Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on September 23, 2012
Ugo Bardi: Degrowth and peak oil
Hello, everybody; I think you came to listen to me today because you want to know something about the situation with crude oil, that is of “peak oil”. So. what I can tell you is that the peak has arrived and we are now in the post peak world. It is an event that is taking place slowly, over several years, but I think we can say with reasonable certainty that the petroleum production peak was in 2008.
To prove what I am telling you I could show you data and graphs, but I think that the best way for you to realize that the peak is past us is to think about how much people are discussing about oil substitutes, that is all those resources which can produce flammable liquids that we can use to fuel our cars. Biofuels, tar sands, shale oil, you surely heard about all that. And you surely heard about the idea of a “new age of oil” that some say it is coming and that is supposed to be a good thing. But this “new age” is based on dirty resources which have been known for decades (at least) and I am sure you understand that they are expensive, if nothing else by looking at gas prices. Today, we are forced to use these resources exactly because we passed the peak of conventional crude oil. In this way, we have been able to mask the peak, for the time being, avoiding an obvious decline of production of liquid fuels. In a sense, we acted as those people who try to mask their age by dying their hair. They may succeed in looking younger, but only for a while.
The problem, however, is not so much for how long we’ll be able to keep the production of liquids stable; it is that the resources we are using for this purpose have a low energy yield and do tremendous damage to a lot of things. We are destroying enormous areas, poisoning the water aquifers, and forcing agriculture away from food production. More than that, we are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases generated the same amount of energy produced. Emissions keep increasing and climate change seems to be accelerating, as we could see from what happened to the North Pole this year.
So, in a sense, peak oil has been a big disappointment. It was perhaps the first modern appearance of the concept of “degrowth”, when it started being discussed some 10 years ago. We expected that the post peak age would have stimulated the development of clean resources and some of us (myself included) thought that it would have saved us from global warming, or at least greatly reduced its importance. But, that has not been the case, unfortunately.
Today, we are discussing another kind of degrowth, intended mostly as a personal choice and most of us seem to believe that it is a good thing. It is an attitude that looks similar to the one we had about peak oil 10 years ago. But is it possible that we are making the same mistake? That is, could we be too optimistic about what degrowth can bring to us?
Let me ask you a question: what problems exactly do you think that degrowth can solve? Maybe you think that degrowing you’ll be happier and this may well be. But can degrowth solve the climate problem? Can it reduce pollution and the stress on the ecosystem? Surely, if everyone decided to reduce their consumption, the impact of human beings on the planet would be reduced. But if just some of us decide for degrowth, wouldn’t the resources that we don’t consume be consumed by someone else? Then, the human impact wouldn’t change
Besides, even if voluntary degrowth were to have a significant effect, would that be enough? Climate change could be irreversible by now, in the sense that we may have unleashed mechanisms that will cause the Earth to keep heating up, even if we were to reduce emissions. If this is the case, degrowth alone would not be a solution, just as peak oil wasn’t one. Will we need geoengineering to save ourselves? Perhaps, but is geoengineering compatible with degrowth?
I am not asking you rhetorical questions: I don’t know the answers myself. What I know is that we are facing incredibly complex problems. We don’t know what kind of solutions might exist and not even if solutions exist at all. The only sure thing is that it has been growth at all cost that has led us to the quandary in which we are now. Stopping growth can’t harm us as much!
14 Comments on "Ugo Bardi: Degrowth and peak oil"
BillT on Sun, 23rd Sep 2012 11:03 pm
“Degrowth” or contraction is not optional. There is no choice. The only choice is how we go about adjusting to it. Yes, if the West doesn’t use the resources, Asia, Africa, South America, etc. will, at least for a while. But eventually, everyone will have to slow down, reverse gears and contract. For the West, it will be much more painful than for the rest. More to ‘lose’.
The real question is: “Do we have time to do that, or is it already too late? Will we hit a tipping point where the Four Horsemen ride out again to wipe out maybe all life on this orbiting rock? Yes, we are taking the whole ecosystem down with us. Only the roaches are laughing.
Arthur on Sun, 23rd Sep 2012 11:16 pm
Not sure if the West is going to suffer more. Yes they are going to lose more in absolute terms, because they have more to lose. But The West is high on the ladder and it takes a longer descent before they are on the bottom of things where it really hurts. Food is essential, not the car. Yet in the West all the non-essential things cost the most. I spent maybe 5% of my income on food and I still would love to lose a few kilos. Most people on this planet spend most of their income on food and thus are going to be hurt most if rising energy prices will have effect on food prices.
Plantagenet on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 12:11 am
Obama says we now have a century of natural gas supply, thanks to frakking. Peak Oil is real and is causing global economic problems, but rather than leading back to the stone age, it may instead usher in the Natural Gas age.
