Peak Freaks

Peak Freaks

http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.php?id=385

(Gold9472: I would request that everyone read this please.)

BY AARON NAPARSTEK
10.28.2005 | ENVIRONMENT

If you happened to be strolling down E. 35th Street in Manhattan around noon on Wednesday, October 5, you may have stumbled across the shirtless, shoeless young man with a wispy goatee meditating on the sidewalk in front of the Unitarian Universalist church between Madison and Park. Or you may have noticed the fellow in the orange jumpsuit, NASA-style, circa 1981. Perhaps you were stopped by a pasty-looking woman and asked, aggressively and completely at random, if you knew a doctor who could help her with the mysterious illness she believes she acquired while volunteering at Ground Zero after 9/11. These and about 400 others were in attendance for the first-ever Petrocollapse Conference, a day-long event organized to allow "tremendous authorities offering a wide range of expertise" to educate the public on Peak Oil, according to Jan Lundberg, a conference organizer and the morning's first speaker.

In his opening remarks Lundberg said the event was "not so much an exercise in proving Peak Oil has occurred or will occur soon, but rather an attempt to explore our post-peak options and fate as individuals and communities." A worthy and compelling task, I thought. Having written and worked quite a bit on New York City transportation issues the last few years, I was slated to do a ten minute talk as a part of the "Local Solutions" panel at the very end of the day. I had put together a presentation called "Urban Transportation in the Age of Expensive Oil" showing five transportation and urban design ideas for weaning New York City away from its costly automobile dependence.

My presentation wasn't a comprehensive policy proposal. Nor was it a revolutionary break from the current status quo (though, I'm sure many New York City traffic engineers, would disagree with that). Rather, it was meant as a grounded, pragmatic review of five car-free transportation and urban design concepts that are working well in other big cities around the world but are still considered somewhat radical here in New York. I planned to talk about London's successful congestion charging system, bike paths and pedestrian spaces in Northern European cities, bus rapid transit systems in South America, and this great project to build light rail along 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan called Vision42. I have often found that, short of flying someone to Amsterdam to ride bikes and look closely at urban design, you need photos to convince Americans that a less car-dominated city is possible or even desirable. Even to New Yorkers who mostly don't own cars, the automobile is such an intrinsic part of American life it is simply impossible for many of us to imagine or envision a life not dominated by them.

Yet, as one tremendous authority after another got up to warn us of the impending, sudden demise of Western industrial civilization due to Peak Oil, I began to get the sneaking suspicion that this crowd, or at least these conference organizers, weren't interested in bus rapid transit, bike lanes or policy proposals of any kind. The Petrocollapse Conference had been convened to warn New Yorkers that End Times were upon us.

If Peak Oil theory is now maintream, discussed on the front page of USA Today and in Chevron and BP ad campaigns, then Petrocollapse is a secular, left-wing, non-fiction version of Tim LaHaye's Christian Apocalyptic "Left Behind" series. The gospel according to Petrocollapse is that Peak Oil is coming, and it's coming soon. The transition to the post-carbon world will not be gradual, it will be sudden and massive. And when it comes, the sinners--those profligate American consumers and the corporate whores who oversee them--will all be swept away in violent social turmoil, starvation and environmental disaster. But there's good news too. After the tumultuous mass die-off, a new society will arise from the burned out SUV hulks and melted plastic detritus. In this post-carbon world, humans will have no choice but to live sustainably, in cooperation with each other and in harmony with nature. Those who get religion and accept Peak Oil into their hearts soon enough--they may be among the lucky survivors whose children grow to live in this new and better world.

In other words, "grounded" and "pragmatic" weren't high on the Petrocollapse Conference agenda. This was made immediately clear in Lundberg's opening remarks as he started off the conference by listing his own Peak Oil bonafides and criticizing other "prestigious insiders of the Peak Oil 'movement'" who advocate various political solutions and policy reforms.

Lundberg isn't interested in these "agendas" because he is "promoting fundamental, system-change." He advocates a return to "complete reliance on nature" and "a real community-based" tribal culture. He believes that "we, like nature, are being raped constantly in every orifice" by Western Industrial civilization. "Progress is a new idea, and a dangerous one," at that. "Nature does not need progress."

Lundberg foresees, or advocates--it is often not clear which--a complete dissolution of the United States into locally governed bioregions and an enormous culling of the Earth's human population. There are three ways, he says, to deal with the overpopulation problem that will suddenly manifest as an overwhelming crisis once Peak Oil is reached. 1. A rational, gradual and voluntary population reduction. 2. Violent, involuntary reduction brought about by "elites" selecting survivors based on their national or genetic desirability. 3. Humanity simply killing itself off en masse.

Of these three options, Lundberg believes the third, is currently "operative" and "to avoid the second 'option' of top-down culling through violence, the first option, compassionate planning, would have to start soon."

Sure, "Our time as a species in a favorable, biodiverse ecosphere is about up" and "there appears to be little hope for a viable future," but it's not all doom and gloom to Lundberg. Upon petrocollapse, "a new society will come together on a local-ecosystem basis. Cooperation and sharing will be necessary for survival, to make urban and suburban land productive and to assure water is as clean as possible." Petrocollapse will be so shocking and so revolutionary that "a completely different approach to human relations and economics will be adopted." How we will get from here to there and in what time frame, Lundberg didn't say.

What was made clear, though, is that to Lundberg petrocollapse is not so much the problem as it is the solution. "I believe petrocollapse can cure Earth of this civilization," he said. "Civilization is the threat."

Another featured speaker at the Petrocollapse conference was Michael Ruppert, editor of From the Wilderness, a web-based clearinghouse for news headlines and original stories that tend to confirm a conspiratorial worldview of government and corporate power. His book, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil claims that the U.S. government orchestrated the events of 9/11. There is a strong overlap between the Petrocollapse and 9/11 conspiracy communities. Conference organizers found Ruppert's version of doom so compelling they gave him two prominent speaking slots.

He introduced his talks by saying "This is the first of two cold showers I'm going to give you. Get ready for goose bumps." Ruppert's thesis: It simply won't be profitable for the big corporations and government that control us to slow the global economic decline and human suffering that will be brought on by Peak Oil. So they won't.

Peak Oil, Ruppert said, is the beginning of the end of industrial civilization and it is driving the elites of American power to implement unthinkably draconian measures of repression, warfare and population control. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have known about Peak Oil for decades and they are implementing "a very clearly established plan" to crash the US economy. The crash will be worse than 1929 and it is "just a few weeks away." They have decided that the only way to control U.S. energy consumption is through "demand destruction"--impoverishing Americans, or worse, liquidating them altogether. That the city of New Orleans wasn't rescued after Hurricane Katrina wasn't due to federal government incompetence. Letting American cities filled with poor people suffer and die is simply what "demand destruction" is all about. During a break outside with a group of smokers, Ruppert went on, "Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld all have their ranches off the grid. They're all running solar and biodiesel. They know what's coming,"

End Part I

As for those who think they can deal with the global energy crisis through technology, policy or any other grassroots action, forget it. "There is more psychosis among progressives than there is in the White House." To Ruppert, environmentalists are no less delusional than the Christian Right. If you want to do something useful with your time and activism, fight the global financial system, because "until you change the way money works," Ruppert says, "you change nothing." Ruppert's only concrete recommendations for action were to buy gold and move to an eco-community. But he wouldn't say where. "My influence is such," he said, "that suggesting a location in public would create a run on property."

No one does a smarter or more entertaining Apocalypse than the day's keynote speaker, James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century. Unlike the Lundberg and Ruppert, Kunstler's social commentary is incisive enough that he gets away with it. He is really the only Cassandra a Peak Oil conference needs.

"In the waning months of 2005," Kunstler said, "our failure to face the problems before us as a society is a wondrous thing to behold. Never before in American history have the public and its leaders shown such a lack of resolve, or even interest, in circumstances that will change forever how we live."

"Even the greatest convulsion in our national experience, the Civil War, was preceded by years of talk, if not action. But in 2005 we barely have enough talk about what is happening to add up to a public conversation. We're too busy following Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, and the hiring practices of Donald Trump. We're immersed in a national personality freak show soap opera, with a side order of sports 24-7." He summed it up thusly: "Our failure to pay attention to what is important is unprecedented, even supernatural." What is important is this: "We've entered a permanent world-wide energy crisis. The implications are enormous. It could put us out-of-business as a cohesive society."

