Peak Oil, Part 1: Alternative Energy and Government

This popular perception says, “Sure, we might be running out of the stuff, but there will always be another energy to replace it.”

We live in what many call the Age of Oil. Characterized by the discovery and exploitation of petroleum some 150 years back, the Age of Oil represents the ‘big bang’ in history that precipitated contemporary civilization – industrialization, transportation, technology, and 6.8 billion people. The Age of Oil unequivocally relies on cheap and easy to find oil (the technical term being “conventional oil” reserves) to literally fuel virtually all aspects of life, from eating to drinking, electricity to manufacturing. We collectively assume that oil will always flow out of Earth in great abundance. And indeed, every human alive today was born into the Age of Oil and doesn’t know otherwise. But what if this oil, a finite resource, begins to run dry? What would happen to the edifice of global industrialized civilization that is constructed from and for petroleum? If we today live in the Age of Oil, and we are soon to run out of oil, what age will we transition into?

Alternative Energy

Well, this is exactly what experts are saying: we are running out of cheap oil, and fast.

If the many graphs out there depicting the ominous end of cheap oil are correct (as we’ll address in Part 2), we are standing, at this very historic moment, on the edge of a dangerous precipice. And there isn’t so much as a mention in the mainstream media or the like.

I’ve decided to write the two parts of this article backwards – instead of addressing the technicalities of Peak Oil production first, which is usually done to establish that oil is, in fact, in decline, I address the usual fundamental mindset people have when confronted with the issue. Most reactions, if you are not familiar with the analysis of peak oil, tend to automatically dismiss the problem based on their faith in government intervention or some alternative energy that will, over night, replace all fossil fuels. This popular perception says, “Sure, we might be running out of the stuff, but there will always be another energy to replace it.” It is a disposition that works for many people … “Let the government take care of it, I’m sure they have something worked out.”

Unfortunately, we can only wish reality was so simple. Governments are entrenched in all sorts of multinational business, and have a vested interest in maintaining the oil status quo (uninterrupted profits for the corporations). If you don’t believe me, watch the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?

The problem with placing blind faith in a non-existent or highly futuristic alternative energy source is simple: our infrastructure, the cornerstone of society, is constructed for the sole purpose of fossil fuels. Even if we, say, converted the some 800 million internal-combustion-powered vehicles on this planet to electric power, how would we manufacture those vehicles? Or build the roads for them to drive on? How would we extract those metals from the earth without oil? According to National Geographic, there are seven gallons of oil in every tire.

Governments are entrenched in all sorts of multinational business, and have a vested interest in maintaining the oil status quo.

This is the fundamental infrastructure problem with alternative energy sources, and the scientists largely agree. Even if we discovered a 99 percent efficient, zero emission, and highly abundant renewable energy source, which has yet to be found, we would still have to build the new infrastructure from oil – and some scientists speculate that there isn’t even enough left to do that. If government really cared, it might be too late to fix the problem… they couldn’t do a damn thing about it anyway.

So, you might be thinking, “Well there has to be more oil out there somewhere.” And this is a half-right statement. I will address Peak Oil in part 2, and pose the question: is Peak Oil really happening, and how can we know for sure?

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3 Comments on "Peak Oil, Part 1: Alternative Energy and Government"

DC on Thu, 14th Apr 2011 11:00 am 



This is the essential core problem isnt it. The auto and oil companies understood full well how to game the system. The system in this case, is, well..everything. They rigged the system in such a way over the course of a century, that any attempt to back away from the oil-based world they helped mold would be (nearly)physically impossible or so costly governments would have no choice but to not seriously consider them.

Consider cites that want to build mass transit systems again, systems that oil companies and General motors deliberatly set to destroy in most all north amercan cities in the 1930s through to 1950. Cities designed soley for cars. While it is not impossible, it is proveing very difficult and extremely expensive. This is central dilemma oil and auto companies have backed us into. Some of us may want to move beyond cars, but we look at the mess weve made of all our towns and cities and are not sure how to best go about it, or if we can event truely afford it any longer. Similar problems exists for agricultral, the inter-city train system(also virtually non-existant. It is for this reason I am not hopeful we can really fix the problems cars create for us in any meaningful way. We may well have to suffer the full-blown fallout of the end of car-dependancey with scarecly any alternatives in place.

John Weber on Thu, 14th Apr 2011 6:15 pm 



Peak oil ultimate depletion within decades and absolutely no replacement at present per capita level in “developed” world.
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/01/energy-in-real-world.html

Energy in the Real World
Solar and Wind are not renewable. The energy from solar and from wind is of course renewable but the devices used to capture the energy of the sun and wind is not renewable. Nor are they green or sustainable.

An oak tree is renewable. A horse is renewable. They reproduce themselves. The human-made equipment used to capture solar energy or wind energy is not renewable. There is considerable fossil fuel energy embedded in this equipment. The many components used in devices to capture solar energy, wind energy, tidal energy and biomass energy – aluminum, glass, copper, rare metals, petroleum in many forms to name a few – are fossil fuel dependent.

and
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2011/02/curmudgeon-report.html
The Curmudgeon Report

We will do anything and everything to maintain our present personal level of energy use and the comfort it affords us. We will do anything and everything to the earth, to other people and even to ourselves to continue on this path. And if we don’t have the energy level we see others have, we will do anything and everything to the earth, to other people and even to ourselves to attain that level. The proof of this assertion is simple; we are doing it.

EDpeak on Fri, 15th Apr 2011 1:29 am 



” The proof of this assertion is simple; we are doing it.”

This proves nothing about what people inherently always do or will do. This merely proves what people have been doing under the present sitatution in which they are, one, bombarded with lies by fossil industry, two, are given far fewer options than they would like to have (we are NOT given the option of going to work tomorrow in fast, efficient, attractive, convenient public transit) we are not given lots of other options in ‘the market’, and companies and people play within a ‘game’ in which fossil fuels are subsidied, and on, and on, and on, and after all these interventions and ways the system is rigged, you step back and say, “aha! it’s just the way people are! the proof it that this is what they are doing right now!” come on..it is no proof at all that different behavior might not be possible under a less corrupt set of conditions, if and when we arrive at such