"Life after Peak Oil"

According to Gregory Clark, running out of fossil fuel may not reduce living standards by as much as you might think:

Life after peak oil, by Gregory Clark, Sacramento Bee: Oil prices have receded from their recent flirtation with $100 a barrel, but ... increased demand, high prices and the prospect of an eventual peak in oil production has caught Americans paralyzed between ... the fear that rampant consumption of oil and coal is irreversibly warming the Earth and the dread that without cheap oil our affluent lifestyles will evaporate. ...

Study of the long economic history of the world suggests two things, however. Cheap fossil fuels actually explain little of how we got rich since the Industrial Revolution. And after an initial period of painful adaptation, we can live happily, opulently and indeed more healthily, in a world of permanent $100-a-barrel oil or even $500-a-barrel oil. ...

Many people think mistakenly that modern prosperity was founded on this fossil energy revolution, and that when the oil and coal is gone, it is back to the Stone Age. If we had no fossil energy, then we would be forced to rely on an essentially unlimited amount of solar power, available at five times current energy costs. With energy five times as expensive ... we would take a substantial hit to incomes. Our living standard would decline by about 11 percent. But we would still be fantastically rich compared to the pre-industrial world. ... Our income would still be above the current living standards in Canada, Sweden or England. Oh, the suffering humanity! At current rates of economic growth we would gain back the income losses from having to convert to solar power in less than six years. ...

The ability to sustain such high energy prices at little economic cost depends on the assumption that we can cut back from using the equivalent of six gallons of gas per person per day to 1.5 gallons. Is that really possible? The answer is that we know already it is.

The economy would withstand enormous increases in energy costs with modest damage because energy is even now so extravagantly cheap that most of it is squandered in uses of little value. Recently, I drove my 13-year-old son 230 miles round-trip ... to play a 70-minute soccer game. Had every gallon of gas cost [considerably more], I am sure his team could have found opposition closer to home.

The median-sized U.S. home is now nearly 2,400 square feet, for an average family size of 2.6 people... Much of that heated, air-conditioned and lighted square footage rarely gets used. Cities ... that were developed in the world of cheap gas have sprawled across the landscape so that the only way to get to work or to shops is by car...

Some countries in Europe, such as Denmark, which have by public policy made energy much more expensive, already use only the equivalent of about three gallons of gas per person. I have been to Copenhagen, and believe me the Danes are not suffering a lot from those the daily three gallons of gas they gave up.

But can we get down to 1.5 gallons without huge pain? We can see even now communities where for reasons of land scarcity people have been forced to adopt a lifestyle that uses much less energy – places like Manhattan, London or Singapore. ... Housing space per person is much smaller, people walk or take public transit to work and to shop, and energy usage is correspondingly much lower, despite the inhabitants being very rich.

So the future after peak oil will involve living in such dense urban settings where destinations are walkable or bikeable, just as in pre-industrial cities (the city of London in 1801 had 100,000 inhabitants in one square mile). Homes will be much smaller... Nights will be darker. We will not have retail outlets lit up like the glare of the midday sun in Death Valley.

Such a lifestyle is not only possible it will be much healthier. We are not biologically adapted to the suburban lifestyle... – lots of cheap calories delivered right to your seat in the SUV that shuttles you from your sofa at home, to your chair at work, to the gym where you try and work on your weight problem. ...

So life after peak oil should hold no terror for us – unless, of course, you have invested in a lot of suburban real estate.

Comments

[hari]

GM - "we're not biologically adapted to suburban living..."

I've come to appreciate the meaning/value of above; and, may be, just may be, Greg is finding out and arguing for a much slower lane for good living in US.

why do so many wealthy Americans move to Tuscany?

[Gil]

Dang! The thought of going back to living standards of the Amish with a world population loss of some 4-5 billion, brutal dictatorships, slavery, etc., sounded much more fun. :(

[evagrius]

He forgot about plastic and other petroleum based products.

says...

Upbeat thoughts-- less driving, less pollution, less cheap plastic crap, less ugly 'burbs, less taxes for endless road maintanence, more public transportation options, more pleasant exercise in the course of everyday living (and less treadmill) and... dare we even think it?... more and better jobs for planners! I am so there...

[ken melvin]

I foresee an economy based on restructuring the old economy.

[mark]

So the future after peak oil will involve living in such dense urban settings where destinations are walkable or bikeable, just as in pre-industrial cities (the city of London in 1801 had 100,000 inhabitants in one square mile). Homes will be much smaller... Nights will be darker. We will not have retail outlets lit up like the glare of the midday sun in Death Valley.

