Evolutionary psychology and peak oil: A Malthusian inspired "heads up" for humanity. -- by Dr. Michael E. Mills
"Oil peaking will be catastrophic, beyond anything I have seen... We are about to drive the car over the cliff and say, `Oh my God, What have we done?'" -- Robert L. Hirsch, US Department of Energy consultant.
Evolutionary scientists are aware of the concept of ecological "carrying capacity," and Malthus' application of these ideas to human populations. Malthus wrote:
"It is an obvious truth, which has been taken notice of by many writers, that population must always be kept down to the level of the means of subsistence; but no writer that the Author recollects has inquired particularly into the means by which this level is effected..." -- Thomas Malthus,1798
Klein reported that in 1944, 20 reindeer were brought to St. Matthew Island. Initially there were abundant food sources, and the reindeer population increased dramatically. There were no predators to cull the population.
On St. Matthew Island, about 20 years after they were first introduced, the reindeer had overshot the food carrying capacity of the island, and there was a sudden, massive die-off. About 99% of the reindeer died of starvation.
As shown in the graph below, this is a general phenomenon. All species suffer population collapse or species extinction if they overshoot and degrade the carrying capacity of their ecology.
Another typical population collapse scenario is noted in the graph below. This is the population graph for yeast cells in a 10% sugar solution. Note that their population first explodes exponentially, and is then followed by population die-off as the finite nutrients are exhausted and their own waste products pollute their environment.
Population Growth and Decline of Yeast Cells in a 10% Sugar Solution
Source: http://dieoff.org/page137.htm Price, D. (1995). Energy and Human Evolution. Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary tudies, 16, 301-19. Growth of yeast in a 10% sugar solution (After Dieter, 1962:45). The fall of the curve is slowed by cytolysis, which recycles nutrients from dead cells.
This is how yeast turns grape juice into wine. The next time you say “cheers” over a glass of wine, remember that you are drinking the waste products (alcohol) of a collapsed yeast colony with poor ecological management skills!
The primary question is this:
Are humans smarter than yeast?
The fate of humans on Easter Island suggests, well, perhaps not.
When the first humans arrived on the island, there were abundant resources to support the small population. The human population increased dramatically. There were no predators to cull the population. The population continued to grow until it eventually overshot the island carrying capacity.
After overshoot, most of the population starved. Apparently, they even turned on each other, sometimes resorting to cannibalism.
Of course, the entire earth can also be viewed as a finite "island" with some resources that are finite and that are being rapidly depleted by a human population explosion.
The graphs above suggests that humans, like the reindeer, yeast, and Easter Islanders, will eventually overshoot our planetary carrying capacity, and suffer the Malthusian consequences.
But... won't scientific advances and technology save us from ecological overshoot?
Raymond Kurzweil has argued in his book The Singularity is Near, that scientific knowledge, like populations, grows geometrically too. He believes it will allow us solve problems of ecological carrying capacity, cure disease and aging, and solve the problem of energy depletion. He is optimistic that technology will help us overcome population overshoot and collapse. For example, computers will become increasingly powerful, as noted in the exponential growth of computing power, below:
With respect to energy, Kurzweil predicts in his article Expect Exponential Progress that "the power we are generating from solar is doubling every two years; at that rate, it will be able to meet all energy needs within 20 years."
Who will win the Malthusian "overshoot" / Kurzweilian "singularity" final human race of the 21st Century?
So, we have two opposing, exponentially increasing trends. One could lead to ecological overshoot and collapse; the other could lead to scientific/technological solutions to these problems.
Which will arrive first? Ecological overshoot and collapse (Malthus), or a knowledge singularity (Kurzweil)?
No one knows.
Malthus vs. Kurzweil
But, we probably won't have to wait long to find out. One of these two scenarios will likely occur within the next several decades. But, which one?
Generally it is healthy to be optimistic. But optimism can be deadly if it produces a Pollyannaish denial of real problems. If we ignore problems by assuming "someone else" will take care of it, or that the "market" or "technological breakthroughs" will always come to the rescue, we may be more likely to get a rude Malthusian smack down later.
