by The_Toecutter » Fri 02 Dec 2005, 01:13:28
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')oo much consumption? Like if we didn't consume so much we would never reach the peak?
More like if we cut oil consumption by over 80% and reduced it even more in the future as substitutes are found, it may not even be a worry within the timeframe of our current civilization.
Say oil were in reality infinite and climate change didn't exist. How long would this civilization last? Of course, oil is finite and climate change is likely real, but even in a world of unlimited resources, this civilization is likely to either die off or evolve into something more advanced as has happened throught history. Those in the early industrial era were able to live without any significant amount of oil, so could we too in the future. In the meantime, drastically reducing consumption of oil immediately could buy us time for a slow and gradual transition away from the finite resource altogether, and if not that, have a good chance of lasting as long as our civilization would have in a hypothetical world without restraints.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')o, the problem is expectations of infinite growth in a finite world coupled with a money system that supports this unsustainable system. The support system exacerbates the problem because it requires continued growth to function. Designing your entire civilization around one cheap finite energy source is the root of the problem.
What I said goes right back to this...
If there is less growth or even negative growth, revenues and thus profits go down. The reason we are having unrestrained growth in the first place is precisely because industry is seeking to maximize profits, and to do that, consumption of resources must be maximized. Only oil can provide for the current demand of resource consumption as of today, especially fuel. We could have the same living standard by increasing efficiency and reducing consumption per unit output, but this shrinks the economy in the process. This also means that switching to alternatives wherever feasable usually hurts the bottom line. Too bad the resources are finite.
The sustainable world would work within the limits of a virtually closed system(aside from the occassional space debris and the ever present sunlight).
Oil won't last forever, but there are many less versatile substitutes for oil for many of the things oil is used to make. Lubricants, plastics, diesels, kerosene-substitutes, methanol, gasoline-substitutes, synthetic fabrics, petrochemical-substitutes can all be made from plant derived sources even today, especially hemp.
But:
a) given the limitations of our planet, there is no way we can consume anywhere near the amount of petroleum-substitutes as we do petroleum today
b) we'd need to drastically cut consumption of livestock and end wasteful factory farms to be able to feed our population WITHOUT fossil fuel inputs or alternatively see a population dieoff
c) we'd need to leave a good percentage of the biosphere left untouched so that we do not render our planet uninhabitable
We would have to drastically curtail use of the things that petroleum and petroleum substitutes can make in order to keep from turning the entirity of the Earth into one gigantic farm(which would inevitably die out in the future due to ecosystem limitations).
I don't know what a sustainable amount of consumption would be over the long term, except that it would entale reliance upon renewable resources that can be sustained indefinately. Basically items nature renews on a frequent basis(plants, animals, ect.) and items derived from these things for other purposes(wind turbines built from plant-based polymers and plastics, ect.). Resources that are finite that don't become irreversably consumed like iron, copper, aluminum, ect. will need to be recycled and reused as much as possible.
In the present, we probably do not have the technological development to immediately transition to a sustainable lifestyle without either a huge dieoff or a drastic reduction in living standard(or both), but we COULD reduce our consumption and keep our same living standard for a small period and as technology progresses and allows, KEEP REDUCING consumption and population until sustainability is reached.
If we were to somehow magically cut our oil consumption worldwide by 70-80% in 10 years by implementing the alternatives that are now viable(but tailored to a closed system and inherently less profitable), end globalization, and for each year on after that keep reducing consumption by 1-2% from the amount of consumption still occuring at the start of each new year, we've perhaps bought us another century(or longer) to work even more solutions to our consumption, provided population stabilizes.
Just adressing the fuel cars use(through massive public transit, reduction in car use, and cars that don't need gas) cuts 40% of America's oil consumption. You haven't touched jet fuel, lubricants, asphalt, propane, petroleum distillates, plastics, and many of the other key items oil is used to produce. Other cuts can certainly be made and today many things can be substituted. Even still, we'll still need oil for some purposes until further notice.
However, we're heading in the opposite direction of what we should be heading. I don't think the above future, with a drastic immediate consumption cut, population stabilisation and subsequent population decline to 3 or 4 billion or less over a century, slow substitution for the remaining things oil cannot make as technology progresses, and an end to globalization will happen.
There is reason I'm a doomer, even though better a world is possible in theory.
To address the root of the problem is precisely to reduce oil reliance as much as possible, as fast as possible, growth be damned. How many corporations could make money off of that strategy? The concentration of wealth and power and massive militaries we see today certainly could not exist in any real solution to this problem, if even such a solution would actually work in practice instead of theory.
The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson