Peak Oil is You
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Page added on December 3, 2013
Let’s Give This Era a Name: The Age of Denial
It’s traditional at this time of year to look back at what we have accomplished or how we have blundered, and to look forward at how we might fix things. So far, we should classify this decade of the 2010s as the Age of Denial. People, and Americans in particular, continue to avoid serious thought about human population growth, the predictable effects of global warming, the degradation of the oceans, and even the depletion of top soil in the Midwest. At this moment, our most critical economic and social problem is something called Peak Oil, and it’s not even getting play in the alternative media, much less on the network news.
About a decade ago, I wrote a series of columns on another internet site about the issue of Peak Oil. Basically, it is the observation that there is only so much easily obtainable oil, and the timeline for human use will look like a bell curve. Oil usage increases until the world’s reserves can no longer sustain increased production. For technical reasons, this is around the point in time when we have used half of what was originally there. Then production declines because old fields become depleted and new fields are smaller and harder to find. The drop in production is actually one of the few cases where we can use the term “exponentially” in the correct sense.
The United States hit its peak oil production around 1970, and it has been in decline ever since. It’s true that with improved technology, we can squeeze a few more drops out by drilling deep offshore, slant drilling, and steam cleaning the tar sands, but these are expensive methods. This whole scenario was explained by geologist M. King Hubbert back in 1956, when he introduced the idea of peak oil to the world.
A few years later, Hubbert predicted that worldwide, the oil supplies would follow a similar pathway, but would take until 1995 or so to hit the peak. We have probably been at or around the point of peak oil for most of this decade.
The economic effects of peak oil are as obvious as they are frightening. The most immediate effect is to increase oil prices, and this has its own effect of slowing the economy down. There was a period in which Saudi Arabia could modulate the world’s rate of oil production by turning up the flow, but even that is a thing of the past. Oil prices jump up and down in response to rumors and temporary conditions — the worldwide economic slowdown has tamped them down a bit over the past few years — but the overall pattern is a steady price increase, all other things being equal.
When I wrote my first column about the depletion of oil reserves, it was the year 2005. Since that time, the price of a barrel of oil has approximately doubled. We should understand that peak oil has probably already occurred, and we will be spending the rest of our lives, and our children their own lives, dealing with the consequences.
But we avoid the long term relevancies. There was plenty of oil yesterday and there will be enough today to maintain a modest lifestyle, and we all hope that there won’t be another big oil shock very soon. How Los Angeles would deal with ten dollar a gallon gasoline and rising electric rates is anybody’s guess. It would make for some interesting municipal elections. How about twenty dollars per gallon? How do we prepare?
Peak oil is just one of the big denials we persist in holding onto. Global warming is obviously the other, as our political discourse shows only too well. The magazine Popular Science recently decided to stop allowing comments on its website because they were uncontrollable. A popular PBS radio program had its staff members read off some of the comments in response to one Popular Science article on global warming, and denial is the perfect term to describe them. Nastiness is another, but this discussion is about cognition rather than the authoritarian personality. Those commenters were themselves just responding to a well funded propaganda campaign that does its best to undermine the communication of scientific reality. When you hear a United States Senator call global warming a hoax, you know we have a big problem. When it’s the party policy, it’s an even bigger problem.
When Paul and Anne Ehrlich published their book The Population Bomb back in 1968, Americans took note. Probably the main reason was that Paul Ehrlich went on the Tonight Show and explained the issues in detail. The population of the USA has grown substantially since Paul Ehrlich sat on Johnny Carson’s couch, and nobody even seems to be noticing nowadays. The world has added the equivalent of about two USAs and two Europes in population over these years, and it’s become a non-story.
To put it more bluntly, let’s divide human history into the era before Ehrlich sat on Johnny’s couch, and the era after. Between 1900 and that 1968 date, the world’s population approximately doubled, growing by about one and a half billion people. That’s a huge amount of growth in a short amount of time, compared to any other previous era of which we have knowledge. Since Ehrlich sat on Johnny’s couch, the world population has doubled again, to approximately 7 billion.
If this kind of increase were sustainable, we could expect that the human population of the world would be in excess of 10 or 12 billion people by the end of this century. It’s obvious that current technologies and land use cannot sustain this level of growth. The alternatives are family planning on the one hand, or famine and widespread death on the other.
Avoiding this problem is denial, and it’s a worldwide problem.
It’s also a case of huge denial at the political level. The anti-abortion wing in this country fights against foreign aid that includes family planning, because of the fear that some of this aid supports abortion. This ought to be an issue that can be finessed or even subordinated to the wider problem, but apparently this is not the case. The worldwide population explosion has gotten us to a number in excess of seven billion, and it is still growing. This affects all other problems including peak oil and global warming, because every added person requires a certain amount of fossil fuel during a lifetime.