The Korean War-generation guys sitting next to me winced as Kunstler went on with his assessment of the American personality. "We've become a nation of overfed clowns and crybabies, afraid of the truth, indifferent to the common good, with hardly even a common culture, selfish, belligerent, narcissistic whiners seeking every means possible to live outside a reality-based community."

Kunstler then went on to suggest one proposal. It was pretty much the only concrete policy suggestion to come during the entire morning of End Times prophecies. "Let's get started rebuilding the passenger railroad system in our country. We have a railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of."

The audience burst into applause. The Petrocollapse Conference had spent the morning telling a room filled with people who probably call themselves progressives or environmentalists that the world was about to end and they were "delusional" for trying or even caring to do something about it. It was nearly lunch and the crowd was hungry, it seemed to me, for some hope, ideas and possibility of taking action and making change.

To the contrary, there were no shortage of policy ideas and suggestions for action at New York University's October 20th "bi-partisan town hall meeting on U.S. oil policy." I recognized a few faces from the Petrocollapse crowd among those filing into New York University Law School's Vanderbilt Hall. The sidewalk meditator, NASA-jumpsuit guy and 9/11 hypochondriac, though, were nowhere to be found amidst the mostly young men in suits and ties.

If the Petrocollapse conference was dominated by conspiracy theorists, then "Winning the Oil Endgame" was the Conspiracy. Present on the dais were former CIA director James Woolsey, Mississippi Governor and former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Robert Altman and Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

Far from doom and gloom, the Endgame speakers were nearly united in their belief that it was both possible and desirable to keep finding fixes for America's energy jones and to keep the American consumer machine rolling along using new technologies.

The meeting was a bit of an Amory Lovins-fest, no pun intended. "Winning the Oil Endgame" is also the name of the Rocky Mountain Institute's new book and Lovins kicked things off by talking about how new lighter weight vehicles and better propulsion systems that he is developing "could make SUV's that get 66 miles per gallon" and triple the efficiency of the entire transportation sector. "It's the equivalent of finding a Saudi Arabia under Detroit,' he said. "We can save oil faster than they can sell oil." Showing an optimism and an appreciation of SUV's that was utterly absent at Petrocollapse, he added, "We'll look back in 40 years when we're off the oil and ask what all the fuss was about."

Altman, who'd served under President Clinton, urged America to take on five bold initiatives: First, more drilling. Go into "under-exploited regions of the world to expand supply of oil." Second, "re-embrace nuclear power" and "get behind the development of new plants." Third, "more coal-fired electricity plants" built with cleaner, though extremely expensive and still-unproven technologies that sequester carbon emissions. Fourth, import more natural gas by building a zillion dollar infrastructure for liquefied natural gas terminals and tankers. And last but not least, we need "more fuel efficient vehicles." Charles Komanoff, a long-time energy economist and activist sitting next to me scribbled his assessment on a scrap of paper: "Final tally: Big ideas for increasing energy supply--4. Big ideas for reducing energy demand--1."

Governor Barbour found himself surprised at how much he agreed with the suggestions of Altman, the card-carrying Democrat. Barbour boiled the energy crisis down to three supply side shortfalls: insufficient domestic production, refining capacity, and "alternative fuels." By "alternatives" the governor didn't mean wind or solar. He thinks we're not burning nearly enough coal or nuclear energy in the U.S.

Interestingly the meeting's most arch-conservative speaker was in some ways the most reminiscent of the Petrocollapse conference. Like Ruppert, Barbour had nothing but derision for environmentalists. Since the days of the Nixon administration, he said, "environmental policy has trumped energy policy at every turn." The result is the mess we're in today.

Also like Petrocollapse, Barbour showed himself to be profoundly gloomy about America's energy future, though he hid it beneath a Southern salesman's optimism. His goal, he said, is for "Mississippi to be recognized as the reliable energy state." He envisions a day when things are bad enough in the U.S. that he can lure big business to Mississippi simply by guaranteeing that it is a place where the lights turns on, and stay on, when your company flips the switch. Towards this end, Barbour is digging into eastern Mississippi's abundant supply of soft light coal, working to build a new nuclear plant and oil refinery, criss-crossing the state with new pipeline, and permitting extraordinarily expensive liquefied natural gas terminals on the battered and vulnerable Gulf Coast.

