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An Interview with James Howard Kunstler | WorldChanging Team
WorldChanging Interviews see all posts in this category

If there's one thing we steer away from around here, it's doom and gloom and the sometimes-too-tempting sense of hopelessness that can come with thinking seriously about the world's problems. For this reason, there was no passive acceptance from the WC editorial team when James Howard Kunstler's "we're screwed" attititude gained attention around the release of his 2005 The Long Emergency.

Of course, the contention was a result of the fact that we are in agreement with Kunstler that the end of oil is inevitable, pivotal, and fast approaching. Most of us simply fall in the camp that all is not lost, and that in fact, as Alex argues in The Post-Oil Megacity, the oil crisis may trigger an opportunity for massive change in the way we orchestrate our lives and construct our surroundings.

To keep things lively, we've decided to post an interview with Kunstler conducted last week at the Renewable Energy & Sustainable Living Fair in Custer, Wisconsin. Kunstler's got some interesting things to say about urban planning, Wal-Mart, and living local. We may not all agree with him, but if part of our goal here is to change the debate, we've got to have one.

One of the interviewers, WC ally Paul Schmelzer, shared the transcript with us, which is included after the jump. Thanks again, Paul!

James Howard Kunstler, Interviewed by Paul Schmelzer, writer and founder of the blog Eyeteeth, and Nick Vander Puy of
Superior Broadcast Network, Saturday, June 24, 2006.

Nick Vander Puy: Last week on NPR, chief executive officer of British Petroleum says this business about peak oil is just a bunch of Nervous Nellies.

James Howard Kunstler: As I’m fond of saying, if we could harness the energy produced from guys like that blowing smoke up the public’s rear end, then we could probably run the interstate highway system, Wal-mart, and Walt Disney World.

NVP: When we were traveling here from northern Wisconsin, we had to go through this panorama of destruction and emptiness, which is all over America now. You’ve written some wonderful and some very critical books about surburbia, and what you call the “greatest misallocation of resources the world has known.” How did we get into this mess?

JHK: It’s not that difficult to understand. In America, we had this fantastic endowment of petroleum which was fairly easy to get. We knocked ourselves out in a couple of world wars and a depression, and after that we decided we needed to give ourselves a present. And the present we gave ourselves was an easy-motoring utopia, and then we commenced to spend the second half of the 20th century building it. And that’s what we did. The problem was, we didn’t figure how it was going to run when we had trouble with our oil supply. We started to in 1973 with the OPEC embargo, and at that time
American oil production had peaked and we were able to muddle through by importing oil from other countries. But now the world is reaching its oil production peak, and we’re not going to be able to go to another planet to import oil. So that’s sort of the nature of the problem.

NVP: How do people break through this collective trance? I was at a Wal-Mart hearing last
week. Lady comes in with a petition with 800 signatures in favor of Wal-Mart.

JHK: “We want Wal-Mart! We want Wal-Mart. We want bargain shopping.” We want to throw our community in the garbage. Well, it’s very hard, and I don’t know that there’s a great wish to break through the fog of misunderstanding and destruction. It may take a period of hardship for the American public to gird its loins and make some decisions about our behavior, and what our behavior is going to be like in the future, and what kind of behavior are we going to continue and promote and subsidize? Because the kind of behavior we’re promoting and subsidizing now—like, building more and more
suburbia so that we can keep the homebuilders busy—that’s not going to be working forever.

NVP: Why is local important?

JHK: Local’s important because you have some control over your economic and ecological destiny. And other people in distant places are not running your life and running your economy. As Wendell Berry pointed out, the word economy comes from the Greek word for home management. And managing your locality, your community, is something better left to someone living in your community. You certainly want commercial intercourse with people elsewhere, and you want to have trade and you want to have those kinds of things, but I don’t think you want people living 12,000 miles away running your life and destroying your community, which is what’s happening.

NVP: Some lyrics you closed The Long Emergency with: the Blue side of Gershwin, the
one that your father favored. What are those lyrics and what did you learn from them?

JHK: Oh, that was from “Our Love Is Here to Stay” by George Gershwin. “The Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may crumble, but our love is here to stay.” Gershwin was writing kind of a tragic lyric there, recognizing that nothing lasts forever. That there’s a beginning and an end to most mortal things, including these big mountains we see. But, actually the idea that our love is here to stay is very profound. I don’t know if the human race is going to be around forever—probably not—but something was here and we were here and there was a lot about us that was pretty great. Our love is here is to stay, in a way. It’s there for an eternity.

Paul Schmelzer: One of the theses of science fiction writer Bruce Sterling’s book, Shaping Things, is that a lot of our current environmental problems come out of a failure to transcend our metahistory—the way we think about our history and our “progress” into the future. How do we transcend the metahistory of oil and of consumption?

JHK: We are kind of hostages to the time we live in and hostages to the customs and practices of our time. It certainly isn’t easy. I don’t know how you do it as a group. I suppose that you’d have to drag out that old word “paradigm.” Paradigm shifts tend to be rapid and tend to be disorderly and tend to be destabilizing. That’s probably the kind of situation we’re going to be headed into. Otherwise, everybody’s just going to keep on motoring down the freeway and have expectations that they’re going to go to the mall and their job is always going to be there, working for the Ramjack Corporiation. So,
yeah, it’s sort of the equivalent of a smack upside the head for the culture, as in, “Yo, wake up!”

PS: The founders of the Apollo Alliance, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger wrote a critique of the environmental movement called “The Death of the Environmentalism” in which they argue, if I’m characterizing it correctly, that the environmentalism has become a captured special interest. They’re fighting against labor and gender rights issues instead of working with related groups. What I found moving about your talk today is that you take a holistic approach: it’s about railroads and
surburbia and urban planning...

JHK: It’s certainly not just about focusing on the muskrats and the mud turtles. We really have to get our thinking beyond that. They’re important too. You see this a lot in the whole land-use discussion, too, where a lot of people who call themselves environmentalists seem to limit their interests to scenery and recreation. And when it really comes down to the matter of, how are human beings going to inhabit the landscape and what kind of human ecology are we going to have and what kind of human habitat are we going to have, they’re simply tuned out and not interested. These guys got to get interested in the design of the human habitat, and that’s essentially urban design. There’s also, of course, the agricultural landscape we have to maintain, and there’s also the wild and scenic landscape that has to be maintained. But they’ve got to pay attention to all those different parts of “the transect of conditions,” as we call it in the new urbanism. And they’re not. They don’t want to hear about urban design.

I remember I once went to Spokane, Washington, and the urban planning staff took me around for a tour. And the tour was weird because they took me from scenic overlook to another saying “Look at the view from here.” Then they’d drive ten miles. “Look at the view from here.” And at the end of the day I had to sort of clue them in and tell them: “It’s not about the scenery from the overlooks, it’s about that grid of streets and buildings that you’ve got ten miles away down there. That’s what you should be concerned about.”

Anybody can put a poster of the Rocky Mountains in their basement and go down there and sit and feel groovy about it, but meanwhile their town is crumbling around them. We need to have towns that are actually rewarding to live in, that people care about and are worth living in. Right now, everybody disdains urban America at any scale, whether it’s a town or a big city, because we’ve done such a bad job of constructing them and assembling them and detailing them. We’ve got to do a much better job with that stuff at a much finer scale.

PS: For a guy with a blog called “Clusterjohn tesh Nation,” you’re certainly not a raving lunatic.

JHK: Well, that’s very kind of you. I try to employ a little bit of profanity to try to wake up the people who are nodding off when I’m speaking. But I’m not a raving maniac. I’m sort of a creature of my own generation, and we like to spice up the dialogue a little bit. I try not to overuse it. Some people still object to hearing it at all. After all, part of what I do is comedy. Nobody complains about George Carlin. They complain about me.

PS: Thanks for your time.

JHK: Thank you.

www.kunstler.com
jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterjohn tesh_nation
www.thebreakthrough.org/images/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf
www.apolloalliance.org
www.superiorbroadcast.org
Shaping Things

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http://www.energybulletin.net/18588.html

Published on 26 Jul 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 26 Jul 2006.
Eight ways that modern medicine is oil dependent

by Paul Roth
RELATED NEWS:

Most of our modern medical system is oil-dependent, just like the rest of society. Oil has been so cheap for so long that it has become a pervasive presence in health care delivery. This impact is most obvious when one looks at the transport systems required to maintain a health service. Just as suburbia has been subsidised by the endowment of cheap and plentiful oil, modern medical care is predicated on the cheap movement of things and people from one place to another. This cheap transportation is so crucial that the system must fall apart if no alternatives are developed before oil becomes scarce and even more expensive. This article examines these issues from the perspective of large hospitals - they represent one of the most centralised expressions of health care delivery, and will probably become one of the first major casualities of peak oil.

1. Transport
Modern healthcare facilities are open systems that consume inputs and produce wastes. With few exceptions, almost none of the inputs are created on site, and must be brought to the facility (usually by road). Examples include food, medical supplies, linen, and medical gases like oxygen. Outputs include general rubbish as well as clinical (ie contaminated) waste that reqiures special handling and disposal (either landmass or incineration). The other big transport category is people - staff, patients, visitors and students need to travel to and from the site.

2. Direct Content
Many items used in modern medicine contain petrochemical derivatives. Some of the main categories are gloves (synthetic rubber), clinical disposables (like syringes), medications, sterile packaging (mainly plastic), high-tech equipment like CT and MRI scanners, and computers.

3. Embodied
Many items that don’t directly contain petrochemicals do have oil-based products embodied within them. Producing stainless steel or titanium joint-replacement components may require oil at several steps, including mining, refining, manufacturing, transporting, and packaging.

4. Energy Production
There are two main categories - offsite (natural gas-fired power stations) and on-site (oil or gas for heating and steam generation).

5. Processes
Activities within hospitals like laundering (hot water) and equipment sterilisation (steam, plastic packaging, ethylene oxide) might be oil-dependent.

6. Roads and Buildings
Maintaining and constructing buildings and roads may include multiple oil-dependent processes.

7. Emergency Services
Most emergency services in Western society are vehicle-based and run on petrol or diesel. The majority are cars and trucks but also (especially) helicopters.

8. Organisational and Political Systems
Healthcare services exist within a complex system of modern society. They currently reside within a hierarchial structure of local, state and federal government, health insurance companies, vocational colleges, registration boards, and many other political and pseudopolitical entities. All are currently dependent on oil to a greater or lesser extent (especially for transporting people and things).

Outcomes
So what changes could peak oil bring to our health-care system? Like the impacts on the rest of society, it will partly depend on the rapidity of oil scarcity and the amount of preparation. In the short term there will probably be decreased and unequal access to services, rationing, and a reduction in quality of life (we might be sicker, more mentally ill, and not live as long). In the longer term, a successful transition will need to involve more personal responsibility for one’s own health, as well as a more informal and dispersed health care system centred on the small-community / village level.

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http://www.energybulletin.net/18729.html

Published on 30 Jul 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 30 Jul 2006.
Oil Depletion Economics 101

by Ronald R. Cooke

The following article has been extracted from my book "Oil, Jihad and Destiny". It looks at the basic economic considerations that must be resolved when we try to analyze oil production, consumption and pricing, or the impact these factors will have on the economy. Please note: the information contained in this article is presented without any warranty. I am publishing it to provide a basis for thoughtful discussion.

Ronald R. Cooke
The Cultural Economist

Consumption and GDP

When we buy goods and services, we are engaged in an act that will lead to their consumption. We may use (consume) them immediately (as with goods such as gasoline or services such as haircuts, etc.), sometime in the future (as we typically do with canned food, clothing, etc.), or over a long period of time (refrigerators, automobiles, etc.). We use Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a way of measuring the dollar value of everything an individual nation, a geographic region, or the world is able to produce within a given time frame (a month, a quarter or a year).

As one may suspect, there is a relationship between consumption and GDP. As consumption rises, there is an attendant increase in the demand for goods and services that results in greater production (and hence GDP). Conversely, when consumption declines, so does GDP.

Historically, there has also been a relationship between oil consumption and GDP. In the past, the increase or decrease in GDP (which measures the production of goods and services), tended to drive the demand and consumption of oil. The more goods and services we produced, the more oil we needed in order to produce our goods and services. We used more gasoline to move things and people, we used more oil for the generation of electricity, and we used more oil as a feedstock for the production of goods (plastics, chemicals, cosmetics, drugs, and so on). If on the other hand, the consumption of goods and services declined, then GDP and oil consumption also declined.

In developing the economic impact analysis for the oil crisis scenarios described in my book, estimates of GDP are tied to estimated oil consumption and estimated oil pricing. In so doing, our formulae must account for the fact that the quantity of oil used per unit of GDP has been changing. While the mature economies of the world - like the United States - are becoming more efficient in their use of oil (using less per unit of GDP), emerging economies (such as China) have tended to use more oil per unit of GDP. We also need to include in our formulae the concept that sharp increases in the price of oil will force people to consume less oil (almost immediately because we cannot afford to pay a higher price) and sharp decreases in the price of oil will stimulate greater consumption (although this takes a longer time because lower consumption has usually been associated with recessive economic conditions that take time to improve).

There is another problem. In the past, GDP and oil consumption have tended to move in tandem (more or less - oil consumption tends to be more volatile than GDP). Changes in GDP drove changes in oil consumption. But as we move from a world economy that has enough oil to meet demand, to an economy that must deal with periodic oil shortages, then the reverse will be true.

Oil shortages (or availability), along with the price of oil, will tend to drive the growth or decline of GDP.

In addition, the price of oil will rise until there is a balance between supply and demand. But this relationship will also be more complicated than it has been in the past. There is a high probability that future oil markets will be characterized by arbitrary oil prices. It will take longer for the supply versus demand mechanism to resolve any imbalances. In addition, oil consumption for transportation will evolve from an emphasis on individual vehicles (my car) to mass transportation (including ride sharing), moderating the normal impact that the supply versus demand mechanism would have on pricing.

In determining how changes in oil production (availability) will impact the price of oil, we must also consider whether or not changes in the price of oil are based on a willing buyer and a willing seller in a market that is free to move according to negotiated supply and demand pricing; we must factor in the impact of other inflationary forces; we must include the length of time that these changes take to occur; and we must determine the status of the economy at the time these price changes occur. And finally, the price of oil and GDP tend to have an inverse relationship.

Confused? Just remember.

We are moving from a world economy that enjoyed excess oil capacity to a world economy dominated by chronic, severe, and highly volatile shortages. The GDP of all nations will have a volatile response to these shortages

.
Rate of Inflation

It's safe to say that increased oil prices will drive up the Rate of Inflation. Although the price of oil tends to be more volatile than the Rate of Inflation, there is a correlation. Rates will be highly volatile as periods of oil shortage alternate with months of surplus. If the price of oil were the only driver of inflation, then inflation would skyrocket. But there are other factors that must enter into our calculation. The combination of higher prices and sporadic shortages will drive an increase in unemployment, restrict consumption and disrupt both the production and distribution of goods and services. Productivity will decrease. Lower interest rates will only marginally help the economy because oil shortages will disrupt the flow and use of money in the economy. These impacts are all deflationary. Thus in our formulae for calculating Inflation, we must offset the inflationary impact of higher oil prices with the recessive impact that oil prices and shortages will have on the economy.

