Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on March 12, 2013
Necessary Extinction
When the environment changes, smart creatures adapt. And, in the face of a changing climate and changing economics, smart people are backing green energy. In 2011 almost a third of new electricity came from renewable sources. But, just as the first mammals had to contend with a world of dinosaurs, the pioneers of green energy have to contend with a world based on an obsolete carbon-based energy system that refuses to upgrade.
Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International.Credit: Courtesy Greenpeace.
Although burning the world’s proven fossil fuel reserves will damage our climate beyond repair the dinosaur corporations who profit from carbon pollution are determined to find more. Shell’s 2012 annual report claims the company is doing its part in “building a better energy future”, but highlights developing oil fields, exploring for oil and gas, and mining oil sands as key activities. That means finding more fossil fuels that we can’t afford to burn, and trying to sell them to customers who, in reality, have or should have better options.
As easily extracted fossil fuels become scarce and global consumption of fossil fuels grows, the dirty energy industry is turning to more and more extreme methods of extraction.
The latest madness is “fracking”: a technique of drilling for gas in which a high pressure cocktail of water and toxic chemicals is used to split open rock formations far below the ground. The unconventional fuel expansion is, in fact, a delaying tactic. Fracking, deepwater drilling and tar sands extraction are dangerous fossil fuel fantasies in which we are supposed to think we can postpone the energy revolution and not move firmly in the direction of renewable energy. This delaying tactic has a massive price associated with it.
Fracking requires huge quantities of water. It also threatens to poison nearby water reserves and cause small earthquakes. It also releases unknown quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
In my own country, South Africa, Shell has been given a licence to explore the possibility of fracking in Karoo, threatening to turn a semi-desert into a total desert. Shell promises jobs and enough energy to power South Africa for years. These are the same promises extractive industries make everywhere they go.
Everywhere they go they do more than extract raw materials. They extract wealth and hope. Just ask the people of Nigeria. Or Venezuela. Or even Canada, where indigenous peoples have seen their rivers poisoned and traditional ways of life destroyed.
If South Africa wants jobs and energy it should withdraw the licence today, and remove all grey area around grid tie-in legislation, beginning with a clear net metering programme that allows for the inclusion of the small to medium renewable energy power producers. A nation blessed with enough sun, wind and waves to power itself has no need to sell its future. Nor to rupture its land for gas!
Fossil fuel companies claim fracking is clean, because burning gas emits less carbon than burning coal. Well, assault isn’t murder, but it’s still a crime. The world doesn’t need more gas to burn. There’s no need to lock emerging economies into nineteenth century technologies. Modern energy supplies are cleaner, cheaper and lack the destructive side effects of ripping up the ground in order to set it on fire.
The push for new extreme dirty energy forms is happening at a time when global carbon dioxide emission growth has been exceeding even the most pessimistic forecasts, and the impacts of climate change are already being felt. Pouring money into new fossil fuel production seems absurd in these conditions. At the same time, the amazing progress in renewable energy that has been achieved in recent years makes it abundantly clear that these destructive projects can be made redundant. We just don’t need dirty energy expansion.
Just as fixed line telephony has been passed over in favour of mobile phones, fossil fueled energy needs to be passed over in favour of modern renewable energy. The kind of domestic electrification needed to end fuel poverty can be delivered to a home by a few solar panels in hours, compared with the wait for a reliable national grid that in many countries has already been going on for decades.
In the absence of a global agreement on greenhouse gas emission reductions, it falls on every government – national and local — and business to implement clean and safe energy solutions, instead of scouring the ends of the earth for more dirty fuel.
And, it falls on every citizen to demand the extinction of the carbon dinosaurs.
4 Comments on "Necessary Extinction"
J-Gav on Tue, 12th Mar 2013 12:35 am
We’re not smart creatures, we’re fat-assed dumb-bells and so the quest for ever more emission-enhancing substances to spew into our biosphere will go on until criticality is reached. Then people will scratch their lumpy heads and fat asses and say: “Damn, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”
GregT on Tue, 12th Mar 2013 1:44 am
Collectively, we are the carbon dinosaurs, and no one needs to demand our extinction, we are doing it to ourselves.
