Of the 65 largest oil producing countries in the world, up to 54 have passed their peak of production and are now in decline, including the USA in 1970/1, Indonesia in 1997, Australia in 2000, the North Sea in 2001, and Mexico in 2004.

This from Commodity Online, who have an excllent primer on Peak Oil. There is now consensus in the oil industry that peak oil is real and we are somewhere around the peak now. Thus, oil will increasingly be harder to get at and consequently more expensive. That’s just the supply side. On the demand side, India and China are modernizing quickly and need increasing amounts of oil.

So, we need a worldwide effort into providing cheap, clean transportation. Hybrids would certainly be one way. If tens of millions of autos were getting 40-50 mpg rather than 20, demand for oil would drop substantially. Ditto for implementing mass transit as much as possible.

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How crazy is this?

Fifty-five million years ago the world’s climate was catastrophically changed when volcanoes melted natural gas frozen in the seabed. Now Japan plans to drill for the same icy crystals to end its reliance on imported energy.

The trick is extracting it without damaging the environment.

Well, yeah.. How can this possibly be done safely and without releasing enormous amounts of greenhouse gases and destroying the natural balance of the ocean?

As energy gets scarcer, we will see more bizarre plans like this, trying to extract energy from the strangest places, cost and risk be damned.

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Jim Kuntsler contrasts the collapse of the USSR vs. the collapse he sees coming here, and thinks maybe Russians were better prepared than we will be.

The comparison with the American situation is chilling. For all its gross faults, the Russians were ironically better prepared for economic collapse and political turmoil than we will be. For one thing, all housing there was owned by the state, and allocated under bare nominal rents, so when the economy collapsed, people just stayed in their apartments. Nobody got evicted.

The biggest difference, though, between Soviet Russia and America today is the psychology of the people. Soviet citizens were prepared for trouble by lifetimes of comparative hardship.

His post mentions the soon to published book, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects by Dmitry Orlov, who lived through much of the Russian implosion.

From the Amazon review.

Rather than focusing on doom and gloom, Reinventing Collapse suggests that there is room for optimism if we focus our efforts on personal and cultural transformation.

He argues that by examining maladaptive parts of our common cultural baggage, we can survive, thrive, and discover more meaningful and fulfilling lives, in spite of steadily deteriorating circumstances.

Technology may be able to invent ways out of the worst of this by developing new, inexpensive forms of energy. (At least I hope so.) But how Russians survived the collapse of their economy may certainly be a guide for us if and when our economy starts to wobble too.

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Transit Oriented Development or “Smart Growth” is often cited as one of the potential solutions to dealing with peak oil by reducing suburban sprawl and creating more usage of mass transit and walkable communities. The idea generally is to promote development near existing transit hubs or along transit corridors.

Thus, a genuine community is created, with stores and services within walking distance. Crucial to the idea is having a train station in the middle of the town, with other forms of mass transit branching off from it.

The creation of compact, walkable communities centered around high quality train systems…makes it possible to live a higher quality life without complete dependence on a car for mobility and survival.

Principles of New Urbanism

Walkability. (10 minute walk to most things)
Connectivity. (make walking pleasurable, narrow streets on the periphery)
Mixed-use & diversity. (multi-cultural, all ages and incomes)
Mixed housing. (housing for all, not just the well-off)
Quality architecture & urban design. (”human scale architecture”)
Traditional neighborhood structure. (discernable edge and center, with public space in the center)
Increased density.
Smart transportation. (encourage bicycles, scooters, rollerblades as well as mass transit)
Sustainability.
Quality of life.

One of the central ideas here is that high-speed, modern trains can and should be used to move large numbers of people efficiently. NewTrains.org proposes a nationwide grid of such trains - as already exists in many parts of Europe and Japan.

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Some are preparing for the end of the world as we know it, convinced that global warming and peak oil, means that life as we know it will be ending soon.

Helen shows the growing collection of horse-drawn ploughs, wheat grinders, treadle sewing machines and other rusting relics of the pre-carbon era, she believes she will need the day the petrol pumps finally run dry.

Well I sure don’t want to live that way (how would I blog?) so it behooves us all to a) cut energy use as much as possible while b) simultaneously looking for new and cheaper ways to create renewable energy and power our vehicles.