We also have to include the deflationary impact of unemployment on regional demand and GDP. Over the last two decades, over 60 percent of displaced white collar workers found new jobs that paid less than they were making before becoming unemployed. For white or blue collar workers living in the highly developed economies of the industrialized world, either the Political or the Production Crisis discussed in my book will exacerbate this problem. Lower pay means lower oil consumption and a declining GDP.

In the economic impact analysis used for the Best Case, Production and Political scenarios described in my book, the Rate of Inflation has been tied to the rate of change in the world price for oil as well as a calculation of unsatisfied oil demand. It works this way. The demand for a scarce commodity will drive up its price. As the price of oil goes up, changes in consumer spending choices gradually reduce real demand. This in turn reduces the upward price pressure on the commodity. As long as real demand (how much oil we would consume if it were readily available) exceeds actual consumption, the difference is called unsatisfied demand. All three scenarios reflect greater volatility in the Rate of Inflation because we are moving from a world economy that enjoyed excess oil capacity to a world economy dominated by chronic, severe, and highly volatile shortages. This volatility will drive corresponding changes in unsatisfied demand and inflation as consumers adjust to shortages by bidding up the price of oil based products.


Unemployment

Any oil crisis will drive up the rate of unemployment. Primary factors include: a decrease in consumption of goods and services, the horrific disruption of transportation and a fear driven decrease in capital spending. In the Best Case scenario described in my book, oil shortages create a mildly recessive condition in the economy. The Production Crisis drives us into a long period of chronic recession that alternates with intervals of mild economic recovery. The Political Crisis scenario describes an economy that plunges into a depression.

Future estimates of unemployment must include a consideration for persistent oil shortages and the resulting volatility of oil prices. The annual change in oil consumption is therefore a better guide to estimated unemployment than the price of oil. We can assume that in periods of restricted supply, nations will consume all the oil they can get up to the point where there is sufficient oil to sustain current economic activity. The level of economic activity will be directly proportional to available oil supplies. Oil consumption and unemployment have an inverse relationship. As oil consumption increases, unemployment will decrease - and vice versa.

For example, if a nation has sufficient free cash flow, consumer demand, and non-oil resources to increase its GDP by 1.3 percent for a given year, then its oil consumption also needs to increase by 1.3 percent (ignoring the impact of changes in energy efficiency). If there is a surplus of available oil, then a growth rate of 1.3 percent is achievable. However, if there isn't enough available oil to permit the potential increase in consumption, then economic activity must grow at a slower rate. If the shortage is severe enough, economic activity will be forced to decrease.

I relied on an inspection of how unemployment has acted in previous recessions (and the depression of 1929) in order to make an educated guess of the projected rate of unemployment that will occur in an oil crisis. Hopefully, there is a really good econometric model on a big computer somewhere that can be used by a really smart economist to improve on the results of my humble calculations.


Global Impact

Although this report only deals with the economic impact of an oil crisis on the United States, these calculations could be duplicated for every nation on this planet

Any oil crisis will have a global reach, sparing no nation from its pain and hardship. The industrial nations of North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim will be hit the hardest because they have the most energy intensive economies.

In making assessments of global oil consumption, we have to factor in the rapid economic growth of nations such as China and India, increasing demand in third world countries, recognize the interaction of regional economies (consumption in America creates jobs in China, and so on), and make some assumptions about the development of alternative forms of energy that will eventually reduce the demand for oil. The oil crisis described in the Best Case and Production scenarios may also produce a panic in world financial markets. The Political Crisis will definitely cause these markets to collapse.

There is one other factor that we must consider when we make an estimate of how an oil crisis will impact global production and consumption.

People.

In making production assumptions, it can be assumed that as the price of oil increases, limited additional production will come on-line to satisfy demand. Thus, if Middle Eastern producers restrict production, the resulting shortages will drive up the price of oil and this in turn will stimulate additional production in the Pacific Rim, North America, EurAsia, Africa and South America. This has been the traditional economic response to shortages. But we must modify our production assumptions based on social responses as well as the limitations of elasticity discussed above. Environmental concerns will act as a drag on new production, exacerbating oil shortages and prolonging the recessive impact of an oil crisis. Islamist influence will have a negative impact on production and transportation in the Caspian, North African, West African, and Pacific Rim oil fields. The transition to alternative fuels is also both a technical and a cultural challenge. And of course, if our cultural problems can not be constrained, regional or world war is always a possibility.

1929

The last comparable economic shock to the world economy occurred in 1929. Severe deflation dropped the American Consumer Price Index (CPI) by over 23 percent to a low of 13 in 1933. The years 1934 through 1940 were characterized by modest changes to the CPI. Unemployment increased by 728 percent, from 1.55 million in 1929 to 12.83 million in 1933. America did not reach a full employment economy until 1942 - 13 years after the collapse of the economy in 1929. American Gross National Product (GNP) plummeted 9.4 percent in 1930, 8.5 percent in 1931, 13.4 percent in 1932, and 2.1 percent in 1933. It bounced back from 1934 through 1937, was negative again in 1938, and then increased through the years of WW2.

By 1932, industrial stocks had lost 80 percent of their value, 40 percent of the banks had failed, and international trade had fallen by more than 60 percent.

If a Political Crisis occurs - like the one described in my book - the world will suffer the same kind of devastating economic volatility that it did in 1929. If oil production simply fails to meet consumer demand over a long period of time (there is no political crisis), then the Production scenario becomes more likely. In both cases, however, the economic trends will be irreversible unless we humans develop a suitable alternative energy system.

Interest Rates

In the above discussion, I stated that lower interest rates will only marginally help the economy because oil shortages will disrupt the flow and use of money in the economy. The reverse is also true. Although the American Federal Reserve (or its international counterparts) can try to contain inflation by raising interest rates, the availability and price of oil have a structural impact on the world economy. Higher prices will tend to exacerbate inflation, irrespective of the Federal interest rate policy. History shows that lower oil prices ease the upward pressure on inflation.

A gradual decline in the availability of oil will tend to be inflationary because consumers have time to adjust their spending habits as they encounter higher fuel and product prices. However, a sudden - and very large - decline in oil shipments could cause a short period of intense inflation (as consumers scramble to buy available oil based products), followed by a longer interval of deflation (as economic activity rapidly declines). It would appear that under depressive economic conditions, Federal interest rate policy will only have a modest impact on the outcome.

Conclusion

After weeks of trying to model world oil production and consumption, after spending hundreds of hours trying to develop and test formulae to predict American GDP, unemployment and inflation based on changes in world oil consumption and production, I concluded it is impossible to develop a conclusive business case from an analysis of available data.

Why? There are many reasons. Here are two of the most important.

* Some of the essential data is unknown, or unknowable. For example, how much oil will Saudi Arabia produce over the next 20 years? What is the projection for Iraqi oil production? And so on.
* It became very clear that past oil market behavior may not be a good predictor of future oil market performance. Historically, the interaction of production, consumption and pricing occurred in a market that had excess production capacity. That may, or may not, be true in the future.


We are forced, therefore, to use the scenario approach to our analysis of future oil market trends.

Scenarios are not predictions. Rather, they permit us to make, and then test, a hypothesis. We will then be able to challenge the assumptions, encourage debate about the model, and profile the probable result of our analysis. Scenarios are tools that give our evaluations focus, permit us to deal with the unexpected, and characterize the results of dynamic circumstances.

Based on its own alternative set of internally compatible assumptions, each scenario can be constructed with due attention to the associated economic and cultural constraints. These assumptions drive the values shown for each data series. We can then assign a probability value to each scenario we construct. High probability scenarios give us a clue to the future of the oil market.

After constructing several alternative scenarios, it became abundantly clear they all produced results that were strikingly similar. Every scenario produced higher rates of inflation and unemployment with declining GDP. The only real difference was in the timing and degree of severity.

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http://www.energybulletin.net/18947.html

Apocalypse always: Is the peak oil movement really just another apocalyptic cult?
by Kurt Cobb

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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH25Dj01.html

Aug 25, 2006


Russia spins global energy spider's web
By W Joseph Stroupe

The vast bulk of the world's oil, gas and strategic minerals resources either is coming under or is already under the control of authoritarian, or less-than-democratic, or leftist, or otherwise radical regimes either with a decidedly anti-Western political stance and ideology or pointedly decreased sensitivities to strategic US interests.

It is difficult to name more than a handful of resource-rich states that are liberal democracies and that are still significantly aligned with the West. Only Canada and Mexico come immediately to mind, and even Canada is increasingly embracing China and the East in the sphere of strategic energy deals and agreements.

Even those resource-rich regimes that are considered to be the most moderate of the globe's producing states are far less closely aligned geopolitically with the US than they were previously.

Saudi Arabia, for example, continues its "Look East" policy of diversifying its markets away from the US. It has concluded a range of important deals in the energy sector with China and India and is steadily moving into closer geopolitical alignment with the rising East.

A number of other key Middle Eastern regimes are following suit. By and large Latin America is doing the same, as are Africa and Central Asia. Almost none of the world's oil and gas producers wants to be inordinately dependent on the US market any longer. Additionally, the steady rise of the powerful economies of Asia beckons oil and gas producers toward such lucrative markets that are politically cost-free, meaning they do not attach political demands and seek to interfere in the domestic affairs of the producing regimes, as does the US.

In virtually all cases, the interests of the West and of its multinational oil companies and big Western financial institutions are being minimized and/or pushed out as the global trend of nationalization, by one means or another, of the oil-and-gas sector picks up speed.

That is occurring in Russia, which has now surpassed Saudi Arabia as the world's largest exporter of oil, in Central Asia, the Middle East and in Latin America. Within virtually all such regimes the lines of separation between the top levels of political leadership and the directorship of key corporations and industries are not only blurred but are being obliterated. The multinational oil companies of the West are being marginalized as a direct result.

That is the case in Russia, where in many key areas of industry corporate directors are intimately tied to President Vladimir Putin, having formed a close association with him long before he became president, and many even hold key positions as upper-level Kremlin officials, or as government ministers. Not merely coincidentally, the key corporations the directors of which are so closely allied with Putin are often resources-based and are also those that are state-controlled businesses, with the Russian state holding controlling (51% or more) interests.

To varying yet alarming degrees, the resource-rich regimes around the globe are copying the Russian model. Resources-based corporate states with a profound political affinity for one another and a simultaneous collective disdain and even a hatred for US-led unipolar dominance are proliferating around the globe.

Resource-rich Russia's mounting global leverage with the world's other producing states and with the powerhouse economies of the East, and its profound political affinity with such producers and key consumer states, far outweighs the influence of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

How so? Russia is crossing the membership boundaries of OPEC to court its most powerful members and to conclude with them joint-venture agreements of huge consequence and importance for the future of global oil and gas exploration and production. The West is rapidly being pushed out of such ventures, or is being forced to take radical reductions in the size of its stakes, and is being left out entirely in many new ventures.

Instead, the world's producing regimes are increasingly entering key joint ventures between themselves and in very close cooperation with the powerhouse economies of the rising East, such as China. We are witnessing not merely the formation of some new oil-and-gas cartel with Russia at its center, but rather the formation of something that includes both producers and the key consumer states of the East in an ever more cohesive de facto confederation. This is dedicated to the achievement of strategic energy security for those within its clearly defined circle.
In the process, OPEC itself, as an entity, is being undermined and marginalized. Simultaneously, the West is being forcibly cast from the proverbial frying pan into the fire as something far more powerful, compelling and all-encompassing than OPEC is coalescing.

The ominous rise around the globe of the resources-based corporate state is accelerating. The implications for the West are enormous, yet such implications are only beginning to be understood. As noted above, such states are concluding rapidly increased numbers of strategic agreements among themselves for the joint exploration and production of oil and gas, and with the rapidly rising powerhouse economies of the East, such as China and India, for the private long-term supply of oil and gas.

The creation of such private pools of oil and gas for the consumption only by specific economic powers in the East and select economies of the West is also a new development that carries with it profound implications for the West.

In essence, the circle defining international energy security is now being drawn. Inside the circle are those producer and consumer states whose political and geopolitical affinity for each other is the result of no mere chance occurrence and whose energy-security interests are being strategically served and addressed on both sides of the producer/consumer equation.

Some of the economies of the West, such as Germany, are being included within the developing circle. Outside the circle are those economies of the West that are to be left out of the growing international energy-security arrangements currently being constructed, as alluded to above. Interestingly, and as a profound new development, it isn't the United States that defines the path and scope of the circle. Instead, it is Russia and its strategic partners who are defining it.

Because Russia's leaders adroitly positioned the Russian Federation to capitalize massively on global energy developments, it is the state that inherited the unique ability to shape global developments as they unfold. Russia is shaping important developments among the world's key producing and consuming powers. They are being shaped contrary to the strategic interests of the United States, as noted above. The US is also shaping developments, foolishly handing Russia and the East ever more global leverage. By incessant strategic blunders, the US has isolated itself internationally and fanned the fires of global anti-Americanism, which increasingly engulf the very regions where its own resources-based strategic interests lie.

An entire array of fundamental global developments as respect strategic resources is quite literally changing the landscape of the traditional global energy order. With regard to energy and energy security, a new global order is emerging. The US-backed liberal, open global oil market order is beset by an accelerating proliferation of private, state-to-state long-term agreements and contracts concluded within the circle Russia and its partners are defining.

This is creating increasing numbers of private pools of oil and gas dedicated only to serving the energy-security interests of the circle of private participants. Along the way, Russia's export monopoly of the oil and gas that still flows outside the circle to the West continues to grow, further ensuring its mounting global leverage.

Rather than being merely unrelated and random events, global developments in the energy and geopolitical spheres over the past seven years form a distinct pattern that bespeaks the execution of a developing strategy of a Russian reacquisition of global power, but in concert with its strategic partners, at the incalculable expense of the West in general and of the US in particular.

Contrary to the assumptions of conventional wisdom, the US hasn't any longer the global leverage to shape unfolding developments in its favor. Russia is rapidly acquiring such leverage, and it is expertly plying that leverage against US vulnerabilities in the energy sphere.

W Joseph Stroupe is editor of Global Events Magazine online at www.GeoStrategyMap.com. He has authored a new book on the implications of ongoing energy geopolitics titled Russian Rubicon - Impending Checkmate of the West.

(Copyright 2004-06 W Joseph Stroupe.)

[papabear]

http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=7031

25 August, 2006
CHINA – VENEZUELA
Chavez in Beijing seeking greater oil sales to China to replace US

On an official to the Asian economic powerhouse, the Venezuelan president promises 500,000 barrels of oil a day within five years. Economic agreements are signed with mining companies.


Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Chinese President yesterday signed a series of trade agreements with his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, to jointly develop Venezuela's vast oil resources as the counter deepen their economic and political ties.

Mr Hu gave Mr Chavez a warm welcome, whilst the Venezuelan leader proposed to increase oil sales to China to 500,000 barrels per day over the next five years.

The Asian giant is desperately looking for all kinds of energy suppliers to fuel its rapidly expanding economy.

“I believe that, through your visit, the two countries' co-operation in all aspects can be promoted,” Mr Hu told Mr Chavez in the Great Hall of the People.

Mr Chavez said he had “a series of important and close consultations with important Chinese entrepreneurs”, but did not give details.

Agreements signed by the two leaders include one for their main government-owned oil companies—China National Petroleum Corp and Petroleos de Venezuela S.A.—to jointly develop the Junin area of Venezuela's Orinoco oil belt.

Mr Chavez is also scheduled to meet Premier Wen Jiabao and National People's Congress chairman Wu Bangguo.

He will also meet executives to discuss developing his country's coal and gold deposits.

The leftist Mr Chavez has strengthened ties with Beijing since taking office in 1999, part of a strategy to sell more to other countries and replace the United States as Venezuela's biggest oil customer.

[papabear]

http://www.energybulletin.net/22584.html

Fifty Million Farmers

by Richard Heinberg

(Note: This is the abbreviated text of a lecture by Richard Heinberg delivered to the E. F. Schumacher Society in Stockbridge, Massachusetts on October 28, 2006)

There was a time not so long ago when famine was an expected, if not accepted, part of life. Until the 19th century—whether in China, France, India or Britain—food came almost entirely from local sources and harvests were variable. In good years, there was plenty—enough for seasonal feasts and for storage in anticipation of winter and hard times to come; in bad years, starvation cut down the poorest and the weakest—the very young, the old, and the sickly. Sometimes bad years followed one upon another, reducing the size of the population by several percent. This was the normal condition of life in pre-industrial societies, and it persisted for thousands of years.

Today, in America, such a state of affairs is hard to imagine. Food is so cheap and plentiful that obesity is a far more widespread concern than hunger. The average mega-supermarket stocks an impressive array of exotic foods from across the globe, and even staples are typically trucked from hundreds of miles away. Many people in America did go hungry during the Great Depression, but those were times that only the elderly can recall. In the current regime, the desperately poor may experience chronic malnutrition and may miss meals, but for most the dilemma is finding time in the day’s hectic schedule to go to the grocery store or to cook. As a result, fast-food restaurants proliferate: the fare may not be particularly nutritious, but even an hour’s earnings at minimum wage will buy a meal or two. The average American family spent 20 percent of its income on food in 1950; today the figure is 10 percent.

This is an extraordinary situation; but because it is the only one that most Americans alive today have ever experienced, we tend to assume that it will continue indefinitely. However there are reasons to think that our current anomalous abundance of inexpensive food may be only temporary; if so, present and future generations may become acquainted with that old, formerly familiar but unwelcome houseguest—famine.

The following are four principal bases (there are others) for this gloomy forecast.

The first has to with looming fuel shortages. This is a subject I have written about extensively elsewhere, so I shall not repeat myself in any detail. Suffice it to say that the era of cheap oil and natural gas is coming to a crashing end, with global oil production projected to peak in 2010 and North American natural gas extraction rates already in decline. These events will have enormous implications for America’s petroleum-dependent food system.

Modern industrial agriculture has been described as a method of using soil to turn petroleum and gas into food. We use natural gas to make fertilizer, and oil to fuel farm machinery and power irrigation pumps, as a feedstock for pesticides and herbicides, in the maintenance of animal operations, in crop storage and drying, and for transportation of farm inputs and outputs. Agriculture accounts for about 17 percent of the U.S. annual energy budget; this makes it the single largest consumer of petroleum products as compared to other industries. By comparison, the U.S. military, in all of its operations, uses only about half that amount. About 350 gallons (1,500 liters) of oil equivalents are required to feed each American each year, and every calorie of food produced requires, on average, ten calories of fossil-fuel inputs. This is a food system profoundly vulnerable, at every level, to fuel shortages and skyrocketing prices. And both are inevitable.

An attempt to make up for fuel shortfalls by producing more biofuels—ethanol, butanol, and biodiesel—will put even more pressure on the food system, and will likely result in a competition between food and fuel uses of land and other resources needed for agricultural production. Already 14 percent of the U.S. corn crop is devoted to making ethanol, and that proportion is expected to rise to one quarter, based solely on existing projects-in-development and government mandates.

The second factor potentially leading to famine is a shortage of farmers. Much of the success of industrial agriculture lies in its labor efficiency: far less human work is required to produce a given amount of food today than was the case decades ago (the actual fraction, comparing the year 2000 with 1900, is about one seventh). But that very success implies a growing vulnerability. We don’t need as many farmers, as a percentage of the population, as we used to; so, throughout the past century, most farming families—including hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions that would have preferred to maintain their rural, self-sufficient way of life—were economically forced to move to cities and find jobs. Today so few people farm that vital knowledge of how to farm is disappearing. The average age of American farmers is over 55 and approaching 60. The proportion of principal farm operators younger than 35 has dropped from 15.9 percent in 1982 to 5.8 percent in 2002. Of all the dismal statistics I know, these are surely among the most frightening. Who will be growing our food twenty years from now? With less oil and gas available, we will need far more knowledge and muscle power devoted to food production, and thus far more people on the farm, than we have currently.

The third worrisome trend is an increasing scarcity of fresh water. Sixty percent of water used nationally goes toward agriculture. California’s Central Valley, which produces the substantial bulk of the nation’s fruits, nuts, and vegetables, receives virtually no rainfall during summer months and relies overwhelmingly on irrigation. But the snowpack on the Sierras, which provides much of that irrigation water, is declining, and the aquifer that supplies much of the rest is being drawn down at many times its recharge rate. If these trends continue, the Central Valley may be incapable of producing food in any substantial quantities within two or three decades. Other parts of the country are similarly overspending their water budgets, and very little is being done to deal with this looming catastrophe.

Fourth and finally, there is the problem of global climate change. Often the phrase used for this is “global warming,” which implies only the fact that the world’s average temperature will be increasing by a couple of degrees or more over the next few decades. The much greater problem for farmers is destabilization of weather patterns. We face not just a warmer climate, but climate chaos: droughts, floods, and stronger storms in general (hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, hail storms)—in short, unpredictable weather of all kinds. Farmers depend on relatively consistent seasonal patterns of rain and sun, cold and heat; a climate shift can spell the end of farmers’ ability to grow a crop in a given region, and even a single freak storm can destroy an entire year’s production. Given the fact that modern American agriculture has become highly centralized due to cheap transport and economies of scale (almost the entire national spinach crop, for example, comes from a single valley in California), the damage from that freak storm is today potentially continental or even global in scale. We have embarked on a century in which, increasingly, freakish weather is normal.

I am not pointing out these problems, and their likely consequences, in order to cause panic. As I propose below, there is a solution to at least two of these dilemmas, one that may also help us address the remaining ones. It is not a simple or easy strategy and it will require a coordinated and sustained national effort. But in addition to averting famine, this strategy may permit us to solve a host of other, seemingly unrelated social and environmental problems.

Intensifying Food Production

In order to get a better grasp of the problems and the solution being proposed, it is essential that we understand how our present exceptional situation of cheap abundance came about. In order to do that, we must go back not just a few decades, but at least ten thousand years.

The origins of agriculture are shrouded in mystery, though archaeologists have been whittling away at that mystery for decades. We know that horticulture (gardening) began at somewhat different periods, independently, in at least three regions—the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Central America. Following the end of the last Ice Age, roughly 12,000 years ago, much of humanity was experiencing a centuries-long food crisis brought on by the over-hunting of the megafauna that had previously been at the center of the human diet. The subsequent domestication of plants and animals brought relative food security, as well as the ability to support larger and more sedentary populations.

As compared to hunting and gathering, horticulture intensified the process of obtaining food. Intensification (because it led to increased population density—i.e., more mouths to feed), then led to the need for even more intensification: thus horticulture (gardening) eventually led to agriculture (field cropping). The latter produced more food per unit of land, which enabled more population growth, which meant still more demand for food. We are describing a classic self-reinforcing feedback loop.

As a social regime, horticulture did not represent a decisive break with hunting and gathering. Just as women had previously participated in essential productive activities by foraging for plants and hunting small animals, they now played a prominent role in planting, tending, and harvesting the garden—activities that were all compatible with the care of infants and small children. Thus women’s status remained relatively high in most horticultural societies. Seasonal surpluses were relatively small and there was no full-time division of labor.

But as agriculture developed—with field crops, plows, and draft animals—societies inevitably mutated in response. Plowing fields was men’s work; women were forced to stay at home and lost social power. Larger seasonal surpluses required management as well as protection from raiders; full-time managers and specialists in violence proliferated as a result. Societies became multi-layered: wealthy ruling classes (which had never existed among hunter-gatherers, and were rare among gardeners) sat atop an economic pyramid that came to include scribes, soldiers, and religious functionaries, and that was supported at its base by the vastly more numerous peasants—who produced all the food for themselves and everyone else as well. Writing, mathematics, metallurgy, and, ultimately, the trappings of modern life as we know it thus followed not so much from planting in general, as from agriculture in particular.

As important an instance of intensification as agriculture was, in many respects it pales in comparison with what has occurred within the past century or so, with the application of fossil fuels to farming. Petroleum-fed tractors replaced horses and oxen, freeing up more land to grow food for far more people. The Haber-Bosch process for synthesizing ammonia from fossil fuels, invented just prior to World War I, has doubled the amount of nitrogen available to green nature—with nearly all of that increase going directly to food crops. New hybrid plant varieties led to higher yields. Technologies for food storage improved radically. And fuel-fed transport systems enabled local surpluses to be sold not just regionally, but nationally and even globally. Through all of these strategies, we have developed the wherewithal to feed seven times the population that existed at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. And, in the process, we have made farming uneconomical and unattractive to all but a few.

That’s the broad, global overview. In America, whose history as an independent nation begins at the dawn of the industrial era, the story of agriculture comprises three distinct periods:

The Expansion Period (1600 to 1920): Increases in food production during these three centuries came simply from putting more land into production; technological change played only a minor role.

The Mechanization Period (1920 to 1970): In this half-century, technological advances issuing from cheap, abundant fossil-fuel energy resulted in a dramatic increase in productivity (output per worker hour). Meanwhile, farm machinery, pesticides, herbicides, irrigation, new hybrid crops, and synthetic fertilizers allowed for the doubling and tripling of crop production. Also during this time, U.S. Department of Agriculture policy began favoring larger farms (the average U.S. farm size grew from 100 acres in 1930 to almost 500 acres by 1990), and production for export.

The Saturation Period (1970-present): In recent decades, the application of still greater amounts of energy have produced smaller relative increases in crop yields; meanwhile an ever-growing amount of energy is being expended to maintain the functioning of the overall system. For example, about ten percent of the energy in agriculture is used just to offset the negative effects of soil erosion, while increasing amounts of pesticides must be sprayed each year as pests develop resistances. In short, strategies that had recently produced dramatic increases in productivity became subject to the law of diminishing returns.

While we were achieving miracles of productivity, agriculture’s impact on the natural world was also growing; indeed it is now the single greatest source of human damage to the global environment. That damage takes a number of forms: erosion and salinization of soils; deforestation (a strategy for bringing more land into cultivation); fertilizer runoff (which ultimately creates enormous “dead zones” around the mouths of many rivers); loss of biodiversity; fresh water scarcity; and agrochemical pollution of water and soil.

In short, we created unprecedented abundance while ignoring the long-term consequences of our actions. This is more than a little reminiscent of how some previous agricultural societies—the Greeks, Babylonians, and Romans—destroyed soil and habitat in their mania to feed growing urban populations, and collapsed as a result.

Fortunately, during the past century or two we have also developed the disciplines of archaeology and ecology, which teach us how and why those ancient societies failed, and how the diversity of the web of life sustains us. Thus, in principle, if we avail ourselves of this knowledge, we need not mindlessly repeat yet again the time-worn tale of catastrophic civilizational collapse.

The 21st Century: De-Industrialization

How might we avoid such a fate?

Surely the dilemmas we have outlined above are understood by the managers of the current industrial food system. They must have some solutions in mind.

Indeed they do, and, predictably perhaps, those solutions involve a further intensification of the food production process. Since we cannot achieve much by applying more energy directly to that process, the most promising strategy on the horizon seems to be the genetic engineering of new crop varieties. If, for example, we could design crops to grow with less water, or in unfavorable climate and soil conditions, we could perhaps find our way out of the current mess.

Unfortunately, there are some flaws with this plan. Our collective experience with genetically modifying crops so far shows that glowing promises of higher yields, or of the reduced need for herbicides, have seldom been fulfilled. At the same time, new genetic technologies carry with them the potential for horrific unintended consequences in the forms of negative impacts on human health and the integrity of ecosystems. We have been gradually modifying plants and animals through selective breeding for millennia, but new gene-splicing techniques enable the re-mixing of genomes in ways and to degrees impossible heretofore. One serious error could result in biological tragedy on an unprecedented scale.

Yet even if future genetically modified commercial crops prove to be much more successful than past ones, and even if we manage to avert a genetic apocalypse, the means of producing and distributing genetically engineered seeds is itself reliant on the very fuel-fed industrial system that is in question.

Is it possible, then, that a solution lies in another direction altogether—perhaps in deliberately de-industrializing production, but doing so intelligently, using information we have gained from the science of ecology, as well as from traditional and indigenous farming methods, in order to reduce environmental impacts while maintaining total yields at a level high enough to avert widespread famine?

This is not an entirely new idea (as you all well know, the organic and ecological farming movements have been around for decades), but up to this point the managers of the current system have resisted it. This is no doubt largely because those managers are heavily influenced by giant corporations that profit from centralized industrial production for distant markets. Nevertheless, the fact that we have reached the end of the era of cheap oil and gas demands that we re-examine the potential costs and benefits of our current trajectory and its alternatives.

I believe we must and can de-industrialize agriculture. The general outline of what I mean by de-industrialization is simple enough: this would imply a radical reduction of fossil fuel inputs to agriculture, accompanied by an increase in labor inputs and a reduction of transport, with production being devoted primarily to local consumption.

Once again, fossil fuel depletion almost ensures that this will happen. But at the same time, it is fairly obvious that if we don’t plan for de-industrialization, the result could be catastrophic. It’s worth taking a moment to think about how events might unfold if the process occurs without intelligent management, driven simply by oil and gas depletion.

Facing high fuel prices, family farms would declare bankruptcy in record numbers. Older farmers (the majority, in other words) would probably choose simply to retire, whether they could afford to or not. However, giant corporate farms would also confront rising costs—which they would pass along to consumers by way of dramatically higher food prices.

