheap liquid fuel that we have already squandered. Nevertheless, the actual moment that world oil production peaks is less relevant than our preparation for the impact.
Relocalization
Powerful, well-financed voices still insist that human economies can grow “forever,” or “for the foreseeable future,” but these voices cry out against the evidence before our eyes. Our massive growth economies were built with cheap oil. Poorly planned development left behind disappearing forests, toxic lakes, soil erosion, species loss, foul air, dead rivers, drying aquifers, and creeping deserts.
The dream of a globalized world marketplace linked by airplanes and trucks will not endure. Monolithic superstores that rely on liquid fuels to ship cheap goods around the world will become the relics of the cheap oil era. These massive chain stores also undermine the local enterprise that communities will need to survive.
“The current solutions being bantered about are inadequate to the conditions we are faced with,” says Anita Burke, after decades inside the oil industry. “We must embrace adaptation strategies that immediately create whole new ways of being in relationship to each other and the planet. Buy local, get off of hydrocarbons in every aspect of your life, gather in community, and espouse only love – your grandchildren’s lives depend on it.”
Communities addicted to cheap oil, especially suburban environments without public transport, will become untenable. Regions that still build highways for cars are simply designing their own demise. Smart communities will design light, convenient public transport to run efficiently on the most locally available energy source.
The post-peak oil era will require that we re-establish local manufacturing and food production, and refurbish economies that have been gutted by globalization. The smart urban designers are now planning for the end of cheap energy, global warming, and the human migration that these changes will set in motion. Smart neighborhood and regional planners are preparing communities for the inevitable transition from escalating consumption to conserver societies, built on a human scale and linked to social services and the natural cycles that sustain them.
Building communities in nature
I recently walked through an abandoned industrial section of Vancouver, where I live. The empty, poorly designed, decaying buildings seemed depressing, but I noticed how much actual green space flourished with wild plants. Squatters with gardening skills, I kept thinking, could make a life for themselves here.
Human society can change. Witness the historic changes to establish democracies, end slavery, secure civil and women’s rights, or eradicate polio and AIDS. Humanity can harness its resources to change destructive habits and improve living conditions. The crisis of peak oil provides an opportunity strengthen the two pillars that nourish real quality of life: local community and wild nature.
Relocalize: The end of cheap oil means less products arriving from around the world and less jobs making junk to sell elsewhere. Globalization is literally running out of gas. As fuel prices soar, communities will have to supply more food, water, and vital resources locally. If you are thinking of earning a degree in international finance, it might be smart to take some permaculture courses as well.
Preserve Farmland: Wise communities will preserve agricultural land, support farmers, provide local food for local consumption, compost all organic waste including sewage, build soils, apply efficient water use, move toward vegetable diets, and restore and replenish water resources. Rather than building suburbs and highways on farmland, smart communities will design small residential neighbourhoods on the least-arable land, integrated with the life-giving farmland and natural bounty that supports a healthy society.
Change the pattern of community: The entire distribution of public activity, public space, and housing must adapt to less fuel and resource consumption. Past planning in the cheap-oil era created public dysfunction, decaying city cores, foul air, and squandered energy. We do not have generations to correct these mistakes. Solutions take time to impliment. The time we have to react is best measured in months, not decades. We face the choice of responding now gracefully and wisely or reacting later in chaos.
Productive urban green spaces: Cities face huge challenges and require green space, not only for play and peace of mind, but for food. Suburbs and urban neighbourhoods must be redesigned to transform lawns and streets into productive green zones linked by public transport. Planting trees anywhere reduces global warming. Cities such as Bogotá, Columbia, and San Luis Obispo, California have shown that degraded cities can revitalize community and economic life with programs that increase green space.
Public transport: Basing development and land-use patterns on the private automobile may be the worst design decision in human history. The automobile is responsible for resource depletion, global warming, degraded farmland, alienated neighbourhoods, aesthetic eyesores, time wasted in traffic, and an epidemic of transport death and injury. Light rail public transport is clean, energy efficient, safe, community-building, and allows travelers to be productive rather than stressed. Smart cities will implement public transit, encourage bicycle use, and create neighbourhoods that encourage walking for most services and family needs.
100% recycling: Nature recycles everything. There is no “away” in nature where garbage and waste is thrown. Human communities must mimic the 100% recycling of nature, eliminate designed obsolescence, and turn garbage landfills into recycling centres. Sewage is natural compost that can be converted to productive soil, as demonstrated in Sweden, India, and Mongolia.
Preserve wilderness: Smart ecological planning not only nurtures people but also preserves wilderness habitat for species diversity. In regions where indigenous people still live on the land, wilderness also preserves cultural diversity and knowledge of local food, medicines and resources.
Modern consumer cities – made possible by the age of cheap fuels, designed for cash profits, or not designed at all – alienated people from each other and from or organic roots. When we gaze upon degraded cement landscapes and the lost souls of inner city children taking refuge in gangs and drugs, we see the cost of broken communities. The end of cheap fuels may help us reclaim an authentic quality of life, not purchased with more stuff but with relationship: our affiliation with each other and with nature.
Tags: , farmland, Peak oil, public transportation, relocalize
This was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Ecology . Feel free to respond, or trackback.
10 Responses to “Peak Oil Changes Everything”
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Heather King Says:
Hi
First of all, thanks, Rex, for having the courage to speak up about the issue that is at the core of this whole mess we’re in – overpopulation. It does seem that nobody in a position of influence wants to touch this one. I’ve never really wanted children, myself, but I know that the will to be a parent is a powerful emotional drive that people will do almost anything to fulfil, and now there is the technology to help them do it, against all odds. Do they want to hear someone saying “Have you ever considered NOT reproducing?” And to be honest, I’m pretty careful whom I speak to about this issue. It does spark some very strong emotions in people.
What I’d like to raise is this: for almost a year now, I’ve been reading about peak oil, ever since my husband sent me a link to “lifeaftertheoilcrash.com”. I’ve been vascillating between panic and disbelief for most of that time, trying to work out where in the world is going to be the best place for us to live, long term, and the best lifestyle (urban vs. country).
My husband and I live in a 2 bedroom apartment in the city of Mechelen, Belgium. It’s well insulated and double-glazed so our energy costs are low. But we are utterly dependent on the current infrastructure to bring us our food, as we don’t have a garden. Our balcony is only big enough for a couple of tomato plants and some herbs – not enough to sustain us at all.
We’d love to live in the country, and we have the means to do it, but as oil runs out, that’s going to be increasingly untenable, unless we can also work in the country (which would be ideal, but at the moment, maybe not realistic). We would need to buy a car, which we don’t want to do. (The air pollution in this country is a scandal, to which we don’t want to contribute.)
A lot of urban dwellers, however, won’t have the means to “escape the city”, and also, would we really want a mass exodus to the country? So my question is: what quality of life are they going to enjoy in the future?
I’ve heard the Cuba story, and yes, it’s somewhat heartening, but if I think of our own town, there isn’t any spare land around on which to build community gardens, even if the council would allow it. I know, because I’ve looked. If it came down to it, we could dig up the road islands and verges I guess, but how to stop the already out-of-control city youth vandalising it? Involve them, I guess.
Hmm. Seems like I might be starting to answer my own question.
Another thing I’d like to say is this: several peak oil commentators have predicted that the suburbs won’t be the place to be when the oil really has dried up. I’m not sure I agree. Even with just a small piece of land you can grow food, and fruit trees. People in the suburbs will be well placed to do it. Also, most suburbs have at least some transportation infrastructure. Maybe what’s needed is a change in thinking, to where a 15 or even 20 minute walk or bike-ride to the bus isn’t considered an insurmountable daily task.
I’m interested to hear people’s thoughts on the “what do urban dwellers do” question.