Poppy-Cock. New York, London , Chicago, San Fran are prestigeous cities. The top dogs will always want to be there irrespective of the bottom line.

Other cities will experience another dynamic. Namely the high cost of fuel will prevent certain classes from migrating to the suburbs to exscape high taxes, crime, and crappy schools. Which in turn will lead to higher taxes, more crime and crappier schools for those cities.

[Farrar Richardson]

I'm already there, and it's great ! Left the country, moved to town, sold my car, cut my square footage in half, bought a heat pump.

Freedom !

Try it.

[Devang]

Until there are concrete plans and projections for transitioning to such an economy, this is nothing more than a pseudo-denial of global warming.

We have known about the European way for a long time now, and we don't like it. Or maybe we do, but are incapable of transitioning to it. I think it's the later. Nobody I know likes driving 40 miles to/from work everyday.

[lagarita]

It's not obvious to me that urban living is more efficient - what's important is that you work where you live. I looked for some hard data and found this (has anybody read this? What are the "other relationships between energy consumption and density"?):

Urban density and energy consumption: a new look at old statistics

Orit MindaliE-mail The Corresponding Author, a, 1, Adi RavehE-mail The Corresponding Author, b, 2 and Ilan SalomonCorresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author, a
a Department of Geography, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 91905, Jerusalem, Israel
b The Jerusalem School of Business Administration, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, 91905, Jerusalem, Israel
Received 27 March 2003; revised 30 September 2003; accepted 30 October 2003. ; Available online 18 December 2003.

Abstract

There is growing concern about the negative environmental and energy effects caused by transportation systems and related land-use patterns. Travel and land-use are a function of one another, therefore it is often hypothesized that changing urban structure can result in changes in energy consumption. A popular view suggests that there is a strong negative correlation between urban density and energy consumption. This implies that increasing density will result in a reduction in energy consumption [Cities and Automobile Dependence: An International Sourcebook, Avebury Technical, Great Britain, 1989].

Using Co-Plot, an innovative multivariate statistical technique, this research crystallizes some of the relationships between density and energy consumption in western cities. The method is applied on Newman and Kenworthy’s data, leading to the conclusion that there is no direct impact of total urban density. Instead several other relationships between energy consumption and density attributes can be identified.

[Cormac]

>So life after peak oil should hold no terror for us – unless, of course, you have invested in a lot of suburban real estate.

Which would be most people.

[Lee A. Arnold]

Solar thermal electrical generation. It is scalable from house to village to city to region. It has no fuel cycle. It is so abundant and harmless that inefficiency and waste are secondary. Easy co-products could be water desalination and heating. It is transportable by the existing electric grids. The energy can be stored as thermal or potential gravitational energy, for nighttime regeneration. It doesn't need a police state to protect radioactive material nor a militarist foreign policy to insure oil supply. If you convert the automobile economy to electric, which is already starting to happen, then you will have well over half of every nation's economy taken care of by an energy source without a fuel cycle on the planet. There will not be reduction in standard of living and solar energy will not cost five times as much.

[vader]

Blame in on the Blacks.

Until Civil Rights, Blacks being allowed to move into white neighbor hoods, and integration of schools, there were no suburbs worthy of the name. Folks lived in urban communities for decades prior.

White flight emptied the cities, uprooted neighborhoods, and trashed the cities making them unacceptable to white folks living there.

Blame the GOP for continuing to play the Southern Card nationwide and you can see the motive and reasoning for the suburbs.

It may have reached it's limits or soon will.

However the solution may be simple.

Simply have some form of mass transportation from the 'burbs to central hubs for transfer to central destinations with shuttles to work and allow small businesses in the 'burbs. A lot of folks will have to change habits, but lots of folks can make money driving vans to pick up 10 or so folks and deliver them to a hub with businesses to sell food and sundries, yet more bus drivers do transport them to hubs.

The great houses with empty rooms can take in boarders, or simply shut heat off to those rooms and close the doors until needed.

No mass re-migration needed. More employment. No real great hit to incomes.

Solar panels on the roofs of 'burbs houses can either be used to supply electricity to the home or the space rented to utilities for the same.

Govt encourages savings and spending on services instead of goods, gets out of the conquest the world business and controls the corps better or educates them to be better citizens takes care of the excessive consumption thingee.

No riots, or end of the world to it.

Just imagination.

[Cormac]

I'm curious as to what is included in the figure of 6 gallons per person. I can find several sources that give the gasoline consumption (ie what you put in your car) as around 3 gallons per person, and I would be extremely surprised if total national energy consumption was only double that.

What about the natural gas that is the main ingredient in fertilizer, without which agricultural productivity would be cut to a fraction?