One of the most challenging problems that must be solved soon is that of oil depletion. Technological civilization runs on energy.
Peak Oil
One of the most critical finite energy resources are fossil fuels, which provide a cheap, dense source of energy to power technological/industrial civilization.
"Peak oil" isthe point when 1/2 of extractable world oil has been extracted.
A related concept is "peak oil production," when oil production starts an inexorable decline, causing oil prices to increase. Here, the term "peak oil" will refer to peak oil production.
The amount of oil produced by a particular oil field, or a region, shows a regular pattern: first oil production increases, then it reaches a peak, and, finally, as the oil field(s) begins to dry up, oil production starts an inexorable decline.
This "bell curve" pattern of oil production, called the Hubbert curve, is also true for world oil production as a whole.
Below, the countries in red are already past their oil production peak; those in green have yet to pass peak (but most will in the next 5 or 10 years).
The graphs below suggest that we may be on a "bumpy pleatau" for a while before we start down the inexorable down slope of the bell shaped Hubbert curve.
Source: TheOilDrum.com
Below are some projected worst, mean, and best case scenarios for future world oil production.
Peak Oil Production: Bell Shaped Curve of World Oil Production
(Graph of Actual and Projected World Oil Production Source: Dr. C. J. Campbell)
What Happens When World Oil Demand Outstrips Production?
Price increases. Very, very unpleasant price increases. Prices that never go down again -- that always trend up.
We are close to, or at, bothpeak oil production and oil demand/production crossover inflection points now.
And, no combination of renewable energy sources can scale up quickly, or provide anywhere near to the energy equivalent of oil.
I was a firm believer in solar, wind, and geothermal energy until a few years ago, and I still believe they will help individuals. But no combination of these "renewable" technologies will make a notable difference at the level of 300 million Americans, much less the 6.5 people in the world. ...No alternatives scale, and we're out of time. We made the important decision about energy policy at two critical junctures in American history: (1) shortly after WWII, when we created the interstate highway system and the suburbs to build a way of life that had no future because it relied completely on ready supplies of a finite resource, and (2) in 1980, when we dismissed conservation at irrelevant..." -- Professor Guy McPherson (see this link)
Here is the key point, and quite a scary one, of which most people are unaware. As of now:
There is no quickly scalable and energy-equivalent substitute for oil.
Take a moment to re-read and digest that last sentence (and its implications).
There is no quickly scalable and energy-equivalent substitute for oil, in termsof its energy density, EROEI (energy returned on energy invested), transportability, safety, range, infrastructure, and cost. This poses very grave economic and social risks starting now, and exacerbating over the next several decades.
Oil is energy dense; renewable sources of energy are not
Energy equivalents of 1 cubic mile of oil (CMO).
In one year the entire world produces about 1 cubic mile of oil (2006 data). It would take 50 years of energy production by each alternative energy source above to accumulate the equivalent energy in 1 cubic mile of oil.
To produce the equivalent amount of of the energy provided by oil in one year would take:
200 Three Gorges Dams 2,600 Nuclear Power Plants 5,200 Coal Fired Plants (not good for global warming...) 1,642,500 Wind Turbines 4,562,500,000 Solar Panels
...additional factors will likely further exacerbate the problem:
1. China and India are now growing massive middle classes.
They want cars, and this desire will substantially drive up the worldwide demand for oil. Car sales in China are up more than 800% since 2000 (source).
2. As noted above, current renewable energy sources are far less "energy dense" than fossil fuels, and they are not rapidly scalable.
"No combination of renewable energy systems have the potential to generate more than a fraction of the power now being generated by fossil fuels." -- Jay Hanson
"In our own day, we must eventually move to lower grade energy resources as we slowly run out of oil. Therefore, we might expect the transition from oil to oil alternatives to be a decisively less successful energy transition than previous energy transitions in history, since all the previous transitions were from low grade to high grade energy resources, and the coming oil transition is from a high energy resource of oil to lower grade energy resources." -- Professor. Douglas Reynolds, oil and energy economist
If someone, somewhere, comes up with a source of power that is safe, inexpensive, and for all intents and purposes inexhaustible, then we, the Chinese, the Indians, and everyone else on the planet can keep on truckin’. Barring that, the car of the future may turn out to be no car at all. -- Elizabeth Kolbert, Running on Fumes, The New Yorker, 11/5/07
3. Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI), or "net energy," is falling.