Sitting to Barbour's left was Columbia University Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs, the only speaker to bring up the "profound environmental problems" of fossil fuels. Speaking immediately after Barbour, Sachs argued that the "evidence is becoming extremely clear" that hurricanes such as the ones that devastated Mississippi this summer are the result of man-made changes to the Earth's climate due to the burning of fossil fuels. Barbour clearly wasn't having any of that. Rather than challenging the professor directly he launched into a lengthy recital of big hurricanes that have hit his state over the last 150 years and an ode the resilience of the people of Mississippi. It was an exquisite example of Republican climate change denial. If you argued with anything Barbour said you'd sound like you were insulting homespun common sense and the good people of Mississippi.

End Part II

And that's the funny thing about the Conspiracy. Barbour, the ultimate Republican insider power player, isn't hiding his agenda. He came right out and said what he is up to. He wants to build massive amounts of new fossil fuel and nuclear energy infrastructure in his state. He wants to keep the American consumer machine rolling along. SUV's, strip malls and suburban sprawl aren't a problem to him, they are the American way of life and they are entirely desirable. Barbour can't really imagine or simply doesn't see the point in bothering to envision any other way of doing things than the way we're doing them now. Focused on keeping the system going, he can see that there is a heck of a lot of easily accessible natural gas in the Caribbean. If he can figure out a way to get some extremely expensive liquefied natural gas terminals built on his state's Gulf Coast, then the rest of the U.S. will have to go through Mississippi to get a hit of that energy. Talking about man-made climate change and increasingly intense hurricanes doesn't help that project along. It just scares off the investors. This isn't conspiracy. It's consumer capitalism. And it's inertia.

Charles Komanoff has been involved in the energy and environmental movements pretty much since they began in the early 1970's. He's a good person to talk to for some perspective. I was surprised when Komanoff first told me that he wasn't particularly interested in the Peak Oil argument. "I think there's an element of wishful thinking and that some Peak Oil adherents are looking for a deus ex machina to sweep away the disaster that is contemporary industrial civilization," he said. "And understandably so. Waiting for Peak Oil is so convenient, so much simpler, and so much more seductively effective than the hard work of organizing for social ecological change."

I sat next to Komanoff during the Endgame conference and saw him frequently chuckling and shaking his head, particuarly during Lovins' presentation. Afterwards he said, "There is a big disonance between Amory's kind of chirpy optimism and actual realities on the ground and actual energy trends." Three decades after Lovins unveiled his revolutionary "soft energy path," Komanoff points out, the U.S. uses 25% more oil, burns 75% more coal and generates 35% more greenhouse gases than it did in the mid-1970s. Though a 66 mpg SUV is certainly more desirable than Detroit's current state of the art, Komanoff doesn't believe Lovins' hyper car project provides us with real answers for our global energy and environmental quandry because the project is "only about improving the fuel efficiency of the vehicle and does nothing about addressing the social and whole system efficieny of travel and mobility and community."

It's "tragic," Komanoff says, because "of the top ten energy thinkers in the world, the first five slots would have to be Amory. Yet, there's so much else missing in his vision, namely the centrality of price." Komanoff believes the solution to our global energy problems will only come about through serious discussions about the pricing of road useage and taxation of carbon emissions. "It's a law of nature. Anything inexpensive will never be conserved. Make fuels expensive -- really expensive, as befits the climate wreckage and political violence endemic to coal and oil -- and everything changes."

Chatting with Komanoff I quickly realized that these were the kinds of pragmatic but forward-thinking conversations and policy ideas that were mising from the two conferences. Though the two Peak Oil meetings came at the problems from completely different angles, I found both to be equally discouraging and even a little bit crazy. Neither gave attendees much of anything that we could do as concerned citizens with limited means to deal with our increasingly dire national energy situation. And both conferences seemed intent on paralyzing us into inaction by suggesting that all we could really do is wait. Wait for the Petrocollapse or wait for Amory Lovins' 66 mpg SUV's. Frankly, both events were just depressing.

Fortunately, there is a place for me to work out those feelings.

The New York City Oil Awareness Meetup gathers the second Wednesday of the month at 7:00 pm at Wai Café, a Chinese health food take-out joint in the Flatiron District. Dan Miner, a senior vice president for business services at the Long Island City Business Development Corporation, runs the meeting. Miner is rapidly making a name for himself as a leader in New York City's sustainability movement. In addition to running the Peak Oil Meetup he has formed a New York City Energy Policy Working Group and authored a paper called "Preparing New York City for the Coming Energy Crisis."