JoeSeph on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 1:04 am
Natural gas is not a substitute for gasoline. You need a completely different car for that. However there are two companies, that I know of, making a petroleum substitute using algae to create oil somehow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
DMyers on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 1:18 am
Bardi glosses over the real issue here, with his final sentence. We need to look at “stopping growth” with a very realistic eye. How much harm will it bring? Only then can we compare the harms in question. What he is saying is that it can’t get any worse. I can imagine de-growth making it a whole lot worse.
BillT on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 2:00 am
Still seeing the deniers claiming that other energy sources will replace oil…lol. Dream on…for many reasons I’ve mentioned many times before. EROEI.
Newfie on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 2:23 am
I think natural gas can be used in a conventional car engine with some modifications. I spend time in Thailand and most taxis there run on natural gas. The taxi are stock cars with a gasoline engine modified to run on natural gas. The storage tank for the natural gas is installed in the trunk. Also… if automobile use were to be gradually reduced, either by high fuel prices or by some kind of rationing, the age of oil could be extended. Of course, the fossil fuel fiesta will end eventually, later in this century. In the long run, looking centuries ahead, the Olduvai Gorge looks like the most likely outcome (total resource depletion and a permanent Neo Stone Age).
DMyers on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 3:28 am
The Olduvai gorge does appear to be our destiny. What a triumph and tragedy, the oil age to end history.
DC on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 7:43 am
The question is not, nor has it ever been whether NG vehicles are possible. Converions are actually fairly straight forward. And outside the US of Coal, a lot of places do just that. But that is not the issue at hand. The issue is if NG will power 1 billion converted gas-burners or, new, like gas does now.
The answer is no. Weve been burning NG as recklessly and wastefully as regular oil. NG production has basically peaked in N.A. Even if places like Russia and the ME still have ‘lots’ by the time we actually finished converting a billion gas-burners to NG burners, or long before!, wed realize NG was costing the ~ of $10.00 a gallon or more!, and wed basically run out of that too. Frak till your blue in the face, but NG wont save suburbia. Gas powered vehicles probably will exist in the Post PO world, but they wont be owned by joe-6 pack or the soccer mom that drives her kids 6 blocks in her 6000 pound SUV.
Arthur on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 9:15 am
Newfie, I know that here in Holland there are several companies that can convert your oil guzzlers into a natural gas guzzler for ca. 2500-4000 euro, government subsidies not included (‘fuelswitch’). It is sold as ‘clean driving’ or ‘green gas’. Problem is, there are only a limited number of gas stations.
http://www.groengasmobiel.nl/no_cache/tanken/tanklocaties-in-nederland/
You have to drive to some windy industry lot, find the owner with the key to the installation and fill ‘r up.
Official government policy is: 10% of the cars on NG in 2020 and 50% in 2050.
In Holland currently 3500 cars driving on NG.
NG is 45% cheaper than regular fuel per unit of energy.
Arthur on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 10:47 am
Obviously it would be foolish to postpone the inevitable end of the car age with another 10-20 year until we wasted that valuable NG resource as well. The proper way to act is to use the remaining fossil fuels in setting up a new energy base. With a variation on the biblical “forge your swords into plowshares”:
“forge your car into a windturbine.”
Larry Langman on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 2:20 pm
It is clear from the mail that many take the view that de-growth will be imposed not sought for or indeed actively pursued. There also appears to be a somewhat unhealthy interest in cars. Which suggests to me that the posters to this site feel that they will in the future have somewhere to go or perhaps more disturbingly some reason to go. De-growth implies a different paradigm, in which perhaps fuel for transport is irrelevant.
Laci on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 3:08 pm
From Kyoto, to degrowth initiatives, to the upcomming fiasco known as the $100 billion per year climate fund, which no one will want to fund. All these solutions have one flaw. They do not provide a mechanism to get the whole planet involved. It is all voluntary. It is like asking people to voluntarily build and upkeep the town’s sidewalks (a public good). Some do realize the folly of these innitiatives, so they recomend going into survivalist mode. They think they can go on farming and surviving in a collapsed world with thousands of nuclear warheads, emerging warlords who will inherit the world’s military arsenal, the hordes of starving people etc etc.
There is thus far only one viable course that makes sense to me. The concept of modifying trade tariffs in a way that will encourage eficiency as proposed in “Sustainable Trade” by Zoltan Ban. It gets around the dilema of the benefit of non-collaboration for the greater good, which is what derailed all past and current innitiatives for sustainability.
Kenz300 on Mon, 24th Sep 2012 3:24 pm
Diversify…diversify…diversify….
Every individual, business and country needs to develop a plan to become more energy self sufficient. Produce local energy and local jobs. Wind, solar, wave energy and geothermal energy production are growing around the world. The energy mix is changing.
We will need an all of the above solution. Bring on the electric, flex-fuel, hybrid, CNG, LNG and hydrogen fueled vehicles. The oil monopoly on transportation fuels will end as the price of oil continues to rise.