The real underlying problem is not peak oil, but declining "net energy" or "EROEI," for oil.
This is one of the most essential peak oil concepts to understand. It doesn't matter how much oil is in the ground -- what matters is how expensive it is to get it (as well as the flow rate).
To get 100 barrels of oil in 1930, it took only 1 barrel of oil energy. In 1970 the ratio had dropped to about 30:1. Now that ratio has fallen to about 10:1. Once this ratio falls to 1:1, it will take more than one barrel of oil to extract one barrel of oil. Game over. (More info here and here; also see "Why EROI Matters" by Professor Charles Hall, and Net Energy and Jevons' Paradox, John Michael Greer.)
More important than peak oil is "peak net energy."
Note in the following charts how rapidly the oil EROEI decline comes near the end.
The Net Energy Cliff for Oil
Source: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3800
A smoothed look at this "net energy cliff" for oil
"If for example, we are now at 8:1 and the rate of change is 3.5% (cost doubling every 20 years) then in 20 years we will be a 4:1 and in 40 years we will be at 2:1. Perhaps we should title this curve the 'Death Curve" or the "Blindside Curve"." Source: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3800
Graphic from Energy Return on Investment - Towards a Consistent Framework, by Mulder, K. and Hagens, N.:
A technical explanation:
"The total 'resource' in the above graphic is the area A+B+C+D. It directly requires D energy to extract A+B+C+D energy. Extraction and distribution also requires indirect costs (like employees driving to work, health insurance, steel for the drillpipes, sandwich meat, etc.) This is energy cost C. As the scale of resource extraction increases, the ratio of A/(C+D) declines. Though conventional economics might not have done so, we also included cost B, which is the environmental externality costs of increased extraction. Once the scale of extraction reaches the point between A and B on the X axis, it takes more energy to produce the marginal unit than the marginal unit is worth. The 'resource' is still in the ground but is energetically unprofitable to produce. If at this point, (assuming one values the environmental tier B), an energy company uses its own stocks of energy to continue production, they do so at an energy loss, and would be better of selling or using their stored energy for other purposes."
When will ultimate net oil capacity be reached?
Total domestic U.S. oil projection (EIA) in mbpd (black) with sensitivity on net available to society (green). Could oil net energy go to zero by 2022?
As the cost of energy rises, the cost of everything else made with oil and oil energy (like building materials) also rises. (More info here.)
6. Oil hording.
Once it becomes clear that world oil production is on an inexorable decline, and that oil prices are on an ever upward trend, oil hording will begin. Some oil may simply not be for sale, at any price. (See this article.)
Without the quick development of dense, renewable and rapidly scalable energy sources, we may be in for a very difficult ride ahead. If we don't act now, oil may be to modern industrial/technological civilization what trees wereto the Easter Islanders, what grape juice was to the yeast colony, and what grass was to the St. Mathew Island reindeer.
Cheap, abundant energy is the oxygen of modern civilization.
There is no substitute for energy. The whole edifice of modern society is built upon it. It is not "just another commodity" but the precondition of all commodities, a basic factor equal with air, water and earth. -- E. F. Schumacher (1973)
When critical resources are decreasing, game theorists call this situation a negative sum game. Such "shrinking overall pie" situations can often lead to intense conflict, unless social structures are developed to help to enable cooperation, and, in the case of peak oil, a massive effort to develop renewable energy is started immediately.
Whether we will have enough time at that point to make the transition to renewable energy is the question.
So, what does this mean for me? For example, what will a gallon of gasoline likely cost in the future?
Ok, let's bring this home to what we all understand -- gasoline prices.
Below is one possible future price scenario for a gallon of gas. Of course, it would be surprising if the gas price projections in the table below were exactly on the mark each year, but the general upward trend in prices is likely accurate.
Think how your life (and the economy) might change in 2012, just a few years from now, if a gallon of gas costs over $17 a gallon?