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The small, locally own oil refineries in China called “teapots” revolted when the government froze gasoline prices. Since they couldn’t make money with the new pricing because the price of crude was rising, they simply switched to producing non-regulated products.

They didn’t have to wait long to bring the mighty Chinese economy to its knees.

Shortages broke out, the government was forced to raise the oil price cap, and ramped up production hugely at their mammoth state-owned facilities and canceling maintenance.

As we in America should know by now, delaying refinery maintenance will come back to bite. Whether a 10 percent increase in retail prices will be enough to slow consumption and encourage increased production remains to be seen.

Interesting, isn’t it, that in a nominally communist county with 85% of the refinery capacity owned by the government, that the little capitalist teapots have such a profound effect?

In a few years, the Chinese will be selling themselves 10 million new cars a year.

Someday soon we in America will be facing shortages, gas lines, and rationing.

The chances are the revolt of the teapots is a harbinger of things to come.

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There is simply no way we can achieve an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions without creating breakthrough technologies that do not pollute.

– from the Introduction to “Breakthrough. From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility” by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

To stop global warming, we need to get everyone on board, facing the same direction, and optimistic about the process. That’s where traditional greens and the left lose their potential audience. They scold that we must cut back, reduce growth, accept a greatly reduced lifestyle - then wonder why many are hostile to their ideas and nothing happens.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus, both longtime environmentalists, have a different plan. Launch a New Apollo Project with the federal government spending 300 billion on research for new non-polluting energy sources. They estimate private enterprise would then add 200 billion more and real solutions could certainly be found. They polled the public on their idea and found almost universal acceptance, Texas rednecks as well as Bay Area enviros were in approval.

Sadly, traditional environmental groups ended up opposing it, because it stepped all over their sacred cows (and donor base, no doubt.) So now the authors have an institute, new book, and book tour, and plan to spread the word.

“If this book doesn’t piss off a whole lot of conservatives and a whole lot of liberals, we’ve failed,” Nordhaus says.

I like their attitude.

Wired has a must-read article on this, and for me it was a real eureka moment. Yes, with a plan like this we have a real chance of both stopping global warming and solving the peak oil problem - and really, what’s the alternative? Wait for the oil to run out and the seas to rise bemoaning our fate all the way as endless wars for oil and water rage across the planet?

Socialists say this kind of change can only happen when a new form of government takes power, but that takes too long and then you’ve got years of fighting those forced from power. We don’t have twenty years. We need to start now. Free marketers think the market can do it alone, but this is illusion. Only governments have the resources and power to pull off a plan like this.

What if the economic solution to environmental disaster weren’t a matter of stepping on the brakes but of stepping on the gas?

Indeed. (I’ll be reviewing the book as soon as it arrives from Amazon.)

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The Oil Drum reports on the Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference.

As Dr. James Schlesinger, the first Secretary of Energy [under Carter], said in his Opening Address, the battle is over, Peak Oil is now accepted as inevitable, and the debate only becomes as to when. We have “won” and need to learn to take Yes! as an answer.

His address had three themes; 1)  Recognition of the Peak is growing and the prophets are no longer howling in the wilderness, 2)  Don’t rub it in, be gracious in victory else risk alienating recent converts, 3) Patience. Gas-powered automotive transport needs to be replaced, but we don’t know by what yet.

From the belly of the beast comes another convert.  Lord Oxburgh, former chair of Shell, has warned that oil prices could hit $150 per barrel and accused the industry of having its “head in the sand” and “sleepwalking into a problem which is actually going to be very serious”

He said it hardly mattered when peak oil production occurred because the real problem is the gap between production and demand.

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The question is being raised more and more. In the coming era of climate change and peak oil, where resources are becoming depleted and carbon emissions change the weather, isn’t the underlying problem one of overpopulation?

SusHI raises the question in a thoughtful post (the graph is from them) as does an Op-Ed in The Guardian.

As the environment finally gets the prominence it deserves, some environmentalists are prepared to assert that population management has to be on the agenda.

There’s no point giving up your meat and your car, recycling your rubbish and producing lots of children. The challenge is to have that debate while steering well clear of racism - or of the authoritarianism that lurks in the background of environmentalism.