Heather King
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Jamshid Azizpour Says:
I live in iran. My city Masjed Soliman is the first city that oil is very much here. It is very bad for people and animal and plant. Please help us.
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Rhea Mungal Says:
Oil, Gas, Aluminum and Steel in Trinidad and Tobago
Here‘s The Real Deal
1.There are certain countries that need aluminum and steel to support their military industrial complex.
2.In Trinidad and Tobago have gas; we have flat waters for ports, and we are strategically located.
3.We contract Alcoa, China and India to make aluminum and steel.
4.We use up our precious resources – sea beds, mangrove, fisheries, estuarine mudflats, sea grass beds, valuable port lands, lands designated for agriculture, forests, water producing dams, gas, underground water, health, communities, financial stocks in the Treasury, ambient air and climate quality, harvesting and hunting industries such as fruit farming, honey and milk farming, crab and mollusk gathering – to make steel and aluminum.
5.Countries like the United States, China and India gain economically; none of these countries will be using their own gas or land space, or destroying their communities or their ecosystem.
6.Trinidad and Tobago lose: vital resources are converted into aluminum and steel products, into a declining US dollar, a paper economy. It is an economic disaster. Financially, the rewards are negligible. The cost of producing one job in any of these industries is prohibitive.
7.We also lose opportunity costs. We pay the price for not investing diligently and comprehensively in food, fresh water, security and alternative sources of energy.
The raping of Trinidad and Tobago’s natural resources and the inevitable destruction of the natural environment is sold to the public using cute slogans such as, gas monetization, development, industrial progress, a vision 20/20. This system of atrocity is disguised with a mask of benevolence. It smells like development, tastes like development, walks and talks like development, but it is the very opposite: It is death producing deals.
The methods are heinous. The authorities tap into State resources – land, water, soldiers, police, legal officials, compliant public servants, money, gas, institutional capacity – pass these on to chosen cabinet colleagues, who then pass them on to their relatives, be it a brother, the head of an Energy Corporation, or the movers and shakers at Alutrint. Vast amounts of state resources are passed directly through cabinet, emasculating the Parliament, the Opposition Party, the ital public servant and technocrat. They are passed in abundance and with great readiness into the hands of souls who were never elected by the people.
What will be the end of all of this?
Trinidad and Tobago will become a lame, limp, sold country, with a sold people.What must be done?
The people must not accept the current and impending emasculation. Equipped individuals must arise among the people and deconstruct this gas agenda.We must save our country.
Dr.Wayne Kublalsingh
(Used with his kind permission)Hello.
Please sign my petition to save our mangrove.http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/957999809
Regards, Rhea Mungal
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OilIsMastery Says:
Rex, I agree we need to save the whales, the sharks, and the fish, however you are way off base with regard to oil. Hydrocarbons are infinite and renewable. Hydrogen is the most common chemical element in the universe and carbon is the fourth most common chemical element in the universe. They bind together in the mantle, no sun or algae required. See the OilIsMastery website for more details.
Rex Weyler Responds:
With all due respect, this dream of “infinite oil” or any kind of infinite energy remains delusional.
There is no such thing in the known universe as infinite energy, and certainly not on this tiny planet.
The fact that hydrogen is plentiful in the universe does not imply more recoverable petroleum. I have heard such claims before, but I know of no credible evidence that these elements combine under pressure inside the earth into hydrocarbons. Oil is captured sunlight, pure and simple.
Furthermore, if oil was more plentiful, rather than extremely limited as we know it is, we would face a worse crisis, because we must burn less oil, not more, to reduce atmopsheric carbon-dioxide that leads to global warming.
Sorry, but this infinite oil claim is a hoax. Don’t get distracted. Humanity must learn to use less resources, not dream up schemes to use more.
rw.
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jose manuel salgado Says:
hi friend, i read your colum on greenpeace about the peak and falling of oil production and the new aproach to a better living, my questions is regards to the other products made from oil, like plastics, medicines, have we alternatives for such things? can we produce such thing as a green computer, made without plastics?