As noted in the graphic below, oil production growth is highly correlated with world GDP growth. A decline in oil production will likely lead to a corresponding decline in world GDP.
"How fast does the economy decline as oil production declines? In his latest report, drawing on various sources, Robert Hirsch reasons that the correlation is 1:1. A 2.5% annual decline rate will shrink the global economy by 25% in 10 years. Other reports substantiate that ratio.
...our GDP will decline at approximately the rate oil declines.
...With the annual oil decline rate expected to range between 2% and 5% (see Hirsch, 2008) and the Oakland Peak Oil report using 2.6%, we will have a massive unemployment and homelessness problem on our hands. It also seems reasonable to expect that a great deal of wealth will be destroyed during the decline, as is happening now in the current credit crunch but on a larger scale."
As noted earlier, a shrinking economy is a "negative sum game" (similar to the game of "musical chairs"). Such situations typically lead to intense conflicts over resources (and resource wars).
Why aren't we getting a "heads up" about peak oil?
Brief answer: Governments and corporations are not in the business of communicating bad news to their constituents (although ethically they should).
The first "heads up" was by geologist M. King Hubbert, in 1956. He warned that oil production in the lower US 48 states would peak in 1970. In 1957, Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover gave a speech in which the warned about the future decline in fossil fuel resources, and he stressed the need to tell the younger generation. However, there were no warnings about peak oil from the government.
U.S. oil production did peak in 1970, as Hubbert predicted. He also warned that world oil production would peak sometime around 2000. Given that Hubbert had already gotten one prediction right, you might think that the government would warn us about the predicted 2000 world oil production peak. They didn't.
From 1970, when U.S. oil production peaked, until today, when world oil production is peaking, instead of warning us about peak oil, the U.S. became increasingly dependent on foreign oil. In 1980, the Carter Doctrine asserted that the U.S. would intervene militarily if our oil supply from the mid-east was threatened. President Carter did make a bit of an effort to warn us in his July 15th, 1979 "Crisis of Confidence" speech. In this fire-side speech, Carter warned that the 1979 oil crisis was the "moral equivalent of war." He also said: "We believed that our nation's resources were limitless until 1973, when we had to face a growing dependence on foreign oil." Note that he didn't explain why our oil resources were depleting.
President Carter set the following national goals in that speech (goals, which in retrospect, were a stunning failure):
I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation
...To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun.
I propose the creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation I will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America's energy security.
...will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.
In a televised televised speech on April 18, 1977, Carter said:
Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.
...The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation.
Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war" -- except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.
Here is a video of this speech:
Again, note that President Carter never really explicitly mentioned the words "peak oil," or the general problem of world oil depletion, or the declining world oil EROEI.
Had the real, underlying problem been clearly articulated back then, might things have turned out differently 30 years later? What if in 1977, President Carter had mentioned that oil production in the U.S. had peaked nine years ago, and we were on a irreversible decline? What if he had mentioned that Hubbert had forecasted that we had only about 20 years before world oil production was projected to peak?
Unfortunately, President Carter never mentioned peak oil. Neither have subsequent presidents.
In 1993, President Clinton, along with the heads of the major U.S. car companies, launched the Partnership for the New Generation of Vehicles. By 1997, they had produced an 72 mpg concept "supercar" that would be a diesel-hybrid combination. After a billion dollars of government money, in 2000 the concept cars were wheeled out. But none were actually sold to consumers. Why?
In 2002 the Bush Administration scrapped the project.
In her article Running on Fumes, Elizabeth Kolbert reviews this project, and writes:
"Detroit has to change. Detroit won't change. The two statements seem incompatible, and yet here we are. The Big Three still claim to be on the verge of introducing revolutionary new technologies—"Imagine: A daily commute without a drop of gas," a G.M. ad touting a battery-powered car (still in the concept stage) exhorts—even as they continue to fight higher fuel-efficiency standards, on the ground that meeting such standards would be technologically infeasible."
Today, we still aren't we getting a "heads up" from the current U.S. President, or other world leaders. Why?