On Wednesday, October 12 a group of about 25 people gathered in the back section of the restaurant for dinner, drinks and Peak Oil. Perhaps not a good sign for the ultimate survival of the species, only five or six women were on-hand. Tapping a piece of silverware to a glass, Miner got the meeting started by asking if anyone new to the group would like to introduce themselves. A skilled and natural facilitator, Miner makes people feel comfortable to talk yet he keeps his meeting on-task and moving.

One regular member makes it clear at the outset of the meeting that he is there for the emotional support. A big, handsome New Yorker with a job in information technology, Rob is not the type you expect to get all touchy-feely. "I was dealing with Peak Oil by myself for a long time," he says. "My family got sick of hearing me talk about it so I started seeing a psychiatrist." An active member named Phillip chimes in, "You're not the only one. I know 20 other people who are seeing shrinks because of Peak Oil."

To address the emotional side of the issue members Simon and Bill started a sub-group called "The Clinic / Peak Oil 101." For many "there is a paralysis that comes when you first start dealing with Peak Oil," Simon says. The Clinic is designed to help people "start moving." Once you've gotten over the initial emotional reaction you can "start doing practical things. Get out of debt. Learn a new skill. Think about moving to a new place and buying gold." Phillip adds, "There are no easy solutions. No matter how you tell people about Peak Oil, you're going to have to change your life. At some point people are going to have to accept the fact that the lifestyle we live here isn't going to be maintained."

Since Miner took over as moderator, the New York City gathering has grown into the biggest Peak Oil Meetup in the world with 167 members and as many as 35 people attending meetings. These divide broadly into two broad groups. The Relocalizers believe New York City won't be viable in the age of Peak Oil and are looking for new places to live and new skills to live in a world without modern conveniences. The Sustainable New Yorkers are dedicated to staying and preparing the city for what they see as a lengthy and potentially tumultuous energy crisis.

Relocalization meetings are often run by a graphic designer named Elise. At the Meetup, she invited people to join her in Clarksville, New York for a workshop on outdoor survival skills: how to start a fire with flint, build shelter out of natural materials, and prevent hypothermia if you're stuck outdoors in the cold. "If you need to get out of New York City quickly, you might need to know how to survive in the woods," she said mater-of-factly.

"People are ready for something else. They're sick of reality shows and consumerism. They're hungry for sustainability." In San Francisco, she noted, "they're turning ornamental gardens into vegetable gardens. Can you imagine Park Avenue, instead of tulips, tomatoes?" Elise is working towards joining an eco-village or starting one. Her ultimate goal is to "be part of a secure, sustainable food network." She is planning a trip to Vermont to learn vermaculture, the practice of cultivating worms to use their castings, that is, their poop, as a natural fertilizer. In the Peak Oil future that Elise envisions, the staples of industrial agriculture; mechanical combines, nitrogen fertilizer, trucks shipping lettuce 3,000 miles across the country, will not be available to us

Phillip is also a Relocalizer. After Elise gave her report, he invited the group to join him in Hancock, New York from October 31 through November 12 for a 72-hour permaculture course taught by Australian Geoff Lawton. Phillip also said that he and his partner were "doing a weekend trip to a dairy farm." One caveat: "It's a gay thing. We're going to make wreathes and learn how to milk cows. And I've never touched a teat." No one laughs. "Come on folks, a little sense of humor!"

With the majority of the Meetup members seemingly falling into the Relocalizer category, discussion does turn fatalistic. Simon says, "If we don't smarten up real fast, 3 to 6 billion people will die in the next 40 years." Perhaps sensing that he's getting a little grim, he quickly adds, "We're living through the death of a civilization and the birth of a new one. It's going to be exciting if you survive."

Despite such dread, and despite another grim speech by Jan Lundberg at the end of the meeting, there is a real sense of action and possibility at the monthly meeting. Miner makes a point of emphasizing that there are things you can do to prepare for Peak Oil and people interested in doing them with you. Much of the action takes place on the Meetup web site.