Rex Weyler responds:
This is an important point. Many useful products derive from oil, all the more reason not to squander this resource by excessively driving and flying around the planet. Plastics can be useful, but they also represent a huge environmental disaster in our landfills and in the oceans. Plastics are responsible for massive sealife destruction. A great deal of plastic use is wasteful, and could be eliminated or replaced with substitutes. Using plastics for throw-away packaging and bags is excessive and wasteful.
Oil is a fixed resource on the planet. As we squander and waste it, we deprive future generations of the use of this resource. If we were an enlightened species and wise civilization, rather than a fairly primitive and greedy one, we would presevere resources such as oil, copper, forests, and soil, so that future generations could make wise, sustainable use of them.
Our high-tech, consumptive culture represents a thin veneer over wild nature. As we erode and deplete nature, we risk everything we have achieved. Our computers and entire consumptive culture could unravel because of our excessive use of resources and destruction of the natural ecosystems that sustain us.
Human survival is a race between our natural genius and our ignorant greed.
rw.
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Andrea Peloso Says:
September 1st, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Dear Heather,
I, like you, live in a tiny flat with no land to garden. I don’t even have a porch.
You would be amazed at what you can do indoors. It is not a 100% solution but it is an amazing start.
I grow all of my own herbs, some of which are medicinals. Most of them have grown really well over the summer and I trust that many of them will continue into the winter.
Many of these also serve as teas, and even fragrant steams for baths.
I recently connected with an organic farmer who has agreed to help me expand my indoor plant garden.
So far, I am moving on to garlic and onion chives which will take care of my need for these, then arugula and lettuce. This means that I can also have regular greens.
Finally, it is worth sourcing out some local beans and lentils. You can sprout them and they serve as protein. This is very easy and cheap to do also.
While it will not entirely solve all of your food needs, it is a really good start. I take home much less now.
Good luck
Andrea
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James Del-Gatto Says:
September 8th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I think it’s very important for those of us concerned with Climate Change and the environment to collaborate with the “Peak Oil” hawks.
I have been working with the Campaign Against Climate Change for 4 years but in the past year I have come to realise the related but even more pressing problem of peak oil, a truly petrifying scenario.
Last week I visited Totnes in Devon UK the most advanced Transistion town in the UK with a view to moving there.
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Andrea Peloso Says:
While Peak Oil and Climate Change are related, I wonder why it is that they are not discussed in tandem more often. Both have a firm sense of timelines, limits.
I wonder if the climate change supporters worry that if people think that oil will run out that this will solve global warming. And I wonder if peak oil folks tend to advocate strategies generally complimentary to climate change, but sometimes so specific as to lose the big picture. Also, there is a certain feeling – oil is going to run out so lets benefit while we still can and turn it to something green … while I don’t think climate change ideology advocates this.
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Mandy Meikle Says:
I’ve just read your excellent article on Greenpeace website and was delighted to see it there. I’ve been giving talks on the links between peak oil & climate change for 5 years now – spurred into doing so by my frustration at the two topics being so obviously linked but rarely discussed together. The Transition Towns movement has done a lot to redress that.
I’m active with Greenpeace (Edinburgh) and while many individuals understand peak oil, it seems that Greenpeace as an organisation doesn’t like to talk about it. I’m not sure why and Greenpeace certainly are not alone. We won’t come up with good solutions by just trying to reduce ‘carbon’ – we have to reduce energy demand and discuss some uncomfortable truths, like population and localisation. Rather than go on at length here, anyone interested in the links between Energy, Economics & the Environment might like this – http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse
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Peak Oil Says:
I believe that peak oil is true and that we are now past the point of peak oil. I believe many of the current events have to do with this senerio and it won’t be long before the main stream media and population wake up and understand what is going on. For me and my family, we are preparing for the next generation.
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