Yields would begin to decline—in fits and starts—as weather anomalies and water shortages affected one crop after another.

Meanwhile, people in the cities would also feel the effects of skyrocketing energy prices. Entire industries would falter, precipitating a general economic collapse. Massive unemployment would lead to unprecedented levels of homelessness and hunger.

Many people would leave cities looking for places to live where they could grow some food. Yet they might find all of the available land already owned by banks or the government. Without experience of farming, even those who succeeded in gaining access to acreage would fail to produce much food and would ruin large tracts of land in the process.

Eventually these problems would sort themselves out; people and social systems would adapt—but probably not before an immense human and environmental tragedy had ensued.

I wish I could say that this forecast is exaggerated for effect. Yet the actual events could be far more violent and disruptive than it is possible to suggest in so short a summary.

Examples and Strategies

Things don’t have to turn out that way. As I have already said, I believe that the de-industrialization of agriculture could be carried out in a way that is not catastrophic and that in fact substantially benefits society and the environment in the long run. But to be convinced of the thesis we need more than promises—we need historic examples and proven strategies. Fortunately, we have two of each.

In some respects the most relevant example is that of Cuba’s Special Period. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost its source of cheap oil. Its industrialized agricultural system, which was heavily fuel-dependent, immediately faltered. Very quickly, Cuban leaders abandoned the Soviet industrial model of production, changing from a fuel- and petrochemical-intensive farming method to a more localized, labor-intensive, organic mode of production.

How they did this is itself an interesting story. Eco-agronomists at Cuban universities had already been advocating a transition somewhat along these lines. However, they were making little or no headway. When the crisis hit, they were given free rein to, in effect, redesign the entire Cuban food system. Had these academics not had a plan waiting in the wings, the nation’s fate might have been sealed.

Heeding their advice, the Cuban government broke up large, state-owned farms and introduced private farms, farmer co-ops, and farmer markets. Cuban farmers began breeding oxen for animal traction. The Cuban people adopted a mainly vegetarian diet, mostly involuntarily (Meat eating went from twice a day to twice a week). They increased their intake of vegetable sources of protein and farmers decreased the growing of wheat and rice (Green Revolution crops that required too many inputs). Urban gardens (including rooftop gardens) were encouraged, and today they produce 50 to 80 percent of vegetables consumed in cities.

Early on, it was realized that more farmers were needed, and that this would require education. All of the nation’s colleges and universities quickly added courses on agronomy. At the same time, wages for farmers were raised to be at parity with those for engineers and doctors. Many people moved from the cities to the country; in some cases there were incentives, in others the move was forced.

The result was survival. The average Cuban lost 20 pounds of body weight, but in the long run the overall health of the nation’s people actually improved as a consequence. Today, Cuba has a stable, slowly growing economy. There are few if any luxuries, but everyone has enough to eat. Having seen the benefit of smaller-scale organic production, Cuba’s leaders have decided that even if they find another source of cheap oil, they will maintain a commitment to their new, decentralized, low-energy methods.

I don’t want to give the impression that Cubans sailed through the Special Period unscathed. Cuba was a grim place during these years, and to this day food is far from plentiful there by American standards. My point is not that Cuba is some sort of paradise, but simply that matters could have been far worse.

It could be objected that Cuba’s experience holds few lessons for our own nation. Since Cuba has a very different government and climate, we might question whether its experience can be extrapolated to the U.S.

Let us, then, consider an indigenous historical example. During both World Wars, Americans planted Victory Gardens. During both periods, gardening became a sort of spontaneous popular movement, which (at least during World War II) the USDA initially tried to suppress, believing that it would compromise the industrialization of agriculture. It wasn’t until Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden in the White House lawn that agriculture secretary Claude Wickard relented; his agency then began to promote Victory Gardens and to take credit for them. At the height of the movement, Victory Gardens were producing roughly 40 percent of America’s vegetables, an extraordinary achievement in so short a time.

In addition to these historical precedents, we have new techniques developed with the coming agricultural crisis in mind; two of the most significant are Permaculture and Biointensive farming (there are others—such as efforts by Wes Jackson of The Land Institute to breed perennial grain crops—but limitations of time and space require me to pick and choose).

Permaculture was developed in the late 1970s by Australian ecologists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in anticipation of exactly the problem we see unfolding before us. Holmgren defines Permaculture as “consciously designed landscapes that mimic the patterns and relationships found in nature, while yielding an abundance of food, fiber, and energy for provision of local needs.” Common Permaculture strategies include mulching, rainwater capture using earthworks such as swales, composting, and the harmonious integration of aquaculture, horticulture, and small-scale animal operations. A typical Permaculture farm may produce a small cash crop but concentrates largely on self-sufficiency and soil building. Significantly, Permaculture has played an important role in Cuba’s adaptation to a low-energy food regime.

Biointensive farming has been developed primarily by Californian John Jeavons, author of How to Grow More Vegetables. Like Permaculture, Biointensive is a product of research begun in the 1970s. Jeavons defines Biointensive (now trademarked as “Grow Biointensive”) farming as

. . . an organic agricultural system that focuses on maximum yields from the minimum area of land, while simultaneously improving the soil. The goal of the method is long-term sustainability on a closed-system basis. Because biointensive is practiced on a relatively small scale, it is well suited to anything from personal or family to community gardens, market gardens, or minifarms. It has also been used successfully on small-scale commercial farms.

Like Homgren and Mollison, Jeavons has worked for the past three decades in anticipation of the need for the de-industrialization of food production due to accumulating environmental damage and fossil fuel depletion. Currently Biointensive farming is being taught extensively in Africa and South America as a sustainable alternative to the globalized monocropping. The term “biointensive” suggests that what we are discussing here is not a de-intensification of food production, but rather the development of production along entirely different lines. While both Permaculture and Biointensive have been shown to be capable of dramatically improving yields-per-acre, their developers clearly understand that even these methods will eventually fail us unless we also limit demand for food by gradually and humanely limiting the size of the human population.

In short, it is possible in principle for industrial nations like the U.S. to make the transition to smaller-scale, non-petroleum food production, given certain conditions. There are both precedents and models.

However, all of them imply more farmers. Here’s the catch—and here’s where the ancillary benefits kick in.

The Key: More Farmers!

One way or another, re-ruralization will be the dominant social trend of the 21st century. Thirty or forty years from now—again, one way or another—we will see a more historically normal ratio of rural to urban population, with the majority once again living in small, farming communities. More food will be produced in cities than is the case today, but cities will be smaller. Millions more people than today will be in the countryside growing food.

They won’t be doing so the way farmers do it today, and perhaps not the way farmers did it in 1900.

Indeed, we need perhaps to redefine the term farmer. We have come to think of a farmer as someone with 500 acres and a big tractor and other expensive machinery. But this is not what farmers looked like a hundred years ago, and it’s not an accurate picture of most current farmers in less-industrialized countries. Nor does it coincide with what will be needed in the coming decades. We should perhaps start thinking of a farmer as someone with 3 to 50 acres, who uses mostly hand labor and twice a year borrows a small tractor that she or he fuels with ethanol or biodiesel produced on-site.

How many more farmers are we talking about? Currently the U.S. has three or four million of them, depending on how we define the term.

Let’s again consider Cuba’s experience: in its transition away from fossil-fueled agriculture, that nation found that it required 15 to 25 percent of its population to become involved in food production. In America in 1900, nearly 40 percent of the population farmed; the current proportion is close to one percent.

Do the math for yourself. Extrapolated to this country’s future requirements, this implies the need for a minimum of 40 to 50 million additional farmers as oil and gas availability declines. How soon will the need arise? Assuming that the peak of global oil production occurs within the next five years, and that North American natural gas is already in decline, we are looking at a transition that must occur over the next 20 to 30 years, and that must begin approximately now.

Fortunately there are some hopeful existing trends to point to. The stereotypical American farmer is a middle-aged, Euro-American male, but the millions of new farmers in our future will have to include a broad mix of people, reflecting America’s increasing diversity. Already the fastest growth in farm operators in America is among female full-time farmers, as well as Hispanic, Asian, and Native American farm operators.

Another positive trend worth noting: Here in the Northeast, where the soil is acidic and giant agribusiness has not established as much of a foothold as elsewhere, the number of small farms is increasing. Young adults—not in the millions, but at least in the hundreds—are aspiring to become Permaculture or organic or Biointensive farmers. Farmers markets and CSAs are established or springing up throughout the region. This is somewhat the case also on the Pacific coast, much less so in the Midwest and South.

What will it take to make these tentative trends the predominant ones? Among other things we will need good and helpful policies. The USDA will need to cease supporting and encouraging industrial monocropping for export, and begin supporting smaller farms, rewarding those that make the effort to reduce inputs and to grow for local consumption. In the absence of USDA policy along these lines, we need to pursue state, county, and municipal efforts to support small farms in various ways, through favorable zoning, by purchasing local food for school lunches, and so on.

We will also require land reform. Those millions of new farmers will need access to the soil, and there must be some means for assisting in making land available for this purpose. Conservation land trusts may be useful in this regard, and we might take inspiration from Indian Line Farm, here in the northeast.

Since so few people currently know much about farming, education will be essential. Universities and community colleges have both the opportunity and responsibility to quickly develop programs in small-scale ecological farming methods—programs that also include training in other skills that farmers will need, such as in marketing and formulating business plans.

Since few if any farms are financially successful the first year or even the second or third, loans and grants will also be necessary to help farmers get started.

These new farmers will need higher and stabilized food prices. As difficult as it may be even to imagine this situation now, food rationing may be required at some point in the next two or three decades. That quota system needs to be organized in such a way as to make sure everyone has the bare essentials, and to support the people at the base of the food system—the farmers.

Finally, we need a revitalization of farming communities and farming culture. A century ago, even in the absence of the air and auto transport systems we now take for granted, small towns across this land strove to provide their citizens with lectures, concerts, libraries, and yearly chautauquas. Over the past decades these same towns have seen their best and brightest young people flee first to distant colleges and then to the cities. The folks left behind have done their best to maintain a cultural environment, but in all too many cases that now consists merely of a movie theater and a couple of video rental stores. Farming communities must be interesting, attractive places if we expect people to inhabit them and for children to want to stay there.

If We Do This Well

We have been trained to admire the benefits of intensification and industrialization. But, as I’ve already indicated, we have paid an enormous price for these benefits—a price that includes alienation from nature, loss of community and tradition, and the acceptance of the anonymity and loss of autonomy implied by mass society. In essence, this tradeoff has its origins in the beginnings of urbanization and agriculture.

Could we actually regain much of what we have lost? Yes, perhaps by going back, at least in large part, to horticulture. Recall that the shift from horticulture to agriculture was, as best we can tell, a fateful turning point in cultural history. It represented the beginning of full-time division of labor, hierarchy, and patriarchy.

Biointensive farming and Permaculture are primarily horticultural rather than agricultural systems. These new, intelligent forms of horticulture could, then, offer an alternative to a new feudalism with a new peasantry. In addition, they emphasize biodiversity, averting many of the environmental impacts of field cropping. They use various strategies to make hand labor as efficient as possible, minimizing toil and drudgery. And they typically slash water requirements for crops grown in arid regions.

We have gotten used to a situation where most farmers rely on non-farm income. As of 2002 only a bit less than 60 percent of farm operators reported that their primary work is on the farm. Only 9 percent of primary operators on farms with one operator, and 10 percent on farms with multiple operators, report all of their income as coming from the farm.

The bad side of this is that it means it’s hard to make a living farming these days. The good side is that we don’t have to think of farming as an exclusive occupation. As people return to small communities and to farming, they could bring with them other interests. Rather than a new peasantry that spends all of its time in drudgery, we could look forward to a new population of producers who maintain interests in the arts and sciences, in history, philosophy, spirituality, and psychology—in short, the whole range of pursuits that make modern urban life interesting and worthwhile.

Moreover, the re-ruralization program I am describing could be a springboard for the rebirth of democracy in this nation. I do not have to tell this audience how, over the past few years, democracy in America has become little more than a slogan. In fact this erosion of our democratic traditions has been going on for some time. As Kirkpatrick Sale showed in his wonderful book Human Scale, as communities grow in size, individuals’ ability to influence public affairs tends to shrink. Sociological research now shows that people who have the ability to influence policy in their communities show a much higher sense of satisfaction with life in general. In short, the re-ruralization of America could represent the fulfillment of Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian democracy—but without the slaves.

If we do this well, it could mean the revitalization not only of democracy, but of the family and of authentic, place-based culture. It could also serve as the basis for a new, genuine conservatism to replace the ersatz conservatism of the current ruling political elites.

What I am proposing is nothing less than a new alliance among environmental organizations, farmers, gardeners, organizations promoting economic justice, the anti-globalization movement, universities and colleges, local businesses, churches, and other social organizations. Moreover, the efforts of this alliance would have to be coordinated at the national, state, and local level. This is clearly a tall order. However, we are not talking about merely a good idea. This is a survival strategy.

It may seem that I am describing and advocating a reversion to the world of 1800, or even that of 8,000 BC. This is not really the case. We will of course need to relearn much of what our ancestors knew. But we have discovered a great deal about biology, geology, hydrology, and other relevant subjects in recent decades, and we should be applying that knowledge—as Holmgren, Mollison, Jeavons, and others have done—to the project of producing food for ourselves.

Cultural anthropology teaches us that the way people get their food is the most reliable determinant of virtually all other social characteristics. Thus, as we build a different food system we will inevitably be building a new kind of culture, certainly very different from industrial urbanism but probably also from what preceded it. As always before in human history, we will make it up as we go along, in response to necessity and opportunity.

Perhaps these great changes won’t take place until the need is obvious and irresistibly pressing. Maybe gasoline needs to get to $10 a gallon. Perhaps unemployment will have to rise to ten or twenty or forty percent, with families begging for food in the streets, before embattled policy makers begin to reconsider their commitment to industrial agriculture.

But even in that case, as in Cuba, all may depend upon having another option already articulated. Without that, we will be left to the worst possible outcome.

Rather than consigning ourselves to that fate, let us accept the current challenge—the next great energy transition—as an opportunity not to vainly try to preserve business as usual, the American Way of Life that, we are told, is not up for negotiation, but rather to re-imagine human culture from the ground up.

(This lecture drew on certain ideas earlier put forward by Knox, New York farmer Sharon Astyk in her remarks at the 2006 Peak Oil and Community Solutions conference in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and on others that emerged in conversation with Pat Murphy of Community Service and Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute.)

[funzone36]

From page 2 of the thread:

It's no surprise geneticists want to promote it as much as possible--they make their living from exaggerated claims about practical and speculative benefits. Same with anthropologists and evolutionary biologists.