[Bruce Wilder]

Gil: "Dang! The thought of going back to living standards of the Amish with a world population loss of some 4-5 billion, brutal dictatorships, slavery, etc., sounded much more fun."

Cheer up, Gil. Returning to the Stone Age in an Apocalypse is not within the realm of possibility -- but the Apocalypse, itself, remains the odds-on favorite. The Human Race may end up the next 200 years as a quarter-billion people living on the balmy beaches of the Artic Ocean, but we will still have some nifty i-pods.

[donna]

Cormac, organic production is better for the soil and out-performs artificial fertilizers anyway if you do it right. It also makes the food more nutritious with more minerals and vitamins as well. Right now it is a bit more expensive, but if oil gets more expensive it might be more equal in costs. And we all might get healthier again.

[Bruce Wilder]

I can see that Gregory Clark is going to plague all my remaining days. I have this completely unfounded prejudice that extremely articulate people are smart people and smart people tend to be articulate. Greg Clark is the wonderfully articulate ignorant moron, who is going to completely disabuse of this prejudice, or I am going to die as he continues the effort.

I have no particular problem with his overall thesis. Petroleum has been very cheap for a long time, and we do squander a lot at the margin, and we could cut back a lot at the margin, with only marginal costs.

But, he just glosses every bit of analysis, and badly. Think we should excise from the history books the prominent role of fossil fuels in the Industrial Revolution? Think moving from a 2000 sq foot house on an acre of land in suburban Grand Rapids, Michigan to a 600 sq foot Manhatten high-rise involves only an 11% cut in standard of living? Hmmm. Wait until you see the increase in rent! The average New Yorker has a commute of something like 35-40 minutes -- nationwide, suburbanites average around 20-25 minutes, though, of course, there are nightmare exceptions like Los Angeles.

Think U.S. standards of living exceed those in Sweden and Canada? People, who look beyond average dollar amounts seldom come to that conclusion. Median indices of health, educational attainment and so on, usually put Canada on par with the U.S., and Sweden ahead.

Even as I admire, envy even, the easy, graceful prose, and even when he's saying what I want to hear, I'm still questioning every foolishly glib assertion, and holding my aching head. I know I deserve Gregory Clark. Some terrible sin in a previous life, no doubt.

[Robinia]

To repeat something that has already been cited on this blog before, the cannard that fossil-fuel-based fertilizer is needed because "without which agricultural productivity would be cut to a fraction" is a manufacture of the artificial fertilizer company PR departments. Advanced agricultural production systems that do not use fossil-fuel-based fertilizers have been proven to be more productive under US climate conditions than those using petrochemicals. As measured by such things as total yield of bushels of corn and soybeans over multiple years' time. More here: http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/science/home.html.

This in no way suggests that growing food without any fertilizer, or returning to pre-modern ag production systems, is appropriate or desirable. It is to suggest that there are better, more productive agricultural systems than the petrochemical ag system, just as there are better, more productive energy or transportation systems than the ones based on petrochemicals. Transition to these better systems should be the work of agriculture, economic development and planning bureaucrats. Instead, we gave the top 1% of wealthy people a tax break to go buy bigger yachts and islands off Dubai.

[ZEROSUMEQUATION]

Hello,
No one has addressed POPULATION as an issue!
With incresing consumption all your ideas are speculative at best. We are headed for the STONE AGE whatever these ignorant ideologists predict.It's not rocket science.Just visit:-
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net for a REALITY check if you DARE !
Ha !

[Fred]

There has got to be some Freudian explanation of why some people are obsessed with imminently running out of oil. Lack of oil = lack of power = impotence, something like that. And then there are those hair-curling stories of angry mobs breaking down the doors of those who are rumored to have food stockpiled away, and after the door are knocked down and the food eaten, well that young daughter over there looks mighty tempting--an obsession with scenarios like this suggests somebody is projecting repressed desires.

Clearly, we will eventually run out of oil and gas and equally clearly, this will happen gradually and we can thus adjust to it. It is a minor concern compared to the threat of being hit with an asteroid. Incidentally, we CAN do something about the asteroid threat. Namely, get to work on making nuclear fusion work so that someday well have unlimited amounts of energy at our disposal and thus the capability of blasting such asteroids out of their orbit. What is the Freudian implication of my being more concerned about asteroids than running out of energy, I wonder?

