Earth Day Special: Energy and Food in a World of Limited Natural Resources

fool.com

The world is running out of oil and the evidence is mounting. The term most commonly used in the discussions surrounding first the ceiling in oil discoveries and now more recently the ceiling of oil production is Peak Oil. Peak Oil since the mid 1950s has been argued as theory but their are more convincing arguments than just $4 a gallon gasoline (last summer) that support what should now be deemed as fact. The chances of finding another large oil reserve fall dramatically each day. Another fact that augments this point is that the largest reserves should be the easiest to find and still a major discovery hasn’t happened since Prudhoe Bay in 1969, 40 years ago. Not finding more oil would be well and fine if we simply didn’t use it at all but that’s currently not the case.

A shortlist of items made from oil (not just energy inputs or transportation inputs) include computer chips, dishwashing liquid, insecticides, antiseptics, tires, clothing, food preservatives, disposable diapers, vitamin capsules, fertilizers, water pipes, artificial limbs, aspirin and many other applications. It would be easy to substitute our energy gained from oil and oil based transportation as wind and solar come onto the grid. Unfortunately though the loss of the petroleum based household items and agricultural fertilizer (that is essential to higher crop yields) could significantly change the way we live.

Amazingly many have pointed to technological advances and rightly so. It becomes tough science though as most of the technological breakthroughs in the past have occurred thanks to petroleum. One solution that has been raised has been using biochemicals as replacements to existing petroleum products. I think many of us have seen corn-based plastics in cups and even corn-based fuels for ethanol but this only works as long as agricultural output remains high. This brings us to our problem. By using food as plastics and without the aid of petroleum-based fertilizers we still need a lot more oil to sustain consumption or we need to change our way of life.

One of the world’s foremost thinkers on this subject, Jay Forrester, actually created a systems dynamics model on resource depletion and its effects on population. A popular book “Limits to Growth” published in 1972 outlines the changes. The figure included in the link below is the original limits-to-growth model. It charts resources, births (b), services (s), population, pollution, deaths, food, and industrial output. While it is important to look at any future predictions with a little skepticism it is also clear that if we don’t make any more major discoveries in oil we must fundamentally change the way we get energy and how we use our resources.

With the suggestion of this model and the daily reduction in oil production, Richard Heinberg, an outspoken Peak Oil expert, sees no other way to tackle this problem other than a reinstatement of a communal agricultural society in the next 20 to 30 years. This would represent a drastic shift from our current vocational allocation of 1% to farming. But their still remain questions regarding one of the few factors under human control, our behavior. If we can cut back on consumption of natural resources, mainly those tied to oil, we may be able to ween ourselves off of what has been our economical life-blood and find other solutions. Is it realistic though for a generation and a people to change their entire system of life? While it could go as far as every family having a victory garden, it is the capitalist in me that calls out for a third way.

Sources and Further Reading:

The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse, Richard Heinberg, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada, 2006.

Fifty Million Farmers www.richardhienberg.com/museletter/175

Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil, Charles Hall and John Day, American Scientist, May-June 2009.

Thirsty Hybrid And Electric Cars Could Triple Demands On Scarce Water Resources

sciencedaily.com

Eco-minded drivers in drought-prone states take note: A new study concludes that producing electricity for hybrid and fully electric vehicles could sharply increase water consumption in the United States.

In the study, Carey W. King and Michael E. Webber note that policy makers often neglect the impact that fleets of hybrid and electric vehicles could have on already-scarce water resources. They calculated water usage, consumption, and withdrawal during petroleum refining and electricity generation in the United States.

Each mile driven with electricity consumes about three times more water (0.32 versus 0.07-0.14 gallons per mile) than with gasoline, the study found.

"This is not to say that the negative impacts on water resources make such a shift undesirable," King and Webber emphasized. "Rather this increase in water usage presents a significant potential impact on regional water resources and should be considered when planning for a plugged-in automotive economy."

The article, "The Water Intensity of the Plugged-In Automotive Economy" is scheduled for the June 1 issue of Environmental Science & Technology.

The Peak Oil Crisis: Priorities

Falls Church News-Press

By Tom Whipple

In the next few years, most of us are going to have to make many important decisions that will profoundly affect the rest of our lives. How soon these decisions come will depend on one's individual circumstances.