China mandates that families only have two children. An unfortunate result of this is that first-born girls sometimes are deliberately killed so the parents can try to have boys instead. There’s little chance repressive authoritarian methods like that could ever be instituted in the U.S., nor should they be. And the obvious racism that could happen when an area decides to keep Them out must also be avoided.

Optimum Population ran the numbers and concluded

Even if the world managed to achieve a 52 per cent cut in its 1990 emission levels by 2050 - not far off the IPCC’s 60 per cent target - it would be canceled out by population growth.

Can the planet really handle 2.5 billion more people in the next 43 years? I doubt it. Sane and rational ways to slow population growth need to be found else Mother Nature might do it for us.

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The Oil Drum explains in a two-part series why trying to extract oil from tar sands is a desperation ploy by the heavily addicted. It’s expensive, an environmental nightmare, and barely returns more energy than it takes to get it.

What we have here is arguably the most environmentally destructive activity man has ever attempted, with a compliant government, insatiable demand and an endless supply of capital turning it into “a speeding car with a gas pedal and no brakes.” It sucks down critical and rapidly diminishing amounts of both natural gas and water, paying neither for its consumption of natural capital nor its environmental destruction, to the utter detriment of its host. And all to eke out maybe a 10% profit, if it turns out that the books haven’t been cooked, and if the taxation structure remains a flat-out giveaway.

All of that, just to produce enough oil to offset the declining conventional oil production in the rest of Canada. Maybe.

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Global warming coincides quite exactly neatly with the use of petroleum-based products on a large scale, something which is hardly coincidence. Industrialization and globalization were literally fueled by oil, and an unexpected consequence of that is climate change. Melting ice caps, the spread of disease in now-warmer climates, and severe drought in some areas are just a few of the effects we are now seeing.

Thus, our carbon-based economy is a direct cause of climate climate. So concludes Jim Kunstler in The Long Emergency in the chapter Nature Bites Back. Because it’s not just climate change that is problematic, it’s also the damage humans are doing directly. Water levels in aquifers are dropping precipitously primarily due to irrigation for farming in arid areas, something made possible by fertilizers created from oil-based products. Gigantic flood control projects like those in China created dams that divert water from elsewhere and then silt up within 100 years anyway.

Kunstler asks, what happens when large farming areas go bust due to lack of water? Will those affected be peaceful about it, get angry and take up arms, or migrate elsewhere, causing huge strains on those areas. I’m guessing on the last two.

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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s newly created Office of New Reactors is expecting a flood of new applications, another sign of resurgent interest in nuclear power.

The new designs are considerably safer, and can be built “from first concrete to reactor critical” in just 36 months.

With Peak Oil appearing to become reality, we need ways to produce massive amounts of cheap energy 24/7 without using petroleum-based products. There are only two ways to do this, coal, which is hideously polluting from start to finish, or nuclear. There are no other alternatives.

NEI Nuclear Notes and Atomic Insights provide news and views on the nuclear industry.

Our previous post on the topic sparked a lively debate in the comments, check it out.

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The 1997 Kyoto protocol would limit carbon emissions to 11,000 pounds per person. According to one carbon calculator, a single round-trip plane trip across the country uses half this “allowance.”

Something to think about as we consider lifestyle changes to reduce our emissions.

Yikes. Sue and I have made numerous transcontinental plane trips this past 12 months, and others travel much more than we do. We’ve also flown to Hawaii on vacation. If plane flights become restricted or nonexistent because of the fuel costs or emissions caps, then the world as we know it will be very different. Hawaii will cease to exist as a tourist destination and if tourism goes so does much of their economy. Then there’s the question of shipping goods to Hawaii (as most everything they need gets shipped by boat.) If the cost of shipping soars because of peak oil, then those goods may not get shipped. Within a few years you’d probably see a mass exodus from Hawaii as their collapsed economy could no longer support that many people.

Hey, I want to go back to Maui. It’s a wonderful place. So, in a coming world presumably concerned with peak oil and carbon emissions, is tourism dead? How do we keep the good parts of our world and deal with these problems too?

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If we truly have reached the peak in oil production and everything is downhill from here, then we need electricity produced reliably in huge quantities without using oil, natural gas, or coal.

