THE PARTY'S OVER: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies

"Richard Heinberg has written an outstanding book, The Party's Over
..The world and the U.S. populations are projected to double in 50 and
70 years, respectively, and global oil supplies are projected to be
mostly depleted in 50 years! [Worse, oil production will peak sometime
between 2006 and 2015] I agree with Heinberg that
society is headed for serious trouble in the near future."  --David
Pimentel, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Entomology, Systematics AND
Ecology, Cornell University

"The Party's Over begins with a commanding review of world history,
where past and current developments including war, empire, and
population growth are interpreted as functions of cheap or
increasingly scarce and expensive energy. The discussion of
substitutes for fast-depleting fossil fuels, and the formidable
impediments to making the transition that would allow industrial
civilization to continue, are important to every investor and
citizen."- Virginia Deane Abernethy, Ph.D., author of Population Politics

http://www.museletter.com/partys-over.html

Synopsis:

When Mike Bowlin, Chairman of ARCO, said in 1999 that "We've
embarked on the beginning of the last days of the age of oil," he
was voicing a truth that many others in the petroleum industry knew
but dared not utter. Over the past few years, evidence has mounted
that global oil production is nearing its historic peak.

Oil has been the cheapest and most convenient energy resource ever
discovered by humans. During the past two centuries, people in
industrial nations accustomed themselves to a regime in which more
fossil-fuel energy was available each year, and the global
population grew quickly to take advantage of this energy windfall.
Industrial nations also came to rely on an economic system built on
the assumption that growth is normal and necessary, and that it can
go on forever.

When oil production peaks, those assumptions will come crashing
down.

As we move from a historic interval of energy growth to one of
energy decline, we are entering uncharted territory. It takes some
effort to adjust one's mental frame of reference to this new
reality.


Try the following thought experiment. Go to the center of a city
and find a comfortable place to sit. Look around and ask yourself:
Where and how is energy being used? What forms of energy are being
consumed, and what work is that energy doing? Notice the details of
buildings, cars, buses, streetlights, and so on; notice also the
activities of the people around you. What kinds of occupations do
these people have, and how do they use energy in their work? Try to
follow some of the strands of the web of relationships between
energy, jobs, water, food, heating, construction, goods
distribution, transportation, and maintenance that together keep
the city thriving.

After you have spent at least 20 minutes appreciating energy's role
in the life of this city, imagine what the scene you are viewing
would look like if there were 10 percent less energy available.
What substitutions would be necessary? What choices would people
make? What work would not get done? Now imagine the scene with 25
percent less energy available; with 50 percent less; with 75
percent less.


Assuming that the peak in global oil production occurs in the
period from 2006 to 2015 and that there is an average two percent
decline in energy available to industrial societies each year
afterward, in your imagination you will have taken a trip into the
future, to perhaps the year 2050.

But how can we be sure that oil will become less abundant?
Petroleum geologists like Colin Campbell (formerly with Texaco and
Amoco) point to simple facts like these: Oil discovery in the US
peaked in the 1930s; oil production peaked roughly forty years
later. Since 1970, the US has had to import more oil nearly every
year in order to make up for its shortfall from domestic
production. The oil business started in America in the late
nineteenth century, and the US is the most-explored region on the
planet: more oil wells have been drilled in the lower-48 US than in
all other countries combined. Thus, America's experience with oil
will eventually be repeated elsewhere.

Global Discovery of Oil Global discovery of oil peaked in the
1960s. Since production curves must eventually mirror discovery
curves, global oil production will doubtless peak at some point in
the foreseeable future. When, exactly? According to many informed
estimates, the peak should occur around 2010, give or take a few
years.

When the global peak in oil production is reached, there will still
be plenty of petroleum in the ground - as much as has been
extracted up to the present, or roughly one trillion barrels. But
every year from then on it will be difficult or impossible to pump
as much as the year before.

Clearly, we will need to find substitutes for oil. But an analysis
of the current energy alternatives is not reassuring. Solar and
wind are renewable, but we now get less than one percent of our
national energy budget from them; rapid growth will be necessary if
they are to replace even a significant fraction of the energy
shortfall from post-peak oil. Nuclear power is dogged by the
unsolved problem of radioactive waste disposal. Hydrogen is not an
energy source at all, but an energy carrier: it takes more energy
to produce a given quantity of hydrogen than the hydrogen itself
will yield. Moreover, nearly all commercially produced hydrogen now
comes from natural gas - whose production will peak only a few
years after oil begins its historic decline. Unconventional
petroleum resources - so-called "heavy oil," "oil sands," and
"shale oil" - are plentiful but extremely costly to extract, a fact
that no technical innovation is likely to change.