However, we are getting a heads up, albeit from a very small group of U.S. congressional representatives -- the US congressional Congressional Peak Oil Caucus with representatives Udall and Bartlett. But this issue is so important, it should be coming from the very top national and international leaders.
Is there enough time (and oil) left to make the transition to renewable energy?
In 1977 Barry Commoner wrote in The Politics of Energy that we must begin developing renewable energy now because theremaining oil reserves themselves will be needed to serve as the transitional medium to build a renewable energy infrastructure. That was 30 years ago.
More recently, Dr. Robert Hirsch, in a study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy titled Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management concluded that to avoid serious impacts, a peak oil mitigation crash program must start 20 years before peak oil. We apparently are at peak oil now, and the crash mitigation program has yet to begin.
Again, the critical issue is this: once peak oil and its potential consequences become generally known and accepted, will there be enough time to make the transition to renewable energy sources quickly enough to avoid major economic and social disruptions?
Will the last precious barrels of oil be used to power SUVs, or will they be used to build the renewable energy infrastructure that is needed to avoid an energy famine?
If we do not quickly transition to rapidly scalable and energy dense renewable energy, the predictions made in the following graphs paint some grim scenarios that may play out in this century.
Note in the graph above that the low energy density of current renewable energy sources (in green) result in renewable energy sources barely making a dent in the total energy picture. Surprising, isn't it? (And, disturbing...)
Yes, the graph above suggests that billions of people may have an early, unpleasant demise if the oil (e.g., energy) depletion problem is not solved. Soon.
Personal reactions to Peak Oil:
Denial vs. Catastrophizing
There seems to be a spectrum of reactions to peak oil, especially when first learning about the problem. On one end are the deniers; on the other end of the spectrum are the catastrophizers.
Jews in Germany in 1939 paid a dear price for denial. Those who saw a catastrophe ahead left the country. (The film "Nowhere in Africa," and the book by the same name, is a true story about a Jewish family that decided to uproot themselves from their home in Germany and flee to Africa. Some of their extended family and friends who remained in Germany did not survive.)
On the other end of the spectrum from denial is catastrophizing. Catastrophizing is believing the worst possible situation will happen, and imagining it vividly, to the point of obsession. We all did this as teenagers when we found a pimple on our face and couldn't imagine facing our school mates the next day. We got over it.
But, some didn't. Catasrophizers under the mind control of religious zealots have many times throughout history believed the end of the world was nigh -- and sold all of their possession in their anticipation of their ascension into the rapturous light. It was a bit embarrassing when the target date passed uneventfully. Sometimes they re-set the date. And waited. Sometimes they made it a self-fulfilling prophesy by drinking suicidal or homicidal Kool-aid.
It would be interesting to do a study comparing peak oil catastrophizers vs. peak oil deniers. Most likely there are some personality / developmental background differences there.
Bottom line: the future is very, very hard to predict. However, doing some best estimate risk management is still prudent. My house is unlikely to burn down, but I still buy fire insurance.
First step: Admit to being an "oilcoholic"
As "oilcoholics," we may need something like "an oil addiction 12-step program." The first, step, of course, is admitting as a society that we have a serious problem.
Let's all say it out loud, together:
"I am an oilcoholic."
(Ahh... don't you feel better, already?)
Stages of Oil Depletion Grief
Further, we may only be in the first stage of oil depletion grief, which may generally follow this progression:
1. Denial. "Peak oil? Baloney! There's lots of oil left. No worries, mate."
2. Anger. "It's the damn ________'s (oil companies, governments, OPEC, etc.) fault that oil prices are going up. They're gouging us. The bastards!"
3. Bargaining. "But what about new oil discovery technologies? What about biofuels? I can keep my SUV, right? Someone, or some new discovery will save us ...right?"
4. Depression. "Damn... no renewable energy source is as energy dense as oil, or quickly scalable... Holy crap. We are _________ (in for a rough ride, doomed, etc.)"
5. Acceptance. "Ok, even if we are in for a rough ride, what I can do? What can I ask my government representatives to do? How can I make a difference? How can I prepare? How can we support research into potential technological breakthroughs?"