If you are one of the millions who have lost their jobs or homes in the last year then you already know that something is happening. Returning to the way we have lived for the last 100 years simply is not in the cards. The world is entering a great paradigm shift and our place in it will be markedly different 10 or 20 years from now. The most alarming thing to remember is that 95 percent of us have not discovered that major changes are underway and are waiting for economic recovery and new jobs to open up.

A professor out in California just published a paper concluding that the current economic downturn was caused as much by the $147 oil we saw last summer as it was by the bursting of the housing and credit bubbles. It doesn't much matter if he is right or not. What is important, however, is that hardly a day goes by without another major oil production project being delayed or cancelled due to low prices. The death spiral for the oil age has begun.

The U.S. is currently losing about 600,000 jobs a month. If we did the bookkeeping a bit more honestly, to account for the discouraged or those forced into part-time work, the real total is probably closer to 1 million a month. This hemorrhage may slow for a time when our trillion dollar stimulus catches hold, but there is nothing out there to suggest that spending borrowed or printed money for a year or two is going to turn anything around. The trends all suggest that unemployment is going to continue rising and that social unrest is not very far away.

Someday, many years or decades from now, all this is going to stabilize. Just what the world will look like is impossible to forecast. Will there still be 6.7 billion of us around or will the world's population have declined from deteriorating climate conditions and a lack of food. The only thing for sure is that there is going to be a lot less fossil fuel around to do the heavy work for us.

The last 100 years, particularly the last 50, have been a magic time. The exploitation of fossil fuels has given mankind an era of incredible riches and, for many, unprecedented freedoms to pursue whatever they choose. Now that time is over and humanity is going to have to reprioritize to the basics of life -- food, warmth, shelter, health care, sanitation, and security.

If the oil age had come and gone in a few decades mankind would not have had the opportunity to reorganize our lifestyles so dramatically from the way we lived in the 19th century, but it is too late now. Recent estimates say that nearly half of the world's population now lives in urban areas where they are dependent on others for food. In America, only three percent of us are left on farms to feed the other 97 percent. This is going to be a real problem for if there is anything we really need to do every day, it is to eat.

With shrinking amounts of increasingly expensive fossil fuels, the American way of agriculture is going to be severely tested. Throw in some climate change and our food producers are going to have trouble keeping up with the demand. Many are worried about depleted soils, and the vast amounts of energy required to grow, store, process, and transfer food raised thousands of miles from the consumer. Then there is the growing problem of paying for food when one does not have a job. For the last 100 years the cost of food was a decreasing part of the average American's budget. That is starting to reverse and it will not be long before the discretionary spending that many have enjoyed in recent decades dwindles as more of our incomes go for the essentials of life.

Much food in America currently is being paid for by unsecured credit cards in the hands of people who will never be able to pay. The banks have already reduced the number of open cards from a high of 483 million last July to 400 million. This number will continue to shrink as delinquencies soar and the banks realize they will never be paid back. As with food, the same sort of problems are arising with health care, and housing. Sanitation and public safety, being largely a responsibility of government rather than individuals is, safe for the minute, but governments are facing growing problems. If, as seems likely, government takes on increasing burdens of feeding and housing people, some new form of social contract is going to have to be worked out.

We are already hearing the opening sounds of what may be the greatest political debate of the 21st Century - how do we get out of this mess. On one side are those who continue to believe that free markets, tax cuts, and offshore drilling, will return things to normal. The other side recognizes the magnitude of the challenge we face, but so far have not publically connected the dots.

This great debate will continue in the Congress, state houses, and local board rooms for a long while as the balance teeters between maxims of the 20th century and realities of the 21st. The break will come with social unrest. It has been a long time since mobs took to American streets in protest. Although common in other parts of the world, one has to look back to the 1960's to find serious social unrest in the US.

This time riots will be for food and jobs rather than for civil rights and against the draft. The unrest will change everything. Governments will realize that changing times require changing institutions and new priorities. The mix between capitalism and government involvement in the economy is going to change for there no way that our current institutions and economic arrangements are going to get us through the next 40 years.