It's also no surprise that organizations such as ASPO want to promote peak oil as much as possible. They make their living from exaggerating peak oil. Peak will happen. No one will disagree with that. But, it is NOT the end of the civilization. A post-peak oil world can use alternative energy, hydrogen fuel cells and electric cars to run the world.

[papabear]

You need to read other articles--alternative energy, hydrogen, whatever you throw out--they need to come from somewhere else, and all require energy-intensive processes. You're just moving the energy gap one step back.

http://www.resurgence.org/2006/ehrenfeld239.htm

FRIENDLY FIRE

Most of those advocating the new energy technologies are not suggesting any reduction in overall energy consumption.

THERE IS A critical issue in the energy debate which has not received the attention it deserves: the problem of ‘friendly fire’. Friendly fire is the euphemism our military and press use to sugar-coat the presumably accidental killing of soldiers in battle by their own comrades.

The first time I saw the term ‘friendly fire’ used in a non-military context was in the book The Argumentative Indian, by the brilliant Nobel laureate economist, philosopher and historian Amartya Sen. In Sen’s words: “Sometimes the very institutions that were created to overcome disparities and barriers have tended to act as reactionary influences in reinforcing inequity.” One example he gives is the contrast between the immense government stockpiles of food in India alongside the largest undernourished population in the world. He states: “The positive hopes of equity through high support prices of food and payment of subsidies have ... tended to produce exactly the opposite effect.” This is friendly fire.

What does the idea of friendly fire have to do with the problems, especially the environmental problems, related to the energy crisis in the US? This becomes clear if we look at possible solutions to the energy crisis. I group them in two categories.

The first category includes all technological solutions. There is no need to describe them in detail: nuclear power, biofuels, hydrogen, efficiency gains in transforming, transporting and using energy, non-biological renewable energy, and others. Each has major advantages and serious limitations. Most have the same drawback: they are much more expensive than sticking a pipe in the ground and letting the oil flow out of a tap. Nevertheless, it is clear that some combination of these technologies will allow us to stretch our energy supply a good deal farther than current practice allows.

The second category of proposed solutions to the energy crisis includes the various methods of conservation of energy based on a simple lifestyle. It means, for North Americans, consuming less and reusing more.

The US has opted for the first category: technology. It’s easy to see why. Our present economy is geared to constantly increasing consumption, and dependence on goods and services we no longer provide for ourselves. There is a deadly combination of a sense that we are entitled to all these goods and services, and a fear that we need them and that we can’t survive without them. We don’t worry about the ultimate cost, because we haven’t the faintest idea what it is. In fact, we act as if there will be no cost. Thus, in the US most of those advocating the new energy technologies are not suggesting any reduction in overall energy consumption.

Indeed, the opposite is likely to be true – continuing low prices encourage us to use still more energy. But there are two hitches: first, even taken together, all of the new energy technologies will probably not be up to the job of replacing cheap oil in running a high-consumption, high-waste society (although – and you can see where I’m heading – they will be critically important in running a responsible-consumption, low-waste society).

The second hitch is more serious, and here is where the friendly fire idea comes into play. If we use the gains from our new energy technologies to continue to increase our consumption and waste, we will find ourselves in a vicious spiral that decreases resources and increases environmental damage – even as our energy technology improves.

Marine fisheries are a good example of this kind of friendly fire. Fossil fuels are the major energy inputs to the world’s fishing industry. In the year 2000, 50 billion litres of fuel, mostly diesel, were burned to land a little more than 80 million metric tons of marine fish and invertebrates – this amounted to 1.2% of global oil consumption, about the same as used by the Netherlands, with an annual emission of 130 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. The energy content of the fuel is about 12.5 times the protein energy content of the catch. Fleets catching luxury species – shrimp, tuna, swordfish – for the US, Japanese and similar markets have the highest energy consumption: 2,000 litres of fuel per ton of catch. But the energy efficiency of the fishing fleet has been declining steadily over time, because every year the boats need to fish longer hours and deeper in offshore waters as the over-exploited fish populations progressively fail. So even if we improve the efficiency of diesel and gasoline engines by 10% or 20%, which is conceivable, and if our new technologies make more cheap fuel available, energy consumption will continue to rise in most fisheries until one by one they collapse, like the North Atlantic cod fishery. Abundant energy in the absence of scientifically regulated fishing strategies is killing the fisheries.

Similar stories come from global forestry – one of many examples is the use of energy-guzzling helicopters to assist in the logging of steep slopes. Our insatiable demand for timber and timber products thus results in soil erosion and permanent deforestation in mountainous areas. The new energy technologies, in the absence of other moderating influences, remove a potential restraint on our ability to carry out destructive forestry. More friendly fire.

There are additional connections between increasing energy efficiency and accelerating environmental and social damage. Global trade, which is heavily energy-dependent, transmits introduced diseases of humans, plants and wildlife, and promotes the costly spread of exotic species. (The annual cost of fighting exotic species in the US is estimated at $120 billion.) And there are other side effects. For instance, the importation from Mexico into the US of luxury foods such as fresh green peppers, tomatoes and string beans in winter is subsidised by huge inputs of energy for industrial agriculture and transportation. The side effects, regardless of whether the energy is sustainably produced or not, include the poisoning of Mexican workers by pesticides, chemical and mechanical impacts on Mexican soils, and the destruction of native Mexican cultures as community economies are disrupted by introduced subsidised commodities and the national demand for cheap, landless labour.

Here is another example of friendly fire: aquaculture is now providing a substantial amount of the fish consumed in the US. The aquaculture facilities themselves require large amounts of energy to run, especially in the case of carnivorous fish such as trout and salmon, whose animal protein is supplied by fish meal made from smaller fish caught by the same global fleets mentioned above.

There are many damaging side effects of aquaculture – these include genetic pollution of native fish stocks by escaped fish, global spread of diseases such as infectious salmon anaemia (which is caused by a virulent virus that has adapted itself to intensive aquaculture), the destruction of the marine sea floor by bottom trawling, and marine pollution by food and wastes from the farms.

Ecotourism, which is also dependent on cheap energy, is often a great boon to conservation. Yet ecotourism has its dark side. The problem of overuse of sensitive ecosystems is obvious – sensitive plants and soils react poorly to trampling even by friendly feet, and endangered animals do not always thrive when watched by large numbers of friendly people in Land Rovers and tour boats. Some negative effects are more subtle: it appears that ecotourism may be responsible for the first recorded introduction of a primary human pathogen, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, into free-ranging populations of wild animals: banded mongooses in Botswana and grey meerkats in South Africa.

And most of these consumptive uses of energy release greenhouse gases that work to alter global climate, which is raising sea level and appears to be increasing the frequency and intensity of large storms. Positive feedbacks add to the problem. Global warming itself is causing widespread melting of Arctic permafrost, with the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from saturated peat, and CO2 from unsaturated peat. These gases raise temperature still further.

AS LONG AS energy technology helps North Americans keep their same consumptive lifestyle, we have friendly fire on a massive scale. If energy were the only limiting factor we faced, perhaps our total faith in a technological fix would have some justification. But there are many limiting factors acting within the highly interconnected economic system that controls all of our lives. Forests, soils, fresh water, climate, ecosystem balances, emerging diseases, the growing gulf between rich and poor, and other environmental and social variables are all approaching critical limits. Even if we can maximise efficiency in production and use of energy, that does not necessarily solve the other problems – some, including the plight of environment and biodiversity, will be made worse by the continued availability of cheap energy. Like most enablers, energy technology is not a villain. We need it desperately, but we need it in a new and saner context of living.

What, then, is likely to happen? Ideally, the advances being made in energy technology could be employed in the US in concert with needed changes in lifestyle – lower consumption and waste. This would have many positive environmental and social effects around the world, although it would admittedly cause at least short-term economic disruptions in our major suppliers of goods and services: China, India and others. But at the moment, a responsible change in lifestyle in the US seems a number of years away, although economic circumstances must inevitably force it to happen.

Perhaps India, despite present appearances, can be different. In India, the idea of a sustainable lifestyle has a long and honourable tradition, notably expressed in Mahatma Gandhi’s thoughts about the vital relationship between ecology, sustainability and consumption patterns. Gandhi knew that the Western model of development – perpetual growth in consumption – was the wrong model to follow, not just in India, but in the West as well. Gandhi would not have liked some of the new energy technologies, but he might have approved of those that lend themselves to careful and gentle human use in a culture of moderation and restraint. Today, there are many dedicated environmental and social activists in India, North America and elsewhere who understand that technology and sustainability must go hand in hand, and are working hard to bring about the necessary changes to make it happen. We can only hope that their efforts will prevail, and that the Earth will be rescued from this deadly rain of friendly fire.

This article is based on the third annual Khoshoo Memorial Lecture, ‘Energy and Conservation’, delivered by David Ehrenfeld in June 2006 at the India International Centre, New Delhi.

David Ehrenfeld is Professor of Biology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers University, New Jersey. He is the author of Swimming Lessons: Keeping Afloat in the Age of Technology.


THE GREAT GRAIN ROBBERY

An example of ‘friendly fire’.

Cars, not people, will claim most of the increase in world grain consumption this year. The US Department of Agriculture projects that world grain use will grow by twenty million tons in 2006. Of this, fourteen million tons will be used to produce fuel for cars in the US, leaving only six million tons to satisfy the world’s growing food needs.

In agricultural terms, the world appetite for automotive fuel is insatiable. The grain required to fill a twenty-five gallon SUV tank with ethanol would feed one person for a year. The amount of corn used in US ethanol distilleries has tripled in five years to fifty-five million tons in 2006. With so many new distilleries being built, livestock and poultry producers fear there may not be enough corn to produce meat, milk and eggs.

Since almost everything we eat can be converted into fuel for automobiles, including wheat, corn, rice, soybeans and sugarcane, the line between the food and energy economies is disappearing.

As the price of oil climbs, it becomes increasingly profitable to convert farm commodities into automotive fuel – either ethanol or biodiesel. In effect, the price of oil becomes the support price for food commodities. Whenever the food value of a commodity drops below its fuel value, the market will convert it into fuel.

Put simply, the stage is being set for a head-on collision between the world’s 800 million affluent automobile owners and food consumers. The only question is, when food prices will rise, and by how much. In recent months, corn prices have risen by one fifth. For the two billion poorest people in the world, many of whom spend over half of their income on food, rising grain prices can quickly become life-threatening.

There are alternatives to using food-based fuels. The equivalent of the 3% grain in automotive fuel supplies from ethanol could be achieved several times over and at a fraction of the cost, simply by raising auto fuel efficiency standards by 20%. There are no alternatives to food for people.

Written by Lester R. Brown of the Earth Policy Institute. For further information visit www.earthpolicy.org.

[funzone36]

Here goes my reply after studying what I learned before months ago:

The Chinese Empire used water energy before. There's no reason to think that we can't do that in a post peak oil world.

Yes, I forgot about the energy used to develop alternative energy. Silicon used to produce solar panels require lots of energy. Steel used to develop windfarms indeed needs tons of energy from heavy mining machines and the excessive heat needed to develop steel. All that energy is too much that if we were to use energy generated from alternative energy (which is a diffused form of energy), we would need 5-10 years to have energy surplus. So, fossil fuels is what's used to develop them. I don't need to go through the safety of nuclear energy. And according to newscientist, hydro-energy actually generates some CO2 too. According to the media, CO2 causes global warming. There is a reason why there isn't a wave energy farm in the world and it's because the energy is too diffused that humanity has not found a way to harness that energy. Tidal energy has been harnessed but since tidal energy is like underwater wind energy, it still uses a lot of steel. OTEC is not harnessable just like wave power. I'm sure that if anyone has been discussing hydrogen fuel cells in forums for a week, they already know that hydrogen must come from fossil fuels. Same applies to biofuels. Geothermal energy is harnessable but the steel required to produce a certain amount of energy is actually more than wind farms.

The current industrial production of silicon is via the reaction between carbon (charcoal) and silica at a temperature around 1700 degrees Celsius. In this process, known as carbothermic reduction, each tonne of silicon (metallurgical grade, about 98% pure) is produced with the emission of about 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Li...rbing_materials

All in all, if we were to take into account energy usage to produce alternative energy, it won't work. Only ancient techniques in pre-industrial times when metal and fossil fuels were not discovered can be used and even that is worrisome as more forests are being chopped off.

Then, there is the idea about using nanotechnology and coal liquifaction. It's not practiced yet but they might be able to delay peak oil. Yes, coal liquifaction produces a lot of CO2 but there's technology to store them underground.

And so after going back to my research, I still think going back to pre-industrial levels is possible after peak oil but it will indeed take quite a bit of time until we adapt.

[papabear]

From Energy Bulletin:

PBS Debate on Peak Oil:
The McCuistion Program: Peak Oil--Are We There Yet?
PBS

Peak oil era will be hard on Hawaii

[Godotology]

From Energy Bulletin:

PBS Debate on Peak Oil:
The McCuistion Program: Peak Oil--Are We There Yet?
PBS

Peak oil era will be hard on Hawaii

lol, the one who wrote the peak oil-Hawaii article is one of my professors who I took Futuristics from

[papabear]

lol, the one who wrote the peak oil-Hawaii article is one of my professors who I took Futuristics from

how was his class?

[Godotology]

how was his class?

i took two classes from him

the first was some political futuristics.. i can't remember too much because I always skipped his class (i was a young sophomore who didn't know better). But we watched a bunch of videos on Russian philosophers and scientists and um..forgot much else.

the second class was simply called Futuristics, it was much more interesting..especially since I actually came to class. The entire class was built on the idea of developing a sustainable colony on "Mars", and we watched alot of videos on current issues on Earth i.e over population, resource use, etc which would influence how we developed our colony.

[funzone36]

US Army: Peak Oil and the Army's future

“The days of inexpensive, convenient, abundant energy sources are quickly drawing to a close,” according to a recently released US Army strategic report. The report posits that a peak in global oil production looks likely to be imminent, with wide reaching implications for the US Army and society in general.

The report was sent to Energy Bulletin by a reader, and does not appear to be available elsewhere on the internet. However it is marked as unclassified and approved for public release.

[ UPDATE: Since we wrote those words several hours ago we've been informed that a reference to the document now appears on a Google search, including a link to the full PDF on a .mil server. "Somebody must be watching you guys!" writes reader SG. See notes below. -AF]

The report, Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations (PDF – 1.2mb), was conducted by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is dated September 2005.

Author Eileen Westervelt, PE, CEM, is a mechanical engineer at the Engineer Research and Development Center (US Army Corps of Engineers) in Champaign, Ill. Author Donald Fournier is a senior research specialist at the University of Illinois’ Building Research Council and has worked with the Corps in the past.

Westervelt and Fournier give special credence to the work of independent energy experts, such as the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) and the Oil Depletion Analysis Center (ODAC). They seem to place very little credibility on the more optimistic oil production forecasts of the international energy agencies. They reproduce ASPO graphs and quote ASPO member Jean Laherrere on why the US Geological Survey (USGS) future oil availability estimates are clearly overly optimistic:

The USGS estimate implies a five-fold increase in discovery rate and reserve addition, for which no evidence is presented. Such an improvement in performance is in fact utterly implausible, given the great technological achievements of the industry over the past twenty years, the worldwide search, and the deliberate effort to find the largest remaining prospects.

The authors warn that in order to sustain its mission, “the Army must insulate itself from the economic and logistical energy-related problems coming in the near to mid future. This requires a transition to modern, secure, and efficient energy systems, and to building technologies that are safe and environmental friendly.” The best energy options they conclude are “energy efficiency and renewable sources.” However, "currently, there is no viable substitute for petroleum."

They do not expect that any transition will be easy: “energy consumption is indispensable to our standard of living and a necessity for the Army to carry out its mission. However, current trends are not sustainable. The impact of excessive, unsustainable energy consumption may undermine the very culture and activities it supports. There is no perfect energy source; all are used at a cost.”

The report includes what looks like a solid overview of the pros and cons of all major renewable and non-renewable energy options. They consider problems associated with hydrogen, shale oil, biofuels and tar sands. On nuclear energy they note that "our current throw-away nuclear cycle uses up the world reserve of low-cost uranium in about 20 years." They hold more hope for certain solar technologies and wind turbines, however, "renewables tend to be a more local or regional commodity and except for a few instances, not necessarily a global resource that is traded between nations."

Overall this is surprisingly green sounding advice, and one might think out of left field for one of the most environmentally destructive and energy consuming institutions on the planet. And yet the report does not seem to be at odds with the Army's new Energy Strategy which sets out five major initiatives:

1. Eliminate energy waste in existing facilities
2. Increase energy efficiency in new construction and renovations
3. Reduce dependence on fossil fuels
4. Conserve water resources
5. Improve energy security

(See: hqda-energypolicy.pnl.gov/programs/plan.asp)

Westervelt and Fournier assert that changes must be made with urgency. However they express concerns that "we have a large and robust energy system with tremendous inertia, both from a policy perspective and a great resistance to change." In light of this, “the Army needs to present its perspective to higher authorities and be prepared to proceed regardless of the national measures that are taken.”

Westervelt and Fournier suggest "it is time to think strategically about energy and how the Army
should respond to the global and national energy picture. A path of enlightened self-interest is encouraged." As we approach Peak Oil, what is ecologically sound and what is perceived to be to in an institution's practical benefit might tend to converge, at least in some respects - even those of an institution such as the US Army.

Links:

* An 8 page summary of the report (PDF – 75kb)
* Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations - full report (PDF – 1.2mb)
* A related powerpoint presentation by Donald Fournier( PDF – 1mb)
* Sustainable energy demands decisions that look beyond cost (one-page commentary by Westervelt and Fournier in Public Works Digest, p. 16; PDF – 723kb)
* A Candidate Army Energy and Water Management Strategy by Westervelt and Fournier (118 pages, PDF – 2mb)



Some extended quotations from the document:

Energy Implications for Army Installations

The days of inexpensive, convenient, abundant energy sources are quickly drawing to a close. Domestic natural gas production peaked in 1973. The proved domestic reserve lifetime for natural gas at current consumption rates is about 8.4 yrs. The proved world reserve lifetime for natural gas is about 40 years, but will follow a traditional rise to a peak and then a rapid decline. Domestic oil production peaked in 1970 and continues to decline. Proved domestic reserve lifetime for oil is about 3.4 yrs. World oil production is at or near its peak and current world demand exceeds the supply. Saudi Arabia is considered the bellwether nation for oil production and has not increased production since April 2003. After peak production, supply no longer meets demand, prices and competition increase. World proved reserve lifetime for oil is about 41 years, most of this at a declining availability. Our current throw-away nuclear cycle will consume the world reserve of low-cost uranium in about 20 years. Unless we dramatically change our consumption practices, the Earth’s finite resources of petroleum and natural gas will become depleted in this century. Coal supplies may last into the next century depending on technology and consumption trends as it starts to replace oil and natural gas.

We must act now to develop the technology and infrastructure necessary to transition to other energy sources. Policy changes, leap ahead technology breakthroughs, cultural changes, and significant investment is requisite for this new energy future. Time is essential to enact these changes. The process should begin now.

Our best options for meeting future energy requirements are energy efficiency and renewable sources. Energy efficiency is the least expensive, most readily available, and environmentally friendly way to stretch our current energy supplies. ... For efficiency and renewables, the intangible and hard to quantify benefits — such as reduced pollution and increased security — yield indisputable economic value.

Many of the issues in the energy arena are outside the control of the Army. Several actions are in the purview of the national government to foster the ability of all groups, including the Army, to optimize their natural resource management. The Army needs to present its perspective to higher authorities and be prepared to proceed regardless of the national measures that are taken.

...

Petroleum

Historically, no other energy source equals oil’s intrinsic qualities of extractability, transportability, versatility, and cost. The qualities that enabled oil to take over from coal as the front-line energy source for the industrialized world in the middle of the 20th century are as relevant today as they were then. Oil’s many advantages provide 1.3 to 2.45 times more economic value per MBtu than coal (Gever, Kaufman et al. 1991). Currently, there is no viable substitute for petroleum.

In summary, the outlook for petroleum is not good. This especially applies to conventional oil, which has been the lowest cost resource. Production peaks for non-OPEC conventional oil are at hand; many nations have already past their peak, or are now producing at peak capacity.


...

Conventional Oil Resources

In general, all nonrenewable resources follow a natural supply curve. Production increases rapidly, slows, reaches a peak, and then declines (at a rapid pace, similar to its initial increase). The major question for petroleum is not whether production will peak, but when. There are many estimates of recoverable petroleum reserves giving rise to many estimates of when peak oil will occur and how high the peak will be. A careful review of all the estimates leads to the conclusion that world oil production may peak within a few short years, after which it will decline (Campbell and Laherrere 1998; Deffeyes 2001; Laherrere 2003). Once peak oil occurs, then the historic patterns of world oil demand and price cycles will cease.



Notes from BA


The military's commitment to energy policy

A notice in the report says, "The findings of this report are not to be construed as an official Department of the Army position unless so designated by other authorized documents." However, as AF notes, other U.S. Army planning documents seem to share the concern about energy supply. And as USA TODAY reports:

Spurred by a 57% increase in fuel costs, the Pentagon is speeding up its efforts to save energy and develop new sources of power. ...All military bases and facilities have been ordered to cut energy use by 2% per year and pursue alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind.

The recent spate of articles about the military and energy policy bespeaks a more comprehensive outlook than either that of the Democratic or Republican parties, or most environmental organizations. For example, see:
America’s strategic imperative: a “Manhattan Project” for energy (Joint Forces Quarterly)
Toward a Long-Range Energy Security Policy - Parameters (US Army War College).

Energy efficiency

The report only surveys energy sources, and does not cover efficiency or conservation. Nonetheless, the report notes that energy efficiency is "the cheapest, fastest, cleanest source of new energy." (p.58). In other publications, the authors do cover energy efficiency in detail, for example in A Candidate Army Energy and Water Management Strategy (118 pages, PDF – 2mb).

Many of the projects pursued by author Fournier are related to sustainability and energy efficiency (also see article in Green Biz).

Online accessibility

The fact that the document does not seem to be online is puzzling. Searching with Google yielded no results. According to a note on page 4 of the report, the report should be available at http://www.cecer.army.mil/, a URL which seems to be obsolete or inaccessible.

Possibility for an alliance

I'm more sanguine about the role of the military than AF. Within the military and intelligence communities, there seems to be a lack of enthusiasm for unproductive resource wars. See the talks by Ex-CIA directors James R. Schlesinger and James Woolsey as well as the work of Gal Luft at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS).

Is the unlikely alliance described in the following article more widely possible?

You wouldn't have thought it possible: a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency drawing a standing ovation from a room full of left-leaning environmentalists right here in Eugene.

But that's exactly what happened at the University of Oregon's Public Interest Environmental Law Conference Saturday afternoon as R. James Woolsey - the nation's chief "spook" under President Bill Clinton from 1993-1995 - spoke passionately about the need to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

"There is a moral dimension to this," Woolsey said. "We should be good custodians of the Earth.

And if that means creating an unlikely alliance between national security hawks, American farmers, Christian evangelicals, liberal do-gooders and tree-hugging environmentalists, Woolsey said, that's just fine with him.

"All these groups are starting to come around on this set of issues," he said...

"Speaker inspires no-oil thinking" in the Eugene Register Guard, March 5, 2006.

[funzone36]

Yes, but...

by Kurt Cobb

Perhaps the most widely heard response to the peak oil argument is that the world has lots of oil left. To those who understand the peak oil problem, this is a non sequitur. The typical counterargument begins with "Yes, but..." followed by a lengthy disquisition on the difference between stocks and flows of a resource, the geology of oil wells, and the various types of oil.

Often what the listener thinks he or she hears is that the cornucopian thinkers are right. But, less often does the listener understand enough to take the problem seriously.

Herein lies a critical communications problem. Perhaps the most crucial argument to the peak oil debate--that there is a huge difference between how much of a resource is theoretically available on planet Earth and how rapidly we can extract it--is too difficult to explain the way we have been explaining it. Perhaps we need some new approaches for explaining this and other aspects of peak oil.

To start let's look at the obstacles we face. First, the public wants to believe that men (and it is mostly men) in nice suits with PhDs and expertise in the oil business know what they are talking about. And, it wants to believe that the government's experts wouldn't overlook something as important as oil supplies; and sure enough, those private and government experts predict that all will be well for at least three decades.

Second, most of the public believes that even if something is increasingly difficult to do--for instance, pull oil out of the Earth's crust--technology will find a way to overcome the difficulty.

Third, the public has been largely conditioned to believe that technology will find substitutes for oil, introduce them over time, and provide a more or less seamless transition to a new energy economy.

Fourth, most people want to believe all is well because that belief is the most convenient one for the lives they now lead. Most people do not regard change, especially radical change, as good.

Fifth, most people find that the vast majority of those around them seem unconcerned about peak oil. This is an extremely powerful influence. People will ask themselves, "If this is such a critical problem, why do so few people seem alarmed?" (What's missing in their thinking, of course, is that this lack of concern could be the result of so few people knowing anything about peak oil.)

Trying to make progress against these assumptions and the mindset that goes with them seems insuperable. But, those who grasp the peak oil problem usually feel that they must at least try.

Let's take each obstacle in turn. First, it's tempting to trash such "men in suits" as Daniel Yergin. I've done it myself. But turning what is arguably one the most critical issues we now face into a discussion of personalities and questionable motives may only confuse any newcomer to the issue. Peak oil and its ramifications are a highly complex story. It is difficult for most people to come to an informed opinion about that story quickly.

And, rather than attempt a comprehensive explanation of, say, stocks and flows as mentioned above, the aim I think at first should be to plant doubts about the "official story." Discuss a few key problems such as phantom, unverified reserves in the Middle East; rapid unforeseen declines in North Sea oil production; and falling new discoveries. This opens up avenues of inquiry for listeners. What those listeners subsequently discover on their own has much more impact than anything they are force-fed. Pressing the peak oil issue too hard will inevitably create resistance.

Second, it's hard to refute the notion that technology will solve our energy problems. Those who lived through the previous oil crises learned that oil crises pass and oil prices fall. New efficiencies supposedly solved those crises, and they will solve the next one. That bit of learning will someday turn out to be a poor guide. But most people tend to extrapolate the recent past into the future. Trying to make complex arguments about energy technologies that have failed to advance as predicted--fusion energy comes to mind--will probably only confuse a newcomer.

Third, the notion that the marketplace will allow substitutes for oil to emerge and provide a seamless transition to a new energy economy seems to be already validating itself in the form of ethanol and biodiesel production. Talk of hydrogen and liquid fuel from coal is everywhere in the news. I can find no shortcut to respond to the misleading media coverage surrounding these developments. Responding implies the enormous task of creating energy literacy among the public. Such concepts as net energy are as critical to public understanding as they are alien to the public mind. Explaining the implications of exponential growth is a must. Perhaps to start we can reduce these ideas to a couple of sentences: 1) It takes energy to get energy and 2) the economy cannot grow larger than the Earth. But we are still obliged to elaborate. When it comes to energy literary, slogans, in my view, simply won't get it.

Fourth, the fact that people want to believe things that will allow them to continue living as they now live is perhaps the most difficult obstacle to overcome. This behavior is not based on evidence and can run completely contrary to the evidence. Besides this, catastrophic, world-changing discontinuities don't come along very often, at least not for everyone at once. My first suggestion is to be careful about definitive and exacting predictions. No one knows the future. To say this is to say also that the so-called experts, the "men in suits," don't know it either.

Here the opportunity is to talk about risks. We routinely insure against risks of all kinds, even ones that are very rare such as house fires. We do this because of the severity rather than the frequency of such events. Peak oil falls into this category because its consequences could be very severe. We don't know how severe and we don't know exactly when it will come. But, wouldn't it be a good idea to take out some insurance, just to be safe? This is a line of argument that can help people relate to something they already know and can help them see a response in the context of how they address risk in their everyday lives.

Fifth, the fact that few people are concerned about something doesn't mean it's not important. Critical issues are not the same as fashionable issues. Big problems almost always start out small or at least start out poorly understood. AIDS, when it first appeared in the United States, seemed like a problem largely confined to a small segment of the gay population. Before Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, the issue of toxic substances in the environment was almost completely absent from public discussion.

Obviously, as the peak oil issue makes more headway in the mainstream media, the feeling that it can't really be important will start to fade. But, for now you might invite people into awareness of peak oil by admitting that very few people understand it. I'm sorry to say that people like to believe they are joining an exclusive club, and right now, those who understand the implications of peak oil constitute a club that remains far too exclusive.

None of this is meant to be the final word on what to say after you say, "Yes, but..." Rather, it is merely an attempt to suggest some possible approaches and to elicit comments on how to spread the word about peak oil effectively.

I eagerly await your feedback.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Glad to see Kurt back posting after a well-deserved vacation. -BA





http://energybulletin.net/24494.html

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Deconstructing Dinner: 100 Mile Diet/Local Food Strategies

When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically travelled at least 1,500 miles. On the first day of spring, 2005, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon chose to confront this unsettling statistic with a simple experiment. For one year, they would buy or gather their food and drink from within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia. Since then, James and Alisa have gotten up-close-and-personal with issues ranging from the family-farm crisis to the environmental value of organic pears shipped across the globe.

Deconstructing Dinner is designed to educate listeners on the impacts our food choices have on ourselves, our communities and the planet. The show, hosted by Jon Steinman, is produced at Kootenay Co-op Radio (CJLY) in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada.

mp3

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http://www.energybulletin.net/25218.html

Two Warning Beacons Burning Brightly in the Night Sky, Heralding the Arrival of Peak Oil
Jeffrey Brown (Westexas), email
I have described the certain crash of Cantarell and the near certain (IMO) decline/crash of Ghawar as "Two Warning Beacons Burning Brightly in the Night Sky, Heralding the Arrival of Peak Oil." These two fields are the two largest producing fields in the world, which account, or accounted, for about 10% of world crude + condensate production.

