THe Future is Now - the End of Cheap Oil

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By Jim Miles (about the author) Page 3 of 7 page(s)

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"In the Long Emergency, all large-scale enterprises will have trouble operating in virtually every sphere of activity."

The cause of all this is of course the loss of cheap oil, the energy source that has fuelled everything that we take for granted today as being the normal course of life, life as it should be, life as it will always be at least in its opulent, ever increasing wealth, superficial lifestyle sense. Much is being said of alternate sources of energy, but Kunstler develops two main ideas that limit their ability to replace the era of cheap oil. First is that to build the infrastructures for all or any of these alternates will take more time than we have until the effects of expensive/limited/no oil are already considerable. Concurrent with that idea is that the methods available to make all those alternates happen manufacturing, transport, maintenance are all based on the declining oil economy.

That dependence on the oil economy is an overall feature of any alternate energy sources. The infrastructure required to build the windmills, the batteries, the coal plant, the water generator, the solar panels are all currently dependent on oil based manufacturing processes, from the acquisition of raw materials through to the delivery of the final product. Essentially our whole lifestyle is dependent on oil, "Everything characteristic about the condition we call modern life has been a direct result of our access to abundant supplies of cheap fossil fuels. The age of fossil fuels is about to end. There is no replacement for them at hand."

The problems with large-scale alternate energies are well presented by Kunstler. It is not that they will not be available, but that they will be difficult to construct and operate, and even if fully successful, will not replace the mass transportation and mass agricultural production that cheap oil has built. As an example of his arguments, the idea of a hydrogen based fuel economy is filled with problems. First, the procedure for using hydrogen as a basis for synthesizing fuel would "take more energy than the resulting compound would produce."

Pure hydrogen continues other problems. Because hydrogen is a low-density fuel it requires much greater storage capacity to contain the same level of energy as oil. In order to make that space smaller it would have to be stored under ultrahigh pressure, which could self ignite if leakage occurred (the heat of decompression see your own air conditioner for the reality of this idea). Other problems are that it will leak "due to its extremely low atomic weight." If it did not leak, it is "also extremely corrosive. It likes to combine with other elements and compounds." In addition the infrastructure required to make, transport, and store hydrogen does not exist and would have to replace the current systems used for gasoline. If it is a viable alternative, the development of that infrastructure should already have started as it is dependent on the oil economy in order to do so.

The future viewed by Kunstler is not pretty. Lifestyles will be of a more rural, small town, agrarian existence. Cities will fall into disrepair, suburbs will be vacated, and "industrial farming, dependent on massive oil and gas 'inputs' at gigantic scales of operation, can no longer be carried economically." Economic growth will not even be a consideration. Life spans will become shorter. A grim picture without recourse.

III Ships of state running on empty

Peak Everything

Similar warnings as Kunstler's, just as forcefully stated, just as strident, are found in Richard Heinberg's Peak Everything:

"...the recent fossil fuel era has seen so much growth of population and consumption that there is an overwhelming likelihood of a crash of titanic proportions. This should be glaringly obvious to everyone."

"Realistically I think we can expect to see some of the worst excesses of human history...."

"The next few decades will be traumatic. The slow squeeze of economic contraction will probably be punctuated by dramatic weather-related catastrophes, resource wars, and regional instances of social collapse."

"[For global warming and carbon equilibrium in the atmosphere] if that [carbon reduction] translated to a 60 per cent reduction in energy consumption, it could mean anything but economic ruin for the world."

Enough doom and gloom. Heinberg is at least slightly more positive in his presentation but in the end asks if he thinks a transition can be made successfully. His answer, after much thoughtful reasoning (in comparison to Kunstler's much more dramatic presentation of future scenarios) is "Frankly, it's not likely. Is it possible? Yes, just barely." Just barely does not leave much space or time for action.

Heinberg's writing is more readily accessible than the first two works. The book is a collection of essays, each with their own theme - rather than chapters progressing through a theme - sometimes bringing in some quirky ideas (Urinetown?) that in hindsight actually make the work more 'readable'. He is capable of very clear and concise summaries of the background material he needs to work with, from his history of farming, to the adaptations made by the neocons to Straussian philosophy, or to a summation of the ideas of Malthus.

There is an underlying voice that says we can survive this, if we act now, if we are prepared to make a paradigm change. Unfortunately he sees that happening only if there is a mass mobilization of thought "based on empirically verifiable, survival-based necessity" otherwise it would amount to "crass manipulation worthy of a Karl Rove or an Edward Bernays." He believes that "we can shift behaviors in a matter of months or years" but with a large caveat in the idea that "such an effort would require an enthusiastic participation of the advertising, public relations, and entertainment industries, as well as organized religions and all major political parties."

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www.jim.secretcove.ca

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews to Palestine Chronicles. His interest in this topic stems originally from an (more...)

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