Renewable energy sources like wind, wave, water, and solar can help and should certainly be used. But they can’t go the distance. There’s only one way to create the enormous amounts of energy needed, and that is nuclear power.

Yes, nukes. That’s the conclusion Jim Kunstler reaches in The Long Emergency, and I reluctantly agree. France already generates 70% of their power that way and have never had an “incident.” Yes, there’s the radioactive storage problem as well as safeguarding against weapon proliferation. But without reliable electricity, much of what we call civilization goes away.

Further, nukes could be used to recharge electric vehicles at night, and thus could keep transportation going when and if plentiful, cheap oil becomes a thing of the past.

If you accept the thesis that oil is running out, then we need to find ways to keep the lights on. Nuclear will do just that. I’m not sure there are alternatives.

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Subtitle: Surviving the End of the Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

U.S. oil production peaked in about 1971. It now appears that global oil production has already or is about to peak. James Howard Kunstler (blog) explores, with ample documentation, what this means in The Long Emergency.

If oil production has peaked, then 50% of all known oil reserves are gone and the remaining 50% will be increasingly difficult and expensive to get to. Some of it will be impossible to get out, so there’s actually less than 50% left. China and India are industrializing fast, creating more demand for oil. Globalism runs on cheap oil. Without it, for example, outsourcing factories to Asia, makes no economic sense.

So, Kunstler asks, what kind of planet will we have as oil supply continues to drop, demand increases, and the price rises? He sees huge economic dislocations coming, with entire industries being crippled or shut down. Those who live in the suburbs or the country will find their lifestyle increasingly untenable, as much of it is automobile-based. There will be further wars for the remaining petroleum reserves. The corrupt Saudi monarchy will probably fall, China could assert hegemony in the Middle East, and those countries without enough oil will have major problems. Government will fracture and autonomous regions will form.

Oil is widely used in manufacturing, both directly in things like pharmaceuticals and fertilizer, and to power the machines that make things. This is a crucial point. Oil isn’t just used for transporting goods, it is also used in creating them.

Ah, you say, renewable energy will solve the problem. Well, it could help, but the capacity of renewables to create enough electricity just isn’t there and again, all those wind turbines and solar panels need petroleum-based products to be manufactured. He sees nuclear power as the only method of keeping the lights on until we make the transition to whatever comes after our soon-to-be-ending era of cheap, readily available oil. Yes, there’s the storage problem for the spent nuclear rods. But there may be no alternative.

It occurs to me that little Cuba, which was forced to reinvent its agriculture after the USSR fell, could provide a model here. They now grow virtually all their food organically, without pesticides and fertilizer, and do so locally. In Kunstler’s view, this is precisely where agriculture is headed. You can forget about buying New Zealand strawberries at Whole Foods in the winter, transportation costs will make that untenable. Food will be locally grown, period.

Sure, this book is apocalyptic. But if you accept that oil production has peaked, then the seriousness of the situation becomes apparent. One wonders what forms of government will evolve because of this, as neither capitalism nor socialism as we know them would be able handle such changes. Capitalism assumes the market will handle supply-demand problems, but what if supply is always dropping? Socialism assumes central control and managed economies, but that seems an unlikely prospect as people increasingly begin to grow their own food, manage their own local economies, and become semi- if not completely autonomous.

(More on this important book in future posts.)

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Our economic system is unsustainable by its very nature. The only response to climate chaos and peak oil is major social change.

This is from Robert Newman writing in The Guardian, and I agree completely. He says we need to break up corporate power, give power back to the people (both figuratively and literally), and create personal and national carbon rationing systems. Again, this sounds good. Capitalism left to its own devices probably can not find solutions to climate change and peak oil because it will always be overly focused on short term profit. Thus, something new is needed.

So, the question for Socialists and Left Greens is, how can these needed changes be accomplished? Socialism posits a strong central government, and all indications are the coming years will bring massive decentralization, countries breaking into fragments over battles for oil and water, with a continuing “hollowing out” of governments as John Robb puts it.

So in this brave new decentralized world, where are the central governments that can mandate change at global or even national levels? Answer. Nowhere. They won’t exist with anywhere near the power needed to create such change.

Capitalism sure isn’t working, but it’s difficult to see how socialism can exist in the coming years either.

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