[eclectic artist]

Although the writer’s conclusion is in the right direction—people will have to live closer together, he has made the usual, avoidable errors along the way:

The price of gasoline is not low. The price at the pump is subsidizd. It isn’t like the price of a shirt. We’re paying indirectly for the extra costs, known as “negative externalities”, of getting gasoline to the consumer. Considering the taxpayer’s costs for all of these oil-based foreign wars, the tax incentives for drilling and refining expansion, and the medical insurance costs, governmental and private, for the skyrocketing incidence of asthma, and other respiratory ailments, and the pollution cleanup costs for oil and gasoline spills, and MBTA removal, and adding these costs into the price of gasoline, the price would come close to the four hours of pay of the average income earner.

Most people are not earning the average income (about $43,000) on which the writer bases his reasoning that energy costs for the average worker are low. Furthermore, people who are already struggling will be hurt far more than any true average income earners are. The statistic is skewed by inclusion of the wealthy. The average earning statistic includes the top 20 percent of income earners, who collectively about 70 percent of the nation’s income. The exact numbers are available online from the U.S. Statistical Abstract 2007. People who are already struggling are people for whom energy and food costs are the major portion of their week’s budget. They will bear most of the burden as energy prices rise. They don’t spend on expensive vacations, second homes, Ivy league educations, or luxury cars.

The writer speaks about a future of reliance on “solar power”. In one sense, all energy forms are solar, including oil (since it is sunlight energy stored in organic matter). If the writer meant “solar energy” in the usual sense, however, he is greatly erroneous. The best projections for solar energy place an upper limit contribution it and (land-based) wind power, to the American energy supply at 20 percent. See, for example, Paul Roberts’ The End of Oil (2004).

The writer shows he does not even realize that his article is read by people around the world! He begins his writing about “us” by announcing that “we” are going to have to tolerate the living standards of England and Sweden a while. Some of “us” readers are British in Great Britain and Swedes in Sweden. He doesn’t know this?

[Rob Dawg]

i think you'll find the average NEW home was close to 2400 sq feet not the average American home as asserted. As noted above there is not clear energy advantage to cenurban vice exurban development patterns although it is likely that the exurbs will prove more flexible in accommodating distributed solar generation.

[ken melvin]

Fogerty's 'Long As I Can See The Light' rings in my head 'cause anything is OK as long as we don't have to change anything. In the 70's, guy wrote a book about it, it was clear that conservation could lessen the need for more power plants, and that we needed alternatives. Idiot comes along down the road telling everyone the sky's not falling we only need to look to the east and drill more oil wells, which got us to where we are today except global warming came along and really threw a wrench in jeden gottverdammt dinge.

And now I know, don’t ask me how I know, that conserving energy and water only allows for more bigger cars on the road and the building of more MacMansions. So, we need a change of plans, i.e., we need is a plan, and that plan needs to deal with reality because plans that deal with what people want to believe aren’t worth anything most of the time. Time and time to start spending a lots of time and money on alternatives to fossil fuel, and to do everything we can in the between time to reduce CO2. The commute by me and my car thingee ain’t agonna cut it nomore. There oughta be a law: Here in CA, we have tenants paying for heating and hot water heating with gas and electricity because the landlord doesn’t have to. If the lord payed, there’d be solar hot water heating panels on the roof of every apartment house and rental house. The time to start was in 1970. But we can’t start any earlier now so better late than never.

[eclectic artist]

hari,

Living in the slow lane was promulgated by Al Gore as a way to reduce greenhouse gases, in his early book "Earth In The Balance". He there advocated focus of living in one's own geographical area, for work, shopping, and entertainment choices. Moving into cities is not a necessary part of this social plan. Cities create economic demands that inhibit adjustment to reduced energy life, as, for example, increases of garbage. Increases of garbage in an urban area create challenges of transport and waste conversion, incineration, etc. Gregory Clark fails to contemplate these costs in his essay, as he focuses on major successful cities that draw heavy imports. New York City's ports are major centers of economic growth. And tourism is an import of a sort as well. Tourism is that city's largest industry. Typical cities do not have these advantages. But to say that Clark would lead people to a slower lifestyle is to misinterpret his prediction of reduced suburban life as an increase in rural life -- something he does not expect at all. And, after all, city life is faster paced than suburban life.

[Barry]

" Namely the high cost of fuel will prevent certain classes from migrating to the suburbs to exscape high taxes, crime, and crappy schools. Which in turn will lead to higher taxes, more crime and crappier schools for those cities."

Posted by: mark

I'd expect the opposite - if moving to the suburbs were harder, there'd be more political opposition to letting inner cities decay.

[eclectic artist]

Bruce Wilder,

I have to agree that much of Gregory Clark's original article in the Sacramento Bee is foolishly glib. It's done for humorous appeal and controversy, instead of what's needed even more than humor: answers -- adequate analysis and answers.