When you consider global warming, declining supplies of petroleum, the expanding population, and depletion of soil quality, you might say we are looking at the perfect storm for humanity. There are various approaches that we might pursue, ranging from the social and religious (make family planning an essential element of family life) to the technical. The techno-fixes include biodiesel, which is a fancy word for plant oils, solar electric production, and every other element of energy production that we can get our hands on. And still, we have to figure out how to do this without adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
These issues seem terribly obvious to me. Global warming is becoming pretty well established, and even if we don’t have 100 percent confidence in the conclusion, we have a growing level of evidence. Peak oil is not only clear and apparent, it is obviously the central element of American policy, foreign and military, for the past several decades. (That’s for another column, but it is both a brutal and rational approach when you think about it.) The population explosion is as simple as a curve on a graph, available on Wikipedia or lots of other sources.
And yet political movements and whole religions deny or ignore these problems, as if they didn’t exist. That’s why I think it’s fair to call this decade the Age of Denial.
14 Comments on "Let’s Give This Era a Name: The Age of Denial"
eugene on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 2:31 pm
Agree!!
Northwest Resident on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 3:56 pm
So true. In fact, we can elaborate. Not only is it “The Age of Denial”, it is the “Corporate-driven Age of Denial”, where vested financial interests pump out the false propaganda and lies 24/7/365 with the goal of keeping “the masses calm”, and the current system afloat at the expense of the environment and the well-being of all humanity. Why do they do it? Because they are addicted to $$$, no other reason. The Powers That Be will burn this world to the ground and destroy every green thing that grows to make another BUCK, because that’s who their one and only true GOD is.
Dave Thompson on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 4:00 pm
We as in “humanity” have a chance to get this right. I am surprised the powers of our overlords have not figured this out yet. However,I think the multinational corporations know they have painted themselves into a corner. They would have to admit that unbridled capitalism has put us in this destructive position. The people would not be pleased. The people will act accordingly.
GregT on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 4:39 pm
We as in ‘humanity’ HAD a chance to get this right. We didn’t, and we won’t.
Multinational corporations are faceless, irresponsible entities. Their only concern is for the ‘bottom line’. They have no souls, and they have no concern for the well being of the people, or the natural environment that supports life itself.
It is the people themselves that are pleased by their overabundant consumerism. It is the people that demand more, not less. If the people truly were capable of acting in their own best interest, they would quit their jobs, stop demanding more consumer goods, and collapse the greed driven system from within. It is the people, that would elect representatives that would facilitate the demise of industrial capitalism, not the representatives that continue to promote it.
No, we will not get this right. It is not in our nature to do so. Greed is too powerful for us to overcome.
jedrider on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 5:53 pm
Apollo 13
“Houston, we have a problem.”
It’s a misquote, and we are talking to ourselves now!
Stilgar on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 6:57 pm
“So far, we should classify this decade of the 2010s as the Age of Denial.”
Agree, absolutely. It’s palpable. I read an article the other day (wish I’d kept the link now) about the native population’s in Barrow, Alaska experiences with the warming Arctic. Following that was a thread of messages, most of which were denying GW. How can something native people (that have numerous generations of experience with) continue to deny its existence?
Denial, may be the only thing left to hold onto for continuing this untenable progression.
If population concerns are squelched as they were after 1968, and nothing is learned from Hubbert in spite of US oil peaking in 1970, and no lessons are learned from what led to the great depression with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and world peak oil is still denied in spite of sharply rising costs of new extraction, and GW can be denied in spite of 80% Arctic ice volume loss, then we are destined to suffer some very harsh consequences.
I would say this to humankind:
Deny at your own risk.
Jerry McManus on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 7:20 pm
“The techno-fixes include biodiesel, which is a fancy word for plant oils, solar electric production, and every other element of energy production that we can get our hands on. And still, we have to figure out how to do this without adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.”
Now THAT is some serious denial!
Just goes to show how disconnected from reality most people really are, even the ones who seem to understand the problem can’t get their heads around the fallacy and sheer stupidity of so called “techno fixes”.
Not to worry, the usual and entirely predictable response to overshoot is collapse. Just as surely as night follows day, so too will war, famine, pestilence and death follow us into the twilight of industrial fossil fueled civilization.
J-Gav on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 8:14 pm
Thanks to you all for the interesting posts above.