The hard math of energy resource analysis yields an uncomfortable
but unavoidable prospect: even if efforts are intensified now to
switch to alternative energy sources, after the oil peak industrial
nations will have less energy available to do useful work -
including the manufacturing and transporting of goods, the growing
of food, and the heating of homes.

To be sure, we should be investing in alternatives and converting
our industrial infrastructure to use them. If there is any solution
to industrial societies' approaching energy crises, renewables plus
conservation will provide it. Yet in order to achieve a smooth
transition from non-renewables to renewables, decades will be
needed - and we do not have decades before the peaks in the
extraction rates of oil and natural gas occur. Moreover, even in
the best case, the transition will require the massive shifting of
investment from other sectors of the economy (such as the military)
toward energy research and conservation. And the available
alternatives will likely be unable to support the kinds of
transportation, food, and dwelling infrastructure we now have; thus
the transition will entail an almost complete redesign of
industrial societies.

Global Energy Resources The likely economic consequences of the
energy downturn are enormous. All human activities require energy -
which physicists define as "the capacity to do work." With less
energy available, less work can be done - unless the efficiency of
the process of converting energy to work is raised at the same rate
as energy availability declines. It will therefore be essential,
over the next few decades, for all economic processes to be made
more energy-efficient. However, efforts to improve efficiency are
subject to diminishing returns, and so eventually a point will be
reached where reduced energy availability will translate to reduced
economic activity. Given the fact that our national economy is
based on the assumption that economic activity must grow
perpetually, the result is likely to be a recession with no bottom
and no end.


The consequences for global food production will be no less dire.
Throughout the twentieth century, food production expanded
dramatically in country after country, with virtually all of this
growth attributable to energy inputs. Without fuel-fed tractors and
petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, it is
doubtful that crop yields can be maintained at current levels.

The oil peak will also impact international relations. Resource
conflicts are nothing new: pre-state societies often fought over
agricultural land, fishing or hunting grounds, horses, cattle,
waterways, and other resources. Most of the wars of the twentieth
century were also fought over resources - in many cases, oil. But
those wars took place during a period of expanding resource
extraction; the coming decades of heightened competition for fading
energy resources will likely see even more frequent and deadly
conflicts. The US - as the world's largest energy consumer, the
center of global industrial empire, and the holder of the most
powerful store of weaponry in world history - will play a pivotal
role in shaping the geopolitics of the new century. To many
observers, it appears that oil interests are already at the heart
of the present administration's geopolitical strategy.


There is much that individuals and communities can do to prepare
for the energy crunch. Anything that promotes individual
self-reliance (gardening, energy conservation, and voluntary
simplicity) will help. But the strategy of individualist
survivalism will offer only temporary and uncertain refuge during
the energy down-slope. True individual and family security will
come only with community solidarity and interdependence. Living in
a community that is weathering the downslope well will enhance
personal chances of surviving and prospering far more than will
individual efforts at stockpiling tools or growing food.

Meanwhile, nations must adopt radical energy conservation measures,
invest in renewable energy research, support sustainable local food
systems instead of giant biotech agribusiness, adopt no-growth
economic and population policies, and strive for international
resource cooperation agreements.

These suggestions describe a fundamental change of direction for
industrial societies - from the larger, faster, and more
centralized, to the smaller, slower, and more locally-based; from
competition to cooperation; and from boundless growth to
self-limitation.

If such recommendations were taken seriously, they could lead to a
world a century from now with fewer people using less energy per
capita, all of it from renewable sources, while enjoying a quality
of life perhaps enviable by the typical industrial urbanite of
today. Human inventiveness could be put to the task, not of making
ways to use more resources, but of expanding artistic satisfaction,
finding just and convivial social arrangements, and deepening the
spiritual experience of being human. Living in smaller communities,
people would enjoy having more control over their lives. Traveling
less, they would have more of a sense of rootedness, and more of a
feeling of being at home in the natural world. Renewable energy
sources would provide some conveniences, but not nearly on the
scale of fossil-fueled industrialism.

This will not, however, be an automatic outcome of the energy
decline. Such a happy result can only come about through
considerable effort.


There are many hopeful indications that a shift toward
sustainability is beginning. But there are also discouraging signs
that large political and economic institutions will resist change
in that direction. Therefore much depends upon the public coming to
understand the situation, taking personal steps, and demanding
action from local and national governments.

Richard Heinberg, a journalist and educator, is a member of the
core faculty of New College of California, where he teaches a
program on Culture, Ecology, and Sustainable Community. This
article is adapted from his book, The Party's Over: Oil, War, and
the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society Publishers, March
2003).

http://www.museletter.com/partys-over.html


See also: www.peakoil.net/iwood2003/OGJ/ASPO.html

and http://www.PostCarbon.org

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