BillT on Tue, 12th Mar 2013 3:15 am
J-Gav and GregT, well said!
There are no ‘renewable energy sources besides food and muscle power. What can be grown in the climate we will have is the limits of energy. All other dreams will be gone long before 2100.
Mother nature gave us the means to go to the stars and we wasted it going to Walmart.
Jonathan Deal on Wed, 13th Mar 2013 6:40 pm
About all that promised prosperity.
It is a fact that there is at least 5 times the amount of proven oil and gas reserves already owned by global corporations and government, than the amount that the planet can burn before 2050. The combined emissions value (measured in millions of tons of Co2 – Gigatons) is 2795. If more than 20% of this volume (560 gigatons) is burned and released into the air before 2050, it is a scientific certainty that the temperature on earth will increase past the two degree limit.
Disturbingly, this is a fact that international oil and gas companies (O&G) appear to ignore. Instead, it would seem that those same companies are very determined to push the frontiers of exploration for more fossil fuels. This is manifesting in more difficult, dangerous, and extreme exploration and production. The examples of the BP blowout off the US Gulf coast and Shell’s exploration problems in the extreme Arctic environment are examples of this.
Shale gas mining, more commonly known by its colloquial label of fracking, slots into this category.
The depths and pressures at which fracking take place, the large volume of water and toxic chemicals, the risk of pollution of water sources and the reality of above-ground damage are some of the risks that O&G appears to be prepared to take. Perhaps the reason that they are prepared to take these risks is that although they may have to pay a fine, they do not have to live in the destroyed environment. Their shareholders and employees will escape the devastating effects of pollution and other environmental damage, for the time being at least.
Economics
O&G shrewdly market their plans to desperate governments under the banner of energy, revenue, job-creation, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. The reality of the situation may however, be different.
At Treasure Karoo Action Group we are reliably informed by scientists and economists that there are problematic issues with these claims:
Energy: The Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of shale gas is not as lucrative as made out by O&G. Essentially this means that the energy expended in fracking exploration and production doesn’t provide a satisfactory return when compared to some alternatives. Empirical data studies in the US are showing that an averaging of all the major shale gas areas confirms a 69% drop in yield from a gas well in the first year. Thereafter the curve flattens out, until it reaches sub-economic and almost zero levels within 5 years. This is in contrast to the 10-15 figures used by O&G, and as such, it goes to the heart of sustainability, which will affect jobs, revenue and energy capacity.
State revenue may be boosted by production activity – if and when production happens, but there is no budget for the costs of pipeline infrastructure, road development and repair, community health costs, pollution remediation, additional law enforcement, environmental monitoring, prosecutors, scientists and many other costs to be borne by the state. There has also, in South Africa, been no attempt to quantify the costs of loss of income from sustainable activities that do produce food, revenue, products and tourism – which activities would be interrupted, damaged or displaced by shale gas mining.
Jobs during the 8-10 year exploration phase would be reserved for technical staff from abroad. Thereafter, local workers may benefit from knock-on jobs in satellite industries, but possibly no more than the jobs developed by a renewable industry venture, and most certainly not as sustainably.
Emissions associated with shale gas mining must be measured over the entire process of exploration, preparation, drilling, fracking, extracting, flaring, separating, condensing, transporting, and containing the final product. There is simply too much dissention amongst the world’s top scientists as to the volume of fugitive and uncounted emissions for shale gas to be scientifically classified as between 50% and 70% lower in emissions than other fossil fuels.
Until O&G can conclusively prove their claims here, the onus remains on them, and the status quo should remain. In our experience, O&G deliberately make their marketing overly technical or simply downplay the risks with general benefit statements such as ‘We care for the community’. A review of O&G reputation around the globe reveals that this is not so. In Africa, we have the very current example and history of Nigeria.
We believe that there are viable and sustainable alternatives to fracking, and that fracking should be banned in Africa.