Wasn’t familiar with Bob Gelfand before reading the article. Denial of this or that unpleasant aspect of reality has been around for a long time, but today one does get the impression it’s coming to a head.
However, the ‘tip-over’ into reality-based thinking has not yet arrived and I see little evidence suggesting it will before the calamitous consequences of our hubris manifest in still more stark and dark ways.
Manuel Lopez on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 9:03 pm
“…the predictable effects of global warming…”
Please read the book “The neglected SUN”
The odds are on the cooling side.
Bob Inget on Tue, 3rd Dec 2013 9:43 pm
Lopez, in one incomplete sentence nails
the entire denial movement. Bravo!
It’s always easier to sow seeds of doubt then to make a cogent argument.
If you feel a lump and consult two doctors. Both tell you bad news.
will you seek a third opinion hoping for a different diagnosis? To help your situation should you consult a Naturopath on another oncologist?
Hint: you will get a more favorably answer from a Chiropractor. This, for a time will calm your fears.
DMyers on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 2:17 am
The word, “denial”, should be shunned except where used in its true sense, e.g., “he denies the allegations.” [note the usage here does not encompass “he is ‘in denial’ with respect to the allegations”] The word, as used in the article, and as used in general these days, is packed with subtle meaning, derived from the language of counseling and drug treatment. Denial is what one on the higher side sees in the one on the lower side.
Denial is seen in others but not in oneself. Denial, as seen in others is always a psychologically dishonest condition. The denier knows what is real but refuses to acknowledge it. This requires an inference, but the fact of it cannot be proven.
With respect to the thing being denied, the observer of denial may himself be using the condemnation of another’s denial to deny his own denial. In short, it is a complicated, imprecise, even eclectic, word to be flinging around as a pejorative with unquestionable validity. It is loaded with twelve-step oriented meanings that have stuck to it and given it an unwarranted legitimacy-by-implication, i.e., it implies to a much greater extent than it defines.
With respect to Lopez’ comment, I understand that he is incorporating the arguments from the book, “The Neglected Sun”, by reference. I’ve never read the book, but it must predict global cooling, judging from the comment.
The possibility of cooling should remain before us as something very real. Articles this past week were describing a current shutdown in sun spots that could replicate the conditions of the Little Ice Age, a cooling period (related to sun spot inactivity) that we know really happened.
This is not to say that global cooling would be to our benefit. Cooling would be just as detrimental to our welfare as warming, as anyone would realize who has noticed crops don’t grow in frozen soil.
I’m not advocating on either side of the subject, and I’m not “in denial.” My mind is open to all possibilities, and I intend to keep it that way.
GregT on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 3:52 am
DMyers,
When you make a visit to your doctor, and he/she tells you that you have a terminal, but possibly treatable disease, and you seek the advice of hundreds of the world’s leading doctors in the field of that same said disease, and 99% of them tell you that it is a 97% probability that this is true. What do you do?
Do you;
A: Keep your mind open to the possibility that they may be wrong.
or;
B: Act as quickly as possible to find a cure to end your untimely death.
Keeping your mind open is all great and wonderful, but ignoring the warnings of those that know better than yourself, because you find them to be inconvenient, is DENIAL.
BillT on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 4:58 am
All addicts deny that they are an addict. It usually takes a life threatening reaction to get them think and accept that it is killing them.
The Western world is addicted to their high energy lifestyle. Whereas, most in the 3rd world are only concerned with making a living and, maybe, having a few luxuries such as an electric light or maybe a small refrigerator. Cars/ TVs, PCs, etc., are only in their dreams, if they think about them at all.
As for the debate cooling vs heating of the world, there are still a few tipping points that could trigger massive cooling, whereas, heating is definite, either way. Can you imagine today’s world if we experienced a year or two without summer? crops would fail all over the world. Demand for heating would skyrocket. Death would be at everyone’s door. And that is not another ice age, just an abnormally cold summer.
I would say that 95+% of the Western world is in denial. Some because they don’t want to believe and understand that humanity is on it’s last century, and the rest because they really don’t know that the problem even exists.
Manuel Lopez on Wed, 4th Dec 2013 11:34 pm
GregT,
The argument that something is valid because most people think it so is not correct. For example, it’s well known the problem that Galileo had with the church.
He sustained that the Earth rotates around the Sun (a heliocentric model). The Church, following Aristotle, and MOST PEOPLE, those years, believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth (geocentric model).
Who was right?
Another one: Since Newton everybody believed his equations correctly explained the movement of a planet around its star. Einstein didn’t. One against the world. And EINSTEIN (the one) was RIGHT.
DMyers attitude is the appropriate one in scientific discussions.