But petroleum has not been cheap; rather, it's been more expensive than its alternatives. One must view petroleum and its alternatives from the same larger perspective that enables realization that there are more measures of national wealth than national income per capita. You realized this, you faulted Clark for stating that the U.S. standard of living is higher than those of Sweden and Canada. So, you can look beyond the gasoline prices road sign as well, to the negative externalities that occasion huge social costs.

I've sketched some of them in my earlier comment on this page. Nothing like those externalities are involved in using solar, wind, and other renewable energies.

More education about easy social responsibilities in the schools has positive externalities. This is one of the social costs of wind and solar power -- necessary for the transition. Some of the current curriculum would have to be sacrificed to get this stuff in. But it in turns pays for itself, helping foster belief in the relevance of, say, high school education, and more social responsibility. Which contrasts strongly with sending youth to fight petroleum-based foreign wars and returning with a belief that disputes can be settled by use of force.

Thus, a larger perspective is an essential component of the answers to the energy challenge we all face together.

[eclectic artist]

lagarita,

Population density as in cities causes reduced per person energy consumption indirectly -- indirectly, in a manner of speaking. I know about suburban living. I know that, naturally, a population would not use more energy directly as a result of just living spread out. It's indirect in the sense that they must therefore travel farther to get to work, shopping, school, and entertainment. Suburban homes are also an intermediate between a spread out population and its higher energy per person consumption. The homes are larger per person, and they are more distant from energy sources, so they require more energy to provide heat, hot water, electricity.

You cite a work that elaborates the indirect ways. Could you indicate in summary form what these are?

Your description of the source gives email names, the university, and dates of publication. What is needed are website addresses or book titles.

[eclectic artist]

Lee A. Arnold,

You are referring to solar power generation facilities, often designed for high sunshine and desert areas, one of the two most promising technologies in which Google announced a massive investment, in November. Most of the readers probably do not yet distinguish between solar energy and solar thermal energy. The thermal energy uses an array of mirrors to focus sunlight onto water in a tower, which generates steam and turns a steam turbine.

It also makes sense to invest in high altitude wind turbine electrical generation -- the turbines float or fly miles above the earth in structures supporting four turbines simultaneously. Two of the turbines at any time are just propellers to keep the craft afloat, while two of them generate electricity. The limit on solar thermal energy, that it may be cost-effective at first only in high sunshine areas, is superceded by the high-altitude wind turbine devices because they operate everywhere, since high winds are universal at high altitudes.

The New York Times reported the Google investment, in "Google's Next Frontier: Renewable Energy", Nov. 27, 2007.

The main drawback to solar thermal energy really isn't a drawback in the immediate future: many high-sunshine areas of the world would turn to this source of energy, which would reduce dependence on fossil fuels very dramatically. It is a very promising future there.

This technology is widely reported in the mass media, and one of the manufacturers is eSolar. Go to: www.altium.com.

[DJM]

Two articles which touch on this issue and expand a few of the connected points we should be concerned about, one of which is; "What are the consequences of our alternate choices if we continue to allow profit for a few to trump the best interests of all currently on the planet, and even the future of the planet."

Corn Ethanol and Its Consequences
and
Corn Boom May Expand "Dead Zone"

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/122007EA.shtml

[market for denial]

obviously exists

so many so desperately want to believe "it's all gonna be OK" ...hence, these articles get written

but it is not OK

we have lived in a world of very transportable and non-"spoiling" energy which returned 100x its invested energy -- that was OIL

all of the "alternatives" promise:
- lower EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) -- they tend to be in the range of 5x-20x
- smaller magnitude ...mere drops in the consumption bucket
- AND they are not easily transportable and storable ...hence we have a liquid fuel crisis

this is a good opportunity for economists to learn from the physicists ...TANSTAAFL

[Barkley Rosser]

Clark is one of the most overrated economists around, his recent book receiving far more attention and praise than it deserved.

In this case, he is probably right, but for the wrong reasons. There are plenty of backstop technologies that can kick in to replace at least energy uses of fossil fuels. For electricity there is nuclear, which is much safer than most people realize, and the waste problem can be resolved by simply reusing it as France and Japan are currently doing, plus we can move to thorium reactors, which are safer and in the long run cheaper than uranium ones. Also, wind power is reasonably cheap and can help, even if not to fully replace the current coal burning electric power facilities.

For transportation, hybrids transitioning to hydrogen or much better electric cars. Sure, probably we would see some increased tendency to greater density, but the sort of transformation Clark talks about looks both unnecessary and unlikely.

[notsneaky]

I think he was considering a worst case scenario.

