By Roger Diamond
There is a train moving across the countryside and we are all on board. Somewhere, ahead on the tracks is a bridge that ends in space where the tracks have been blown up long ago. If the train carries on moving, it will eventually plummet over the edge of the bridge and into space, condemning the occupants to death. Many of the occupants are unaware of this sure disaster coming up, but the influential passengers and the people in command of the train are fully aware of it. Yet no one is doing anything, except perhaps talk anxiously about it in hushed tones.
This analogy applies to many of the world’s environmental problems. Soil depletion, deforestation, climate change, water pollution, extinctions and so on. It also applies to oil depletion. If there is one thing that is certain, it is that oil is finite. So the train will run off the tracks when the last drop of oil is consumed. However, there is another dimension to this story.
Less certain than the finite nature of oil, but becoming clearer by the day, is where we sit on the timeline for oil depletion. Peak oil is the point at which we produce less oil today than we did yesterday. Opinions vary, but most give dates around 2005-2015 for the oil peak.
In the train analogy, peak oil is a hill in the countryside. After that hill has been passed, it is downhill all the way to the blown-out bridge. The consequence of this is that as we speed up on the downhill side, not only do we race ever faster to the end of the line, but also it becomes harder and harder to stop the train, and, as an oil super-tanker captain will tell you, the train will not stop as soon as you apply the brakes. Supertankers can take many hours to go from full steam ahead to a stop and similarly, as the train plummets down the hill, with a larger population, bursting from the windows and doors, clamouring for more oil (speed) as we go, the momentum becomes almost unstoppable and the point of no return is in fact long before we even lay our eyes on the immense chasm and the twisted, stretched filaments of railway track that lead into the emptiness.
Thinking laterally you object to this argument and ask why we cannot simply jump off the train. Very simply, you can, but you will be all alone and left behind as the rest of society races ahead, computers and internet buzzing 24 hours, goods shipping around the world and oil powering most of this. The solution lies in convincing everyone to take action — either jumping off the train, or working out a way of stopping the train. The former is a back-to-basics approach, the latter a more technological option. In reality, both will be needed.
The problem is that, if we have passed or are on the hill now, we don’t have much time. Yet the train has 6 billion people on board and a bunch of train drivers who are dead set at acceleration (economic growth) no matter what anyone says. How does one get this message out in time to save the train or the passengers? I certainly am no advocate of violence, but if history can be our lesson, sometimes the only way to change is to remove the drivers. But remember the South African story, our own proud story of political change, and there is reason to hope that negotiations can save the day.
Oil depletion is real. Peak oil is here. We are the people who make this choice: to pass over the hill and let the train continue towards the abyss with us all on board, or to stop the train and jump off into the countryside and save ourselves a certain fate.
Worse than peak oil is climate change, but no problem, mother nature will solve both peak oil and climate change “Germany’s green energy revolution” http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/arielgoldberg/2009/10/19/germany%e2%80%99s-renewable-energy-policy-is-awesome/
How to survive peak oil, visit:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/142575/would_you_know_how_to_survive_after_the_oil_crash/?page=entire
The best book I read on peak oil: “The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the fate of Industrial Societies” by Richard Heinberg.
Who in the South African Goverment, and elite, know what, and when about Peak Oil?
PeakOilRSA Briefing Paper, submitted to RSA Gov, c/o Min. of Intelligence, Mr. Kasrils; part of the court record, capetown magistrates court:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19060700/090708-18-July-2006-Peak-Oil-RSA-Briefing-Paper-Min-Intelligence
For years the oil industry denied peak oil, it was only fairly recently, after the publication of Richard Heinberg’s book that the realisation dawned.
Now they are shouting it from the hilltops, why?
What do they have up their sleeves? Not concern for humanity, look how they try and undermine anything aimed to stop climate change.
Are they shouting about peak oil to take our attention away from climate change, or is there another motive?
That train actually has 6.7 billion people on board, not 6 billion as indicated in the article.
That’s 6,700,000.
Six billion seven hundred million.
Six thousand seven hundred million.
Oops. Numerically it’s 6,700,000,000. Big numbers are like that. Surpassing understanding.
@Counter Spin
The oil industry are trying to divert attention away from climate change with the peak oil crises and the same old overpopulation nonsense. Poor people in societies with high birth rates don’t drive cars, they do not make any difference to peak oil, its just a diversion.
Trust me.
