The ‘Energy Fiesta’ is nearing its end

Welcome to America: a country where energy waste remains our most important and prolific product, even though the long emergency ending the“Energy Fiesta” of cheap oil has begun.

The only realistic solution to the dilemma this country, and the world faces, is reducing per capita consumption and achieving negative population growth. No society will voluntarily entertain such drastic conservation measures, and no government has shown any inclination to reduce both simultaneously for sustainability. The solutions fall into two basic categories: technological and organizational structure, and neither one provides a viable remedy.
Technologically, it takes energy to get energy. Governments can always print more money, but they can never create fossil fuels without expending energy. Only the sun has created free fuels – oil, natural gas, and coal. Organizationally, governments and their utility pediculae promote supply side growth.

Oil and natural gas have fueled much of the massive population growth and the extraordinary achievements of the last 150 years. They constitute the largest stored energy sources of the world economy, the lifeblood of industrial society. Today, these fossil fuels supply 93 percent of the world’s energy while waterpower accounts for only 1 percent and the labor of men and domestic animals the remaining 6 percent. This is a startling reversal of corresponding figures for the Fiesta’s beginning in 1850. Then fossil fuels supplied 5 percent of the world’s energy, and men and animals 94 percent.

Within the next handful of years the world will reach the ultimate peak in global oil production. Domestic production remains in slow, but terminal descent since production peaked in the 1970s.“Peak oil” represents a historical turning point from an era of growth to an era of contraction. Peak gas won’t be far behind. In the 1850s, geologists estimated petroleum reserves of about 2-3 trillion barrels with a world population of 1 billion. Today, there remains 1-2 trillion barrels with a population of 6.5 billion.

The Day