[Tim Fox]

I read somewhere that we never actually run out of resources, we just find substitutes when the price of a resource becomes prohibitive. I wonder what price it will take for gasoline? $6 a gallon? $8 a gallon? $10 a gallon?

Necessity is the mother of invention...and if the shortage of silicon is overcome and Americans adapt the end of the world is far off...I don't think the meteor is expected until sometime in 2090...

[Alpha Quadrant Resident]

It was suggested above (re the threat of an astroid doing to us what one did to the dinosaurs):

"Namely, get to work on making nuclear fusion work so that someday well have unlimited amounts of energy at our disposal and thus the capability of blasting such asteroids out of their orbit."

Personally, I favor sending Bruce Willis. I have Paul K. with me. The prospects for viable fusion energy (other than solar, of course) have been getting dimmer, not brighter.

[Bruce Wilder]

The whole global-warming-peak-oil thing -- I think of both issues as being different aspects of a single emergent reality -- is still just dawning on our collective consciousness, even though the warnings have been out there for more than a full generation.

And, we're doing what humans do -- we're talking about it, gossiping, having a dialectic, and ignoring, minimizing, puzzling, pontificating, exaggerating, predicting, projecting, hoping, fantasizing, and crying in alarm. Even after we, collectively, have a much better handle on what is going on, and what to expect, we will still be all over the map, and beyond, in our variety of attitudes and prescriptions.

eclectic artist makes the useful point: "The price of gasoline is not low. The price at the pump is subsidized." and follows by pointing to the externalities. This is exactly the kind of critical point that I tend to lose track of, when a highly articulate fellow like Clark is telling me more or less what I want to hear -- I go into a trance and become as stupid as he is, or I fight the trance, and give myself a headache, but still lose track of the truth.

The myth of limitless possibilities and endless economic expansion is clearly confusing a lot of people, who would rather not hear about the limits, or about how others suffer so that they can prosper.

I'm personally not ready to go all organic and new-age, but I do think economists could perform a useful service by doing the dismal science thing, and studying what the real limits are, and making that clearer to the rest of us.

Energy use, and the entropy we know as pollution are tied together, and yes, energy use is one of the critical elements in our high-productivity industrial civilization. They tie together, and the carrying capacity of the earth does limit us -- we cannot have it all.

As the next step in organizing our political economy, humans are going to have to learn to manage the earth's environment. We won't just be able to talk about it, we will have to actually do something about the weather.

Clark could have used his economic historian's perspective to tell us the one really critical fact, which is that we will have to make this next giant leap, really really fast. Where humans had hundreds of thousands of years to get to conceptual language, thousands of years to develop tools, many centuries to develop agriculture and then, cities, and, finally, science and technology, we have only decades, and very few of those, to master the climate and the ecology.

[Patricia Shannon]

One of the things that reduces milage for cars is unneccessary items like automatic window openers & power brakes & steering. At the same time, they add to obesity.
I had a 1970 Dodge Dart for almost 25 years. It did not have power brakes or steering. I am a small person, and I had no problem braking & steering. When my car was in the shop for a month or two after an accident (I was waiting for them to call and tell me it was fixed, they were waiting for me to call and tell them to fix it), a co-worker lent me a car her husband had bought used to fix up and sell, his hobby. It had power steering, power brakes, and automatic transmission. I gained 5 pounds. That little bit of lack of exertion, even though hardly noticeable if at all, adds up.

Cutting back some on our "quality of life" would make most of us healthier in the short run, as well as in the long run (reduced pollution).

[daesonesb]

the problem with people panicing over peak oil is that they assumer there will be NO oil. Thats not true. There will be enough left (if conserved) to produce all the important plastic things (hospital equipment).
We will just have to get rid of cheap packaging and stupid toys...

[daesonesb]

as far as natural gas for fertilizer. The organic movement is making leaps foreward in phasing out the need for natural gas to control insect probelms...

[Aurelio]

And how exactly do you think solar panels are made? do you really think that the cost of solar panels today has any resemblance with the cost of solar panels when 1. Oil is at say 250$ a barrel and 2. We are spending tremendous amounts of energy (industry runs on energy) to manufacture those panels... The price jump is not 5x. But wait... why do we care, all those tractors that harvest corn, rice and wheat don't run on solar power yet... and we have to redeploy an entirely new electric based agriculture infrastructure before a substantial proportion of us is starved to death.... hmmm maybe we won't really need those solar panels after all if we are so concerned with supporting agriculture with .... OMG... manual labor...!!!