In a recent message board posting Rob asked if anyone wanted to split the cost of "The Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens," a 25-minute video available at www.chickenvideo.com for $14. And he threw out a question: "So I was reading one day on survivingpeakoil.com about how foraging for food takes much less energy than hunting. The article mentioned that acorns are a good source of protein. I noticed in my area that there are a lot of acorns just lying on the side of the road. I started collecting them and storing them." After spending some time in jars, Rob noticed that "many of the acorns have a sprout growing out of them. I am thinking to myself, could I still eat that if I was really hungry? What do you guys think?"

If you are not interested in raising chickens or harvesting acorns, then the Sustainable New York Committee is probably more for you. The bottom line is that, at the Meetup you aren't assaulted by the gloomy hoplessness that pervaded the Petrocollapse and Endgame conferences.

That is, until Miner announces that we have a special guest and Jan Lundberg is invited to say a few words. Lundberg used to produce an oil industry but has since renounced any ties to the petroleum business and now runs a web site called CultureChange.org. Lately he's been touring the country via Amtrak, speaking to groups about Peak Oil and showing a movie about plastics pollution.

Lundberg immediately kicks into 60's revolutionary mode. "We've got to pull the rug out from under the system, subvert the fascist police state and subvert corporate fascism. We've got to stop buying new cars. Buying an old car at least undermines the enemy." The speech grows darker. "We could see the final energy crisis this winter. It would create a cascade of effects in which the house of cards collapses. Then we have mass starvation and exodus from high population areas for the land."

I interviewed Lundberg a couple of days after the Meetup to try get more of a sense of how he sees us getting from petroleum-addicted society to the sustainable future that he foresees. Still, he focused mostly on the critique side of the equation. "We've paved over the best farm land. We've ruined water sheds. And we've become isolated individual units of consumption. We've lost family cohesion. Peoples' traditions have been trampled. When people have sold each other out in their own families and they imagine that they are above and separate from nature, they will pay a very large price."

As he digresses down this path I recall a moment during the Meetup when someone asked Lundberg why his sister Trilby, who now runs the family business, The Lundberg Report, doesn't use her position as a prominent energy industry pundit to talk about Peak Oil. In his response, you begin to get the sense that there is, perhaps, something very personal behind Lundberg's dark vision. "Trilby seized the company in a hostile take-over that involved the abuse of our mother. Her husband is an OPEC gigolo. She's nothing more than a mouthpiece for the major oil companies. It's a complete waste of what was once America's most trusted energy industry newsletter. They are sell-outs for the buck. That's what most people are in the professional classes. They just want to be praised for earning a dollar and reporting to work every day."

A couple of days after the Petrocollapse conference, I received an e-mail from Lundberg. It was a surprise because up until that moment, all of the e-mails and phone calls that I had left with him had gone unreturned.

He thanked me for my presentation before delving into a critique. My presentation, he felt, didn't do a good enough job explaining what would be necessary in a world in which "gasoline and diesel are gone." The car-free urban transportation ideas I presented seemed "more geared toward business-as-usual reforms." Next time I "might want to put more visionary images out there that depict scenes more like Cuba in their Special Period -- or use your imagination." Forget for a moment that not even the most pessimistic Peak Oiler believes that gasoline and diesel are going to be "gone" any time soon. If there is one thing I've learned from reading the literature and going to the conferences it's that there is no bigger put-down in the Peak Oil world than calling something "business-as-usual." That's about as rough as it gets.

Curious about what kind of urban transportation presentation Lundberg would have rather shown at his conference, I e-mailed him back a couple of days later. "Jan, what are you saying? You'd have liked to have seen Cuba-style images of horses pulling SUV's down Park Avenue?"

"Actually, Aaron, yes," Jan replied. "Although SUVs are heavy."

Who says the Petrocollapse crowd isn't grounded and pragmatic?

End

US report acknowledges peak-oil threat

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...59205A9DBE.htm

By Adam Porter in Perpignan, France
Wednesday 09 March 2005, 18:23 Makka Time, 15:23 GMT

It has long been denied that the US government bases any policy around the idea that global oil production may be in terminal decline.

But a new US government-sponsored report, obtained by Aljazeera.net, does exactly that.

Authored by Robert Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling and titled The Peaking of World Oil production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management, the report is an assessment requested by the US Department of Energy (DoE), National Energy Technology Laboratory.