Oil Prices Settle Above $55 (Associated Press)

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil producer and exporter, was the quickest to implement OPEC's production cuts; its exports in December were 1.1 million barrels a day lower than before the OPEC's October call for production cuts.

According to the EIA, the Saudis produced 11.1 mbpd total liquids in 2005, consumed 2.0 mbpd total liquids, and exported 9.1 mbpd total liquids.

Their crude + condensate production for 2005 was 9.55 mbpd (All EIA data).

Their total liquids consumption is growing quite rapidly, up by about 22% from 2004 to 2005.

In any case, let's assume that the Saudi's current crude + condensate consumption is about 2.0 mbpd. Their 9/06 crude + condensate production was 9.0 mbpd, which suggests crude + condensate exports of about 7.0 mbpd in September, 2006.

If the captioned news story is reporting crude + condensate, it suggests that Saudi crude + condensate production in December may have been down to about 7.9 mbpd.

It is interesting that we have reports (confirmed for Mexico) of declining/crashing production for both Saudi Arabia and Mexico in December. We have reports that the Saudis are increasing the cuts in crude deliveries to some refineries for February, and Pemex is cutting, or eliminating, crude oil deliveries to Gulf Coast refineries.
(6 Jan 2007)

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http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/456

* Lectures: "Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply"-Richard Heinberg (23 June 2005 Oil Food Security)

"Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply"-Richard Heinberg transcript

17 August 2005

Richard Heinberg: I'm actually gonna cover some of the same territory as Richard has already explored here, hopefully from a little different perspective, add a few helpful facts and figures along the way.

Food is energy and it takes energy to get food. These two facts, when we take them together, have always established the biological limits to the human population and they will always continue to do so. The same is and has been true for every other species as well. Food must yield more energy to the eater than is needed to acquire the food. Woe to the fox who expends more energy chasing rabbits than he can get from eating the rabbits he catches. If this energy balance remains negative for too long, death results. For the species in general the outcome is extinction.
We humans have become champions at developing new strategies for increasing our share of energy captured from the environment. Harnessing of fire, domestication of plants and animals, adoption of ards***[1:14] and plows, the deployment of irrigation schemes and the harnessing of traction animals. Developments that occurred over tens of thousands of years all served this end. The process was gradual and time-consuming. Over centuries small inventions and tiny modifications of existing tools from ***[1:38] to horse-collars enabled human and animal muscle-power to be leveraged ever more slightly more effectively. This exercise took place within a network of natural limits. The yearly capture of solar radiation by the green biosphere was immense relative to human needs, but finite nevertheless and the vast majority of that solar radiation served functions that indirectly supported human existence. Giving rise to air-currents by warming the surface of the planet and maintaining life in the oceans and on land. The amount of human muscle-power was limited by the number of humans, who of course had to be fed by draft-animals who also entailed energy costs as they likewise needed to eat, also had to be cared for in various ways. Therefore, even with clever refinements in tools and techniques, in crop development and animal breeding, it was clear that we humans would inevitably reach a point of diminishing returns in our ability to continue increasing our energy harvest and therefore our population.

By the 19th century these limits were beginning to become apparent. Famine and hunger, as we have already heard, had always been common throughout even the wealthiest regions of the planet. But migration to other nations, crop rotation, and the application of manures and composts were gradually making those events less frequent and severe. European farmers, realizing the need for a nitrogen source in order to continue feeding their burgeoning and increasingly urbanized populations, began employing guano (bird excrement) imported from the cliffs of islands off Chile and Argentina. One can only imagine what it must have been like working on those ships. The results were gratifying. However, after only a few decades those guano deposits were being depleted. By this time, in the late 1890's, the worlds population was nearly twice what it had been at the beginning of the 19th century. A crisis was again in view, but again crisis was narrowly averted due to fossil fuels.

In 1909 two german chemists named Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch invented a process to synthesize ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and the hydrogen in fossil fuels. The process, the Haber-Bosch process, initially used coal as a feed-stock though later it was adapted to use natural gas which is currently the feed-stock of choice. After the end of the great war nation after nation began building Haber-Bosch plants. Today the process produces 150 million tons of ammonia per year, equaling the total amount of available nitrogen produced from all natural sources combined. I think this is a very important point to keep in mind. The Haber-Bosch process has effectively doubled the amount of available nitrogen in the biosphere and concentrated it specifically for the purpose of growing crops for human beings. Fossil fuels went on to offer still other ways of extending natural limits to the human carrying capacity of the planet. Early steam driven tractors came in to limited use in the 19'th century but after WWI the size and effectiveness of powered farm machinery expanded dramatically and the scale of use of farm machinery exploded, especially in North America, Europe and Australia during the 1920's, 30's, 40's and 50's.

In the 1890's one quarter of US cropland had to be set aside for the growing of grain to feed horses, most of which worked on farms. The internal combustion engine provided a new kind of horse-power of course and also increased the amount of arable land available to feed humans. Chemical pesticides and herbicides developed mostly after WWII used knowledge pioneered in the laboratories that had worked to perfect explosives and other chemical warfare agents. Pesticides not only increased crop-yields in, again, Europe, North America and Australia but also reduced the prevalence of insect-born deceases like malaria. The world began to enjoy the benefits of better living through chemistry. Though the environmental costs in terms of water and soil pollution and damage to vulnerable species would only later become widely apparent.

In the 1960's industrial chemical agricultural practices began to be exported, as we've heard, to what by that time was being called the third world. This was glowingly dubbed The Green Revolution and it enabled a tripling of food-production during the past half century. At the same time the scale and speed of distribution of food increased. This also constituted a means of increasing carrying capacity, though in a more subtle way. The trading of food items goes back to paleolithic times but with advances in transport the quantities and distances involved gradually increased. Here again fossil fuels were responsible for a dramatic discontinuity in the slow pace of growth. First by rail and steam ship, then by truck and airplane, immense amounts of grain and ever larger quantities of meats, vegetables and specialty foods began to flow from countryside to city, from region to region and from continent to continent. William Catton in his classic book Overshoot terms the trade of essential life-support commodities as "scope expansion". Carrying capacity is always limited by whatever necessity is in least supply as Justus von Liebig realized nearly a century and a half ago. If one region has water but no good topsoil it's carrying capacity is limited by the lack of topsoil. Another region may have good soil but insufficient rainfall. There the carrying capacity is limited by water. If a way can be found of making up for local scarcity by taking advantage of distant abundance as by diverting water from region A to water crops in region B the total carrying capacity of the two regions combined can be increased substantially. We can put this in the form of a formula, carrying capacity of A+B > carrying capacity of A + carrying capacity of B. >From the ecological point of view this is why people trade but trade has historically been limited by the amount of energy that could be supplied or applied to the transport of materials. Fossil fuels have temporarily erased that limit. The end result of chemical fertilizers plus powered farm machinery plus the increased scope of transportation and trade was not just a threefold leap in crop-yields but a similar explosion of human population which has grown fivefold since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

All of this would be well and good if it were sustainable. But if it proves not to be then a temporary exuberance of the human species would have been purchased by an enormous unprecedented human tragedy. Well, where are we now in this?

Arable crop land until recently was increasing because of clearing of forests, putting new lands into production and through irrigation. Now the arable cropland globally is decreasing because of salinization of soil, because of urban growth, erosion. Topsoil created over tens of thousands and millions of years is decreasing. In the US great plains about half of the original topsoil is gone, much of it washed down the Mississippi river into the gulf of Mexico. The nutritional quality of our food is actually decreasing on a yearly basis due to the gradual demineralization of the soil and this has been actually documented through measurements taken by the US department of agriculture since the 1940's. The number of farmers as a percentage of the population is of course decreasing. In the US at the turn of the last century something like 70% of the population were directly involved in food production. Today that number is more like 1-2% of the population. The number of domesticated crop-varieties is decreasing dramatically due to the consolidation of the seed industry. Not that many years ago in Bali there were 200 varieties of rice, each adapted to a different microclimate of that small island. Now there are only four rice varieties being grown in Bali. Of course the global population, as we've seen, is still growing. We're adding about 80 million people per year currently. We reached 6 billion just back in 1998 and since 1998 we've added another nearly half billion, roughly the total size of the population of North America just since 1998 or 1999 . As we've already seen again, grain production per capita globally decreasing now. A total of 2,000 million tons produced in 2004 which was a record in absolute numbers but for the past decade and a half population growth has outstripped grain production so there's actually less available on a per-head basis. And according to World Watch Institute we may be within sight of a decline in total production figures, in other words absolute production figures in food and especially grain.

Meanwhile the global climate is of course increasingly destabilized resulting in relatively minor problems for farmers now but these are problems that are likely to grow to catastrophic proportions just within the next decade or two.

Meanwhile available fresh water is decreasing. In the US 85% of fresh water use goes toward agricultural production requiring the drawing down of ancient aquifers at far above their recharge rates. Globally, as water tables fall, ever more powerful pumps must be used to lift irrigation water and of course those pumps require ever more energy usage. By 2020 according to World Watch Institute and the UN virtually every country in the world will face shortages of fresh water.

The effectiveness of pesticides and herbicides is also decreasing. In the US over the past two decades pesticide use has increased 33-fold yet each year a greater amount of crops is lost to pests which are evolving immunities to pesticides faster than chemists can invent new poisons. And then of course oil production is peaking as we talked about it in some length last night. That of course makes machinery more expensive to operate as oil prices goes up. It makes fertilizers more expensive to produce and it also makes transportation of food more expensive. And this, I believe, may be the single factor that brings all of these other problems that are like simmering crises to a full boil. The state of dependency on fossil fuels has become enormous. In the US agriculture is responsible for well over 10% of all national energy consumption. Over 400 gallons of oil equivalent are expended to feed each American each year. About a third of that amount goes toward fertilizer production. About 20% to operate farm machinery, about 16% for transportation of food, 13% for irrigation, 8% for livestock raising not including the livestock feed and about 5% for pesticide production. Now this doesn't even include the energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retailers or cooking. Trucks move most of the worlds food although trucking is ten times more energy intensive than moving food by train or barge. Refrigerated jets moves a small but growing proportion of food almost entirely, of course, to wealthy industrial nations at 60 times the energy cost of sea transport. Processed foods make up three quarters of global food sales by price though not by quantity. This adds dramatically to energy costs. For example a one pound box of breakfast cereal may require over 7,000 kcal of energy while the cereal itself provide only 1,100 kcal of food energy. All of this is fairly apparent to anyone who bothers to study the modern food system with an eye to it's sustainability. There is therefore already widespread concern over this subject and debate over the problem of how to avoid an agricultural Armageddon. Within this debate two viewpoints have emerged. The first advocates further intensification of industrial food production primarily via the genetic engineering of new crop and animal varieties. The second advocates ecological agriculture in it's various forms: organic; bio-dynamic; permaculture; bio-intensive and other methods. Critiques of the latter course contends that traditional chemical-free forms of agriculture are incapable of feeding the burgeoning human population. Here is a passage by John Emsley of University of Cambridge from his review of Vaclav Smils book "Enriching the earth, Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food".

Here is the passage: "If crops are rotated and the soil is fertilized with compost and sewage, thereby returning as much fixed nitrogen as possible to the soil it is just possible for a hectare of land to feed ten people provided they accept a mainly vegetarian diet. Although such farming is almost sustainable it falls short of the productivity of land that is fertilized with artificial nitrogen. This can easily support forty people and on a varied diet."

Okay. But given the fact that fossil fuels are non-renewable, limited in extent, it will be increasingly difficult to continue supplying chemical fertilizers in present quantities. Nitrogen can be synthesized using hydrogen produced from electrolysis of water with solar or wind-power as a source of electricity but currently no ammonia is being commercially produced this way because of the uncompetitive cost of doing so. To introduce and scale up that process would require many years and considerable capital investment. The bio-engineering of crop and animal varieties does little or nothing to solve this problem. It is possible to fantasize about mays or other crops modified to fix nitrogen in the way that legumes do but so far efforts in that direction have failed. Meanwhile the genetic engineering of complex life-forms appears to pose unprecedented environmental and human health hazards as has been amply documented by Dr Mae-Wan Ho among many others. The bio-engineering industry itself consumes fossil fuels and assumes the continued availability of oil for tractors, transportation, chemical production and so on. That's one side of the argument. Those arguing in favor of small scale ecological agriculture tend to be very optimistic about it's ability to support large populations. For example the 2002 Greenpeace study "The Real Green Revolution, organic and agro-ecological farming in the south", while acknowledging the lack of comparative research on the subject nevertheless states: "In general it's thought that organic and agro-ecological farming can bring significant increases in yields in comparison to conventional farming practices. Compared to green revolution farming systems OAA is thought to be neutral in terms of yields although it brings other benefits such as reducing the need for external inputs. Eco-agricultural advocates contend that there is plenty of food in the world. Existing instances of hunger are due nearly to bad policy and poor distribution. With better policy and better distribution all could easily be fed well into the future. Thus given the universally admitted harmful environmental consequences of conventional chemical farming the choice should be simple. Some eco-agricultural proponents are even more sanguine and suggest that permaculture, bio-intensive or bio-dynamic methods can produce far higher yields than can mechanized chemical-based agriculture and experiments have indeed shown that small scale bio-diverse gardening can be more productive on a per-hectare basis than mono-crop megafarms and in some cases by far. However, some of these studies tend to ignore the energy and land productivity costs of manures and composts imported onto the studied plots. In any case, and there's no controversy on this point, permaculture and bio-intensive forms of agriculture are dramatically more labor and knowledge intensive than industrial agriculture. Thus the adoption of these methods will require an economic transformation of societies. Therefore even if the nitrogen problem can be solved in principle by agro-ecological methods and/or hydrogen production from renewable energy sources there may be a carrying capacity bottleneck ahead in any case simply because of the inability of societies to adapt to these very different energy and economic needs quickly enough. Even though it may not be politically correct in many circles to discuss the population problem we must recognize that we are nearing or past fundamental natural limits no matter which course we pursue. According to widely accepted calculations humans are presently appropriating about 40% of earths primary biological productivity. It seems unlikely that we, as a single species after all, can do much more than that. Given the fact that fossil fuels are limited in quantity and we're already in view of the global oil production peak the debate over the potential productivity of chemical genetically engineered agriculture versus that of organic and agro-ecological farming maybe relatively pointless.

We must return to a food-system that is less fossil fuel reliant even if it does prove to be less productive. How we might do that is suggested by perhaps the best resent historical example of a society in a fossil fuel famine. Here I want to talk a little bit about the instance of Cuba in recent years and I know there's gonna be a presentation on this subject later on but I hope to just set the stage for that. I'm looking forward to seeing it myself.