[Aurelio]

And how exactly do you think solar panels are made? do you really think that the cost of solar panels today has any resemblance with the cost of solar panels when 1. Oil is at say 250$ a barrel and 2. We are spending tremendous amounts of energy (industry runs on energy) to manufacture those panels... The price jump is not 5x. But wait... why do we care, all those tractors that harvest corn, rice and wheat don't run on solar power yet... and we have to redeploy an entirely new electric based agriculture infrastructure before a substantial proportion of us is starved to death.... hmmm maybe we won't really need those solar panels after all if we are so concerned with supporting agriculture with .... OMG... manual labor...!!!

[Mikko]

Peak Oil is not just prices going higher. It is:
- economy breaking down with high inflation
- financial system breaking down for lack of credibility
- as a result, massive unemployment
- as a result, public services going down with taxes
- as a result, massive security breakdown
- as a result, chaos

Need to go on?

[Aselya]

In contrast to a widely discussed theory that world oil production will soon reach a peak and go into sharp decline, a new analysis of the subject by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) finds that the remaining global oil resource base is actually 3.74 trillion barrels -- three times as large as the 1.2 trillion barrels estimated by the theory’s proponents -- and that the “peak oil” argument is based on faulty analysis which could, if accepted, distort critical policy and investment decisions and cloud the debate over the energy future.
In contrast to a widely discussed theory that world oil production will soon reach a peak and go into sharp decline, a new analysis of the subject by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) finds that the remaining global oil resource base is actually 3.74 trillion barrels -- three times as large as the 1.2 trillion barrels estimated by the theory’s proponents -- and that the “peak oil” argument is based on faulty analysis which could, if accepted, distort critical policy and investment decisions and cloud the debate over the energy future.

The ‘peak oil’ theory causes confusion and can lead to inappropriate actions and turn attention away from the real issues,” Jackson observes. “Oil is too critical to the global economy to allow fear to replace careful analysis about the very real challenges with delivering liquid fuels to meet the needs of growing economies. This is a very important debate, and as such it deserves a rational and measured discourse

“This is the fifth time that the world is said to be running out of oil,” says CERA Chairman Daniel Yergin. “Each time -- whether it was the ‘gasoline famine’ at the end of WWI or the ‘permanent shortage’ of the 1970s -- technology and the opening of new frontier areas has banished the specter of decline. There’s no reason to think that technology is finished this time.”

The report emphasizes the importance of focusing on the critical issues. “It is not helpful to couch the debate in terms of a superficial analysis of reservoir constraints. It will be aboveground factors such as geopolitics, conflict, economics and technology that will dictate the outcome.” The report also points to such aboveground questions as timing and openness to investment, infrastructure development, and the impact of technological change on demand for oil.
Global production will eventually follow an “undulating plateau” for one or more decades before declining slowly. The global production profile will not be a simple logistic or bell curve postulated by geologist M. King Hubbert, but it will be asymmetrical – with the slope of decline more gradual and not mirroring the rapid rate of increase -- and strongly skewed past the geometric peak. It will be an undulating plateau that may well last for decades.

During the plateau period in later decades, according to the CERA analysis, demand growth will likely no longer be largely met by growth in available, commercially exploitable natural oil supplies. Non-traditional or unconventional liquid fuels such as production from heavy oil sands, gas-related liquids (condensate and natural gas liquids), gas-to-liquids (GTL), and coal-to-liquids (CTL) will need to fill the gap.

“It is likely that the situation will unfold in slow motion and that there are a number of decades to prepare for the start of the undulating plateau. This means that there is time to consider the best way to develop viable energy alternatives that would eventually provide the bulk of our transport energy needs and ensure that there is a useable production stream of conventional crude for some time to come,” CERA concludes.

The “peak oil” argument is frequently supported with data indicating that new exploration finds are not sufficient to replace annual production. Their data sets have serious deficiencies. The peak argument is an incomplete and therefore misleading analysis because it ignores the role of development (vs exploration) projects in expanding reserves, fails to understand economic factors that can point company and national strategies to emphasize development vs exploration work. By focusing on “discovery” and ignoring the increased knowledge and confidence about field volumes, it disregards the fact that revisions, additions and exploration together have generated resource growth of 320 billion barrels – 80 billion barrels more, or one-third more, than total production – during the period from 1995 to 2003. CERA draws both on its own data bases and those of its parent company IHS, which has the world’s most complete proprietary data bases on oil production and resources

In clear contrast most neoclassical economists reject methods of economic analysis that are not based on human preferences, arguing that net energy analysis does not generate useful information beyond that produced in a thorough economic analysis. This is a perspective that I do not share, particularly because we believe that markets are poor predictors of what we perceive to be almost inevitable impacts of a coming serious decline in energy availability and in EROI for our most important fuels.
In any case neither system has yet adequately addressed the cost of environmental impact or contribution to depletion. Thus a critically important issue is what should the boundaries of the analyses be i.e. how far should we go in the costs of the energy to make (or use) a fuel? There are also important methodological problems that are nicely seen in the letters and responses found about EROI for biomass-derived alcohol that were in Science magazine June 23, 2006.
There are several groups working on determining the EROI of various alternatives to oil although it is apparent that there are no clear alternatives to oil with high EROI and a large resource base. Windmills have, apparently, a high EROI, but an enormous expansion would be required before it gives even 1 percent of US energy use.