It was prepared by Hirsch, who is a senior energy programme adviser at the private scientific and military company, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

They work extensively on defence and geopolitical issues for clients, including many for the US government.

Advisory roles
Among current job openings at SAIC are positions at Fort Benning (formerly School of the Americas) and a private military contract to help retrain the Albanian air force in Tirana.

Hirsch has held a wide variety of positions in the US energy hierarchy including senior energy analyst at the Rand Corporation, through to a presidentially appointed assistant administrator for solar, geothermal and advanced energy systems.

He has also previously worked for the US Department of Energy on numerous advisory committees, including the DoE Energy Research Advisory Board.

This new report follows on from two presentations by Hirsch last year. One on 1 March to the same National Energy Technology Laboratory and another on 14 June last year at the Annapolis Centre for Science Based Public Policy. Here Hirsch laid down his ideas on the peak of oil production.

The Annapolis Centre for Science-based Public Policy is a group which has received $658,000 in funding from Exxon Mobil since 1998. It openly disputes the idea that global warming is the result of burning fossil fuels.

But this brand new senior-level report on "peak oil" is unprecedented in US government circles. It is not just the existence of the report itself that is such a landmark in the current oil debate. Its conclusions also pull no punches.

Uncertain timing
"World oil peaking is going to happen," the report says. Only the "timing is uncertain".

The effects of any oil peak are similarly not ignored. Specifically, the impact on the economy of the United States. "The development of the US economy and lifestyle has been fundamentally shaped by the availability of abundant, low-cost oil. Oil scarcity and several-fold oil price increases due to world oil production peaking could have dramatic impacts ... the economic loss to the United States could be measured on a trillion-dollar scale," the report says.

The authors of the report also dismiss the power of the markets to solve any oil peak. They call for the intervention of governments. But also they rather worryingly point to a need to exclude public debate and environmental concerns from the process. They say this is needed to speed up decision-making.

"Intervention by governments will be required, because the economic and social implications of oil peaking would otherwise be chaotic. But the process will not be easy. Expediency may require major changes to ... lengthy environmental reviews and lengthy public involvement."

Hirsch notes, despite arguments from the major oil companies and producer nations, that new finds of oil are not replacing oil consumed each year. Despite the advances in technology, reserves are becoming increasingly difficult to replace.

Three scenarios
The report sees "a world moving from a long period in which reserves additions were much greater than consumption, to an era in which annual additions are falling increasingly short of annual consumption. This is but one of a number of trends that suggest the world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking of conventional world oil production".

The report then takes three possible scenarios and outcomes. Firstly that energy replacement solutions, or "mitigation" as the report states, are started 20 years before any "peak". Secondly that solutions are only enacted 10 years before any peak and, thirdly, that solutions are only put into practice as the peak becomes apparent.

In what some may see as an optimistic assessment, the authors believe 20 years is enough time to limit damage from any peak. However, they point out that "if mitigation were to be too little, too late, world supply/demand balance will be achieved through massive demand destruction".

Demand destruction is a modern way of saying catastrophic recessions and shortages. But as well as these predictions, the report lays out "signals" it believes will be apparent in the run-up to any peak. This is perhaps the most worrying aspect of the report, as it seems to describe the very events that are taking place at the moment.

Supply insecurity
"As world oil peaking is approached, excess production capacity ... will disappear, so that even minor supply disruptions will cause increased price volatility as traders, speculators, and other market participants react to supply/demand events," the report says.

"Simultaneously, oil storage inventories are likely to decrease, further eroding security of supply, aggravating price volatility, and further stimulating speculation ... oil could become the price setter in the broader energy market, in which case other energy prices could well become increasingly volatile and unpredictable."

The report highlights a series of ways to minimise any impacts. From increased fuel efficiency to technological help in stopping the practice of "oil-left-behind" or non-extractable oil and various forms of new liquid fuels, liquefied coal and gas-to-liquids.

But in its conclusion the report makes troubling reading, noting that "the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions were gradual and evolutionary. Oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary."

This report is the clearest signal yet that the U.S government is taking the subject of "peak oil" seriously. Yet it remains to be seen what actions can be taken to stop this potentially "revolutionary" change.

Hmmm... I'm beginning to think that we're fucked.

Here's a movie made about Peak Oil:
http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5815