What can evolutionary psychology, and psychological science in general, offer to help problems of ecological overshoot?
Can humans be "smarter than yeast?" Can we be the only species that can successfully avoid ecological overshoot and collapse? These are psychological problems -- are we psychologically sophisticated enough to manage our own collective behavior?
Evolved adaptations (including psychological ones) are all solutions to problems of inclusive fitness in ancestral environments. Your "inclusive fitness" refers to the number of genes you project into the next generation via reproduction and by helping those who share your genes (close kin).
Evolution cannot look forward; it cannot anticipate what it has never encountered. We have no psychological adaptations to avoid ecological overshoot. In fact, we have just the opposite.
Here's the sobering rub:
Inclusive fitness is always relative to others; it is not absolute.
That is, nature doesn't say,
"Have 2 kids (or help 4 full sibs), and then you can stop. Good job! You did your genetic duty, you avoided contributing to ecological overshoot, and you may pass along now..."
Instead, nature says:
"Out-reproduce your competitors. Your competitors are all of the genes in your species' gene pool that you do not share. If the average inclusive fitness score is 3, then you go for 4... "
In other words, our psychological adaptations are designed to not just "keep up with the Joneses" but to "do better than the Joneses." This is in whatever terms that increase inclusive fitness -- number of children, and things that have led to them, such as status, wives (for men), resource acquisition and control, etc.
An unfortunately corollary of this that one can also increase one's inclusive fitness by reducing the inclusive fitness of others. That potentially makes murder, genocide, warfare, and other nasty stuff potential genetic pay offs.
So, what are we up against to avoid ecological overshoot? Nothing less tenacious than human nature. Hopeless? Not sure yet.
If we are to have a chance to be "smarter than yeast", we have to "fool Mother Nature." How? By fully understanding psychological adaptations so that we can "out-smart" them.
In fact, it happens all the time today.
We can enjoy films, TV and photos because they were not part of our ancestral environment. When we watch a TV sitcom such as "Friends" we are fooled into thinking the characters really are our friends. We may say hello if we see Jennifer Aniston on the street (she was in our living room, after all). To her, of course, we are an intruding stranger who she has never met. We cry and laugh at movies, despite the fact that we know what we are watching is just light projected through film, the actors are reading from a script, and there is a sound guy holding a boom mic just out of eye sight. Just as we are fooled by perceptual illusions, we can also be fooled by psychological illusions.
Can we fool our psychological adaptations to help live sustainably on a finite planet? Probably. We need to see the planet as our home, other people as our kin, and the well-being of our children (and their children) as directly tied to our level of present consumption of finite resources and our level of environmental pollution.
Women may have a special role to play. They need to be prepped to find "ecological men" of limited resource consumption really, really sexy. Unfortunately, sexual selection has designed women to generally go for "alpha males" -- high status / high consumption / high resource control men (in ancestral times, it helped women's children survive and thrive). Men are adapted to do their darned best to give women what they want, or face reproductive oblivion.
However, if tomorrow women found the guy behind the wheel of a Prius irresistible, while they sexually rejected the guy driving an SUV, what do you think would happen to Prius sales?
Powerful media / advertising messages probably could help to fool our psychological adaptations. (This is called "social advertising" or "social marketing.")
Whether those who are currently powerful will expend the resources to accomplish this, and whether we will have enough time to do so, again, there is the rub.
For some more of my thoughts regarding these issues, see:
My PowerPoint slides from my talk presented at the 2005 LMU Bellarmine Forum: "Why A Sense of Global Community Needed to Survive the Coming World-wide Energy Crisis: Peak Oil, Ecological Carrying Capacity, and the Perilous Phase Transition to Renewable Energy Sources."
Peak Moment TV a television series emphasizing positive responses to energy decline and climate change through local community action. Also available at Global Public Media
Peak OIl? ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) -- excellent, balanced presentation. It includes interviews with Colin Campbell, Robert Hirsch, Chris Skrebowski, and others.
Discovery Channel's Addicted to Oilreported by Thomas Friedman (author of "The World is Flat").