Oil prices have receded from their recent flirtation with $100 a barrel, but ... increased demand, high prices and the prospect of an eventual peak in oil production has caught Americans paralyzed between ... the fear that rampant consumption of oil and coal is irreversibly warming the Earth and the dread that without cheap oil our affluent lifestyles will evaporate. ...
Study of the long economic history of the world suggests two things, however. Cheap fossil fuels actually explain little of how we got rich since the Industrial Revolution. And after an initial period of painful adaptation, we can live happily, opulently and indeed more healthily, in a world of permanent $100-a-barrel oil or even $500-a-barrel oil. ...
Many people think mistakenly that modern prosperity was founded on this fossil energy revolution, and that when the oil and coal is gone, it is back to the Stone Age. If we had no fossil energy, then we would be forced to rely on an essentially unlimited amount of solar power, available at five times current energy costs. With energy five times as expensive ... we would take a substantial hit to incomes. Our living standard would decline by about 11 percent. But we would still be fantastically rich compared to the pre-industrial world. ... Our income would still be above the current living standards in Canada, Sweden or England. Oh, the suffering humanity! At current rates of economic growth we would gain back the income losses from having to convert to solar power in less than six years. ...
The ability to sustain such high energy prices at little economic cost depends on the assumption that we can cut back from using the equivalent of six gallons of gas per person per day to 1.5 gallons. Is that really possible? The answer is that we know already it is.
The economy would withstand enormous increases in energy costs with modest damage because energy is even now so extravagantly cheap that most of it is squandered in uses of little value. Recently, I drove my 13-year-old son 230 miles round-trip ... to play a 70-minute soccer game. Had every gallon of gas cost [considerably more], I am sure his team could have found opposition closer to home.
The median-sized U.S. home is now nearly 2,400 square feet, for an average family size of 2.6 people... Much of that heated, air-conditioned and lighted square footage rarely gets used. Cities ... that were developed in the world of cheap gas have sprawled across the landscape so that the only way to get to work or to shops is by car...
Some countries in Europe, such as Denmark, which have by public policy made energy much more expensive, already use only the equivalent of about three gallons of gas per person. I have been to Copenhagen, and believe me the Danes are not suffering a lot from those the daily three gallons of gas they gave up.
But can we get down to 1.5 gallons without huge pain? We can see even now communities where for reasons of land scarcity people have been forced to adopt a lifestyle that uses much less energy – places like Manhattan, London or Singapore. ... Housing space per person is much smaller, people walk or take public transit to work and to shop, and energy usage is correspondingly much lower, despite the inhabitants being very rich.
So the future after peak oil will involve living in such dense urban settings where destinations are walkable or bikeable, just as in pre-industrial cities (the city of London in 1801 had 100,000 inhabitants in one square mile). Homes will be much smaller... Nights will be darker. We will not have retail outlets lit up like the glare of the midday sun in Death Valley.
Such a lifestyle is not only possible it will be much healthier. We are not biologically adapted to the suburban lifestyle... – lots of cheap calories delivered right to your seat in the SUV that shuttles you from your sofa at home, to your chair at work, to the gym where you try and work on your weight problem. ...
So life after peak oil should hold no terror for us – unless, of course, you have invested in a lot of suburban real estate.

[Jeff]

@ Aselya:
1. Reposting (cut-n-paste style) the entire essay is in poor taste.

2. Regarding the CERA quote contained in the full text, you might be interested to know that CERA was long on the optimistic side of the peak oil question, but has just conceded its past predictions were flawed. See below.
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source: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49178

Published Jun 9 2009 by ASPO-USA
Archived Jun 10 2009
CERA official acknowledges “peak oil is here”
by Staff
Speaking at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC on 8 June, CERA Global Oil Group Managing Director Jim Burkhard began and ended his talk by stating that “CERA acknowledges that peak oil is here, you heard it from a CERA person.”
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Interestingly enough, CERA still claims that it is economy and politics driving oil scarcity, which is to say that they continue to mistake cause for effect. Be that as it may, a longtime voice of reassurance now agrees that scarcity is now taking its unavoidable toll.