Of course Cuba, back in the 1980's, was more reliant on fossil fuels for agricultural production than even the United States. Cuban farmers were using more fossil fuels per acre than American farmers. So the collapse of the Soviet union at the end of the 1980's was a catastrophe for Cuba. Their oil use was reduced by over 50%. At that time the Soviet union, which was the worlds first or second foremost oil producing nation at that time, was exporting oil to Cuba at such a discount that the Cubans was actually re-exporting some of that oil for a profit to earn foreign-exchange income. So that simply went away at the end of the 1980's. Oil use was reduced by over 50%. Per capita energy use in Cuba fell to 1/15'th to 1/20'th of US usage. Since that time Cuba has been in the process of changing from an industrial society to an agrarian society and they have emphasized biological solutions to their various energy and social challenges. They found that their focus is to build human resources through education and of course Cuba produces more doctors per capita than virtually any other nation in the world.

Here's what happened. In 1991 Soviet personnel left Cuba and economic subsidies which had amounted to something like 6 billion dollars a year vanished. The GDP collapsed by 85% in the first two years. As a result of all of this the Cuban people suffered. They lost weight, on average 20 pounds per person. A 30% per capita decline in calorie consumption from food. There were some recorded cases of blindness from malnutrition but probably the full scope of the effects of malnutrition in that society will not be known. A whole generation of Cuban children grew up malnourished. There was of course a major decrease in the material standard of living. So what did Cuba do during what they came to call the Special Period? Well, at that time there had been already some Cuban organic agronomists who had been advocating for the adoption of more organic agricultural methods within Cuba and for the most part their advice had been falling on deaf ears. But once the fossil fuels became much more expensive, weren't available, these agronomists were called in and basically given free reign to redesign Cuba's agricultural system. They abandoned the Soviet industrial model of agriculture. They broke up the large state-owned farms into smaller private plots and co-op farms. They basically went organic because they had to, because they didn't have the chemical fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides. Meanwhile they maintained their free decentralized medical system and used their limited oil resources to generate electricity because to them electricity was actually more important. That was providing the absolute necessities of their minimally industrialized way of life. So they had to save fossil fuels wherever they could so they deemphasized the private automobile and they began moving people around by ox-cart and these giant vehicles that they call a camel which is basically a tractor trailer-rig in which they cram about 300 people in the trailer. They also found a new use for traffic-cops. Traffic-cops now would stop any car on the road that had empty seats and make it wait until enough hitchhikers showed up to fill up the car. As a result of all of this the Cuban society did survive. The economy, as of 2005, is growing again steadily but at a very slow rate. Food production is up to about 90% of the pre-crises period but at nowhere near the pre-crises level of energy inputs. There's been very little new housing, mostly remodeling of existing housing structures. That fact is mostly due to the high energy cost of cement which is very short supply. Transportation is still very much an ad hoc improvised basis. Everybody shares every vehicle on the road. Cubans adopted a mostly vegetarian diet but they did so involuntarily. This wasn't for any sort of ethical reasons, it's just that there wasn't much meat to go around because meat production required more energy. Meat eating went from twice a day to twice a week. Of course therefore they needed to supplement their diets with more vegetable sources of protein. They decreased their consumption of wheat and rice because they simply weren't appropriate to food production on the island. With less transportation they had to move producers and consumers closer together, so this meant more urban gardening. Encouraging the growth of gardens all throughout the cities like Havana. Any kind of empty land was immediately put into agricultural production and rooftop gardening was adopted. Rural areas improved their education for farmers. Many people moved from Havana to the country. In order for this to happen they had to raise salaries for farmers above the salaries being offered for office workers in the cities. So this encouraged people to move from the cities to the countryside to participate in agricultural production. As a result of all of this of course their is very little obesity now in Cuba due to the healthier diet and more physical work. So let's look at some pictures.

Much of this information or all of these pictures are from my colleagues Pat Murphy and Faith Morgan of the organization Community Service in Yellow Springs Ohio who've made a number of trips to Cuba specifically to study the Cuban response to energy famine and how this may offer us lessons for how to deal with the coming energy famine in the rest of the industrialized world.

They found usefulness for raised-beds which help with hand labor.
These raised-beds can be built over existing pavement as on parking lots and even city streets.
The modernized agrarian; this man earns more than an engineer.
Immediately they began breeding more oxen in Cuba because they realized that oxen would be necessary and of course horses tend to compete with people for grain because horses need to eat grain, oxen don't.
So they decided oxen would be a better way to go than horses and they immediately began breeding oxen for traction animals.
I mentioned rooftop gardening.
Very widespread throughout Havana and the other cities but also rooftop raising of food animals like chickens, hamsters and rabbits.
This is a picture of downtown Havana and you can see a really considerable amount of food production right there within the city.
The transition to a non-fossil fuel system will take time.
The Cubans took fifteen years to arrive at where they are now.

We have to emphasize here that we are discussing a systemic transition. We can't just remove oil in the forms of agro-chemicals from the current food system and assume that it will go on more or less as it is. Every aspect of the process by which we feed ourselves has to be rethought. Given the likelihood that global oil peak will occur soon, this transition must occur at a rapid pace backed by the full resources of national governments. Without cheap transportation fuels we will have to reduce the amount of food transportation that occurs and make necessary transportation much more efficient. This implies increased local food self-sufficiency. It also implies problems for large cities that have been built in arid regions that are capable of supporting only small populations on the regional resource base.

Think of places like Las Vegas, Nevada or even Los Angeles, California. How much food can be grown in those places? We will need to grow more food in and around cities certainly. Currently Oakland, California is debating a food policy initiative that would mandate the growing of 40% of the vegetables consumed in the city within 50 miles of city center by 2015. If the example of Cuba were followed rooftop gardens would result as well as rooftop raising of food animals as we saw. Localization of the food process means moving producers and consumers of food closer together but it also means relying on the local manufacturing and regeneration of all the elements of the production process from seeds to tools and farm machinery. This would appear to rule out agricultural bio-engineering which favors the centralized production of patented seed varieties and discourages the free saving of seeds from year to year by farmers. Clearly we must minimize chemical inputs to agriculture both direct and indirect such as those introduced in processing of foods. We will need to introduce draft animals in agricultural production and as the Cubans found, oxen may in many instances be preferable to horses because of the need of horses for grain their tendency therefore to compete for humans for carrying capacity. Governments must also provide incentives for people to return to an agricultural life. I think it would be a mistake simply to think in terms of the need for a larger agricultural work-force. Traditional agriculture requires social networks; intergenerational trust and bonding and knowledge sharing. We need not just more workers but a rural culture that makes agricultural work rewarding. Farming requires knowledge and experience so we will need education for a new generation of farmers but only some of this education can be generic. Much of it must be of necessity locally appropriate. It would be necessary as well to break up the corporate megafarms that produce so much of todays cheap grain. Industrial agriculture implies an economy of scale that is utterly inappropriate and unworkable for post-industrial food systems. Thus land-reform will be required in order to enable small holders and farming co-ops to own their own plots. In order for all of this to happen governments must end subsidies to industrial agriculture and begin subsidizing post-industrial agricultural efforts. There are many ways in which this could be done. The present regime of subsidies is so harmful that merely stopping it in it's tracks and doing nothing else would itself be advantageous. But given the fact that rapid transition is essential, the offering of subsidies for education, low-interest loans for land purchase and support during the transition from chemical to organic production would be essential. Finally, given the carrying capacity limits that we've been discussing, food policy must include population policy. We must encourage smaller families by means of economic incentives and we must improve the economic and educational status of women in poorer countries around the world. All of this sounds like a very tall order but the alternatives: doing nothing or attempting to solve the problem simply by applying more technological intensification will certainly result in dire consequences. In that case existing farmers would fail because of fuel and chemical prices. All of the worries of existing trends mentioned earlier would intensify to the point that the human carrying capacity of earth would be degraded significantly and perhaps to a very large degree permanently. In some, the transition to a fossil fuel free food system doesn't constitute a utopian proposal; it is an immense challenge and will call for unprecedented levels of creativity at all levels of society but in the end it is the only rational option for averting human tragedy on a scale never before seen. Thank you very much.

Presenter: Thank you very much Richard. If you have any ***[36:15] of comments ***[36:16] will take them.

Spectator #1: ***[36:17] Cuban example, what's happened to population in the last fifteen years?

RH: Cuba's population is growing but quite a slow pace. It's the slowest growing population in the Latin-American region. So they have recognized the need to keep population growth low but the population is still growing and it's a bit of a problem because there simply isn't enough housing for everyone in Cuba.

Spectator #2: It seems to me ***[36:43]-***[36:48] transformation ***[36:50] start to work on the perception that it's okay to have ***[36:52] family, it's okay for some couples not to have kids. It's okay to have maybe an only child. It's a perception of time maybe that we measure cities and distances in terms of how far ***[37:04] travel is. 60 minutes away, ***[37:08] by what? Perception of physical work, the change in our perception of what it means to be a physical worker. It's sort of a ***[37:15] theme amongst societies now. I don't garden and I don't get my fingernails dirty, I'm an office worker now. I've worked my way up.

RH: Could I just say something about that? This is I think a very important consideration for the poorer countries because there you have millions of people who are aspiring to the industrialized urban way of life. For example the townships in South Africa. You don't see gardens there in the townships. Here are people living in extreme poverty and they could certainly benefit by growing a few tomatoes or potatoes or something, but they don't do that because they associate growing your own food with poverty. That's where they came from and they want to move into the urban existence of Cape Town and Johannesburg and be like the folks who own cars and so on. I think that perception has to change, just as you said.

Spectator #3: Can you ***[38:10] share with us your experience about what's happened when you go on television ***[38:15] there is no way of avoiding a population crash ***[38:19] realize that ***[38:20]-***[38:21]. How do you handle this and what's happened to you and you come out in one piece.

RH: Well, I think for people who don't even understand the problem of peak oil for instance, just bringing them that information is about as much as their brains can contain at one moment and it's really only after one has absorbed that and a few other worrisome facts about the un-sustainability of our modern industrial society that one can begin to really talk about the full consequences. It's more than the average person can absorb all at once. But for policy makers, these people have to understand this because even if it's very difficult just from a human standpoint to absorb the news these people are responsible after all for making the kinds of decisions that will determine life and death for perhaps millions of people. They have to be made to understand it.

Spectator #4: I think you need to emphasize the de-urbanization does not necessarily mean de-industrialization because the kind of industrial set of values can be done in local dispersed communities that are self-sustaining in food can be quite as ***[39:34] in sense of small scale. ***[39:37] your talking to ***[39:39]-***[39:40] because it suggests we ought to go backwards. In fact we want to make more intelligent use of the knowledge that we have in a dispersed network of self-sustaining populations.

RH: Yes I partly agree with what you say because I think there's a great deal we've learned during the industrial period about things that can be produced and ways of producing them. We will be able to adapt but we're simply going to have a lot less energy with which to pursue the productive process and that's going to mean, if you look at what industrialization has been and what it has meant, we will have less of it. So you can call it anything you want but it's going to be coming down off that peak of mechanization of the human experience and the human relationship with nature. De-mechanization if you will.

Spectator #5: The ***[40:34]-***[40:36] economy of ***[40:36] living ***[40:38] is the critical term that we've got to get across when we're talking about the future rather than going back. I think there's a whole education process. ***[40:45]-***[40:46] agriculture. Regularly and every time I promote organic farming or ***[40:54] what you're talking about it comes back that she has a view that it's too expensive. People won't pay that money for what? A good food but ***[41:08]-***[41:08]. I'm just wondering whether maybe ***[41:11]-***[41:12] on this as well. On the web I noticed there's an International Kitchen Garden Association, it seems to be a sort of a celebration of growing some of your own food. I'm just wondering whether you've come across that or whether there is anything you can suggest that would help get over this mind-set thing by making it an attractive or popular or interesting change.

RH: I'm not sure I can think of a way to make it seem like an overwhelmingly attractive idea to people who are already overwhelmingly invested in a very elaborate, well-funded, inexpensive in terms of food production per minutes worked to be able to by a tomato or whatever. It's an overwhelmingly attractive system as it's set up, what we desperately need to understand is that we can't continue that. I think your minister of agriculture needs to understand the problem of peak oil. It would be nice if we could advertise the transition to a fossil fuel free agriculture as being easier and cheaper and so on and it is more rewarding in many respects and there are advantages but purely on that basis I don't think the transition will occur. If it were going to it would have by now because there have been plenty of organic advocates around for the last 20 years talking about the advantages of organic versus so called conventional agriculture. What we really have to understand is the chemical based industrial agriculture simply cannot be continued because of the problem of peak oil. The longer we wait to address that problem the more likely it is that we will face this carrying capacity bottleneck in it's direst form. We have a responsibility to anticipate this problem because even the US department of energy or at least a report prepared for the US department of energy is acknowledging that this problem is inevitable. There should be no controversy about that. There may be a little controversy about when it's going to occur but there should be no controversy that the event will occur. We have to prepare for it. If we wait until the event itself there will be very dire consequences. That message has to get across.

[papabear]

http://energybulletin.net/25544.html

Published on 1 Feb 2007 by Bloomberg. Archived on 1 Feb 2007.
Simmons says global oil supply has peaked

by Rhonda Schaffler

Matthew Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Co. International in Houston, talked yesterday with Bloomberg's Rhonda Schaffler about the need to address energy use, his view that global supply has peaked and the likelihood oil prices could reach as much as $300 a barrel. (Source: Bloomberg)

[Transcription of the first few minutes of the interview]

Q: Tell me how you draw your conclusion that at this point we've hit Peak Oil.

A: If you look at the numbers and you follow what's going on starting with Mexico's giant Cantarell field which is now in a very serious state of decline and then you look at the North Sea and you see just the UK and Norway, it's pretty obvious to me that those three areas alone could actually decline by between 800,000 and 1 million barrels a day in 2007.

That pretty well wipes out almost all the production gains coming onstream and in implicit in that it assumes that everyone else is flat.

So I think basically too many of our oil fields are too old. Too many now are in decline. The Middle East is basically out of capacity. they're some projects that are being worked upon, but most don't hit the market until 2008, 2009 and we're running out of time.

... I am firmly of the belief that over the course of the next year or two, this issue of peak oil will replace global warming as an issue that we're all worrying, debating and talking about.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE: The Oil Drum has a You Tube version of the interview.

See the original URL for the complete audio interview which about seven minutes long.
Not sure how long the video will be available. Currently you have to scroll down the page to find it. The date for the video is Feb 1, if you have to search for it.

The impetus for Simmons's remarks may be the decline of the Cantarell field in Mexico that has been in the news during the past couple of weeks (The Oil Drum, Wall Street Journal).

Discussion at The Oil Drum

-BA

Lets not let peak oil 'replace' global warming as an issue that we're all worrying about and debating, as the issues must be considered together.

-AF