Totally agree. Don’t you think it’s time we realised that our political leaders won’t get around to regulating the green revolution while they are still so fired up about their previous struggle? Hell, they haven’t even got their minds around AIDS, crime, health, transport, employment, justice, housing, education…
Need me to go on?
The municipality changed my water meter because they said it must be faulty because I don’t use enough water. No Change! Now they want to change my electricity meter too, for the same reason.
Some of us do do our individual best!
I don’t think the big problem is running out of oil but surpassing the 2 degrees warmer mark; a sure thing once all the oil has been used up and the carbon is released. But perhaps as we see the end of the oil supply we will do something serious about alternate energies.
Curb overpopulation, stop anthopogenic climate change and solve peak oil:
Give everyone five years to convert their motor vehicles to renewable energy or they face steralisation.
First of all, stop seeing all facets of this mess (because it’s all part of the same cause; humans) as a problem.
“Problem” implies that there is a solution. We are way past that (by about 40 years IMO). What we have is a predicament.
There is no solution. Don’t be distracted by the “till the last drop of oil is burned up” meme. Peak oil is in the rear view mirror. Watch and see what happens when the world economy starts moving again; not enough oil to go around.
A 10% drop in production brings everything to a standstill. Then what? Well, study history. shortage of recources means more dictatorships, more famine, disease, wars,…all the good stuff (snark) Your train analogy at that point brings fist fights, shoving people out the window, etc.
Face it, we are humans, violent, heartless, prefer to measure ourselves against fabricated reality (money) then actually face up to the pandemonium we cause to everything we touch. We had our chance and we blew it.
Mother nature will take care of the rest. Just as She does with any other species that goes into overshoot. And as for the planet itself; don’t worry it’s been through worse. Once the cause of it’s ailment is dealt with, all it needs is time.
I reckon, humanity will not be here to celebrte the year 3000.
I don’t agree with Lhommevert’s nihilistic take on humanity. I think we each have a choice in the matter. We’re not all violent and heartless, but we all have the potential for it. As Solzhenitsyn said “the line between good and evil runs through every man’s heart”
Each man’s heart is where it started, where this whole thing started. From a craving, to a thought, to an action, by many…
There’s so much we can do on so many levels. And if we can’t, then at least we did what we could right?
If I leave the world having given more than I took, what is there to regret?
@Peak Oil Perspectives
Before you shed crocodile tears about “Soil depletion, deforestation, climate change, water pollution, extinctions and so on.” why doesn’t the oil industry get its own house in order?
The oil industry has brought poverty and pollution to Niger Delta
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/oil-industry-has-brought-poverty-and-pollution-to-niger-delta-20090630
Your concern about peak oil appears to be based on self interest and nothing else.
Regrettably i must agree with l.Hommevert… the deed is done and we are moving to after care
Whilst oil depletion is real (‘abiotic oil replenishment theories notwithstanding) the Malthusian, apocalyptic ‘speeding train’ analogy is not.
As scarcity of fossil resources increases, the world economy will slow, cease growing, and then begin to contract.
Lagging behind will be global population, which is expected to peak at some 9 to 11 billion around 2050, according to some crystal ball gazing ‘experts’
The global population will then also contract along with diminishing fossil resources.
One might take account that the six fold population ‘explosion’ of the past 150 years occurred over an extremely brief period set within an anthropological timescale of some 1.5 million years, and was occasioned by the advent of exploitation of fossil resources.
Food production and other economic activities grew because these resources became available, and then the population grew into this increased support capacity, not the other way round.
Now the opposite is about to happen, and if this process is chaotic and violent, it will be due to misguided policies and misallocation of resources by politicians rather than through resource and population contraction being inherently ‘unstable’
Proponents of ‘alternative energy’ fail to take into account the chemical role of fossil resources in the current food production, packaging and distribution systems.
Windmills and solar panels simply cannot replace these inputs.
Production will begin to drop once total energy inputs drop due to increasing scarcity, which is true of any physical system, not only in attempts to sustain the ‘Green Revolution’, ‘Organic’ lobbyists notwithstanding.
ian shaw
If peak oil comes much sooner we will celebrate 3000, put an end to climate change.
@Perry Curling-Hope
If renewable energy took over our energy needs, oil could be used for some chemical needs. To cut down on transport, buy local, now thats good thinking. Don’t use oil based chemical fertilizers, modern scientific organic agriculture is producing similar yields to chemical indutrial farming without chemical oil fertilizers.
Modern technology is going to leave the oil industry in the dark. Peak oil is the best news I ever heard.
Oil refineries pollute our land, water and air.
(Groundwork – Environmental Justice Action in South Africa – http://www.groundwork.org.za/oil_refineries.htm
Peak oil is the best news I ever heard, now we have to develop renewable energy fast = millions of new jobs + stop anthopogenic climate change!!
YES !
@Perry Curling-Hope
1) You argue “As scarcity of fossil resources increases, the world economy will slow, cease growing, and then begin to contract.”
Wrong. When Germany started to convert to renewable energy, the 60 000 nuclear and coal jobs at stake had already been replaced by double that amount of jobs in the renewable energy sector, and the number increases everyday. Germany aim to go 100% renewable.
Green jobs will be Germany’s largest employer by 2020.
China is expected to become the world leader in renewable energy products though, that is if Obama does not get his way, he wants the US to lead the race.
2) Don’t rely on star gazers for global population projections. World population to peak in 2050 according to new UN study:
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0313-population.html
Unfortunately those points put pay to the rest of your theory.
If one looks at the damage the oil industry do to the environment and society, peak oil is a blessing.
Clean Air,
Germany’s ‘Renewable Energy Sector’ would not exist nor be sustainable without government mandates and subsidies.
Mandates are another term for coercion, and subsidies are not merely about ‘money’
The conventional energy sector is compelled to buy electricity from the state sponsored ‘independent’ renewable producers, paying a ‘Feed in Tariff’ 3 to 8 times the cost of production by conventional means.
It is a roundabout way to subsidize renewable with fossil energy, and is tolerable only whilst the renewable energy constitutes a minority percentage of total generation capacity.
The prevailing mandates have been extended to 20 years and the Merkle government is facing mounting opposition as consequences of attempts to meet growth targets are impacting the consumer.
With such lucrative tariff breaks and government subsidies of up to $240,000 per worker P/A for some categories of ‘green job’ extracted from the German taxpayer, it is not surprising the industry attracts an intense and vocal lobby of corporate support.
Just because politicians set targets for such and such by this or that date, it does not mean it is now quotable gospel or will actually happen.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/10/21/germany-s-renewable-myth.aspx
A VERY different Germany may well be 100% renewable sometime in the future, but it will be due to resource depletion, accompanied by some very undesirable consequences for affluence, choice and prosperity, not by current political mandate.
@Perry Curling-Hope
Every drop of oil extracted from the ground is subsidised by the people who live on this planet.
Just one example, “Oil Giant Is Gone, Legal and Environmental Mess Remains”
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/29
A second example is billions of people on this planet will pay for the devastating effect of climate change, merely another form of subsidy.
The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is a 700-page report released on October 30, 2006 by economist Nicholas Stern. Its main conclusion is that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change onsiderably outweigh the costs.
It proposes that one percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) per annum is required to be invested in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and that failure to do so could risk global GDP being up to twenty percent lower than it otherwise might be.
So the benefits of subsidies for renewable energy far outweigh the cost.
Your belief that “A VERY different Germany may well be 100% renewable sometime in the future, but it will be due to resource depletion, accompanied by some very undesirable consequences for affluence” is archaic.
Green jobs and green energy are the next economic boom “Barack Obama is promising a $150bn “Apollo project” to bring jobs and energy security to the US through a new alternative energy economy.”
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/11/03-8
@Perry Curling-Hope again….
It looks as if the global renewable energy revolution is taking place faster than you can reply to my emails, this has just hit my inbox
Meet the Barefoot Women Solar Engineers of Africa
After six months of training at the Barefoot College in India, these African women are now returning to solar electrify their own communities in Cameroon, Mali, The Gambia and Sierra Leone. More than 440 households in 9 communities in these countries will have light at night from solar systems installed and maintained by these Barefoot Women Solar Engineers of Africa.
http://www.barefootcollege.org/newsletters/BarefootNewsletterJune2007.html
Who needs oil?
@Perry Curling-Hope
Oil may trade for $65 dollars a barrel of crude, however if the hidden costs such as the cost of dependence on oil, health costs, social costs, environmental costs, and climate change costs are factored in, a barrel of oil actually costs us $480.
The true cost of oil to the US is $65 trillion a year, visit:
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461
THAT MAKES A FEW PALTRY SUBSIDIES FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY CHEAP BY COMPARISON!!