Kenneth Deffeyes, author of "Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak," explains his theories and looks at oil alternatives. http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=072705
Lecture by physics professor David Goodstein, author of "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil." Lecture given at Caltech on 10/13/2004: http://today.caltech.edu/theater/list?subset=science(search in list for lecture)
Interview with 'Twilight in the Desert' author Matt Simmons. Are the Saudis running out of oil, and are their reserve estimates accurate? What other sources might help fill the gap? (Originally aired: 06/15/2005) http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=061505
BBC Connections: The Trigger Effect. Excellent program on our interdependence on fragile links between different forms of technology, with a focus on the 1965 New York blackout, and the cascading technological collapses that followed. The film has some quite ironic coincidences, showing the twin towers and an incoming flight with the flight number 911. This is the documentary that prompted the 1996 film by the same name.
DVDs:
History Channel -- Mega Disasters -- Oil Apocalypse (2007)
Matt Savinar on Coast to Coast radio program, November, 2007 (mp3).
Energy Roundtable -- Financial Sense Newshour Features discussions with James Howard Kunstler, author of "The Long Emergency," and Richard Heinberg, author, "Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World." Also, Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Beyond Oil:Current Events, "... we passed the peak on December 16, 2005..."
U.S. National Commission on Energy Policy -- Oil Shockwave report.
On June 23, 2005, a group of nine former White House cabinet and senior national security officials convened to participate in a simulated working group of a White House cabinet. Their task: to advise an American president as the nation grapples with an oil crisis over a seven-month period. As they enter the room, they are unaware of the circumstances or nature of the oil crisis.
The Behavioral Aspects of Peak Oil: Basic Contingencies, by Lyle Grant. Summary at TheOilDrum.com, and full paper (PDF) "Peak Oil as a Behavioral Problem" that appeared in Behavior and Social Issues, 16, 65-88 (2007)
PeakOilBlues.com -- website -- "peak oil aware" psychotherapists who know the stress the dawning awareness of Peak Oil, and who wish to assist others in learning how to transform any frozen or destructive emotional reactions into more proactive, productive responses.
Money Talks " ...our economy fails to charge us the "true cost" of denying future generations the fossil energy they might need to feed themselves 50 years hence."
Earth Clock -- population, etc. http://www.celsias.com/2007/11/04/earth-clock/
Websites related to Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI, EROI, or "net energy" or "exergy") -- one of the most essential concepts to understand with regard to oil and renewable energy:
1. Initially, higher prices for energy and food items and a major recession. 2. Longer term, a decline in economic activity. 3. Transportation difficulties and electrical outages. 4. Possible collapse of the monetary system. 5. Failure of economic assumptions to hold. 6. Changed emphasis to more local production. 7. Reduced emphasis on debt. 8. Reduced emphasis on insurance and pensions. 9. More people will perform manual labor. 10. Resource wars and migration conflicts. 11. Changes in family relationships. 12. Eventual population decline.
Hope for some possible energy "technofixes" (knock on wood that they
arrive in time, are rapidly scalable, have a high EROEI, are renewable, clean and cheap):
If someone, somewhere, comes up with a source of power that is safe, inexpensive, and for all intents and purposes inexhaustible, then we, the Chinese, the Indians, and everyone else on the planet can keep on truckin’. Barring that, the car of the future may turn out to be no car at all. -- Elizabeth Kolbert, Running on Fumes, The New Yorker, 11/5/07
The wiki New Energy Congress reviews the most promising claims for up-and-coming clean, renewable, affordable, reliable energy technologies, in order to come up with a weighted list of recommendations of the best technologies. See, in particular, their Top 100 Technologies. Some of these are controversial (a few might be criticized as outright cranks), while others are scientifically proven and commercially available. See, in particular, the MagLev Wind Power Generator.
WSJ: The World Has Plenty of Oil, By Nansen G. Saleri "Where do reasonable assumptions surrounding peak oil lead us? My view, subjective and imprecise, points to a period between 2045 and 2067 as the most likely outcome."
"Most people assume linearity in environmental processes, but the world is largely non-linear: it's a complex system. An important feature of complex systems is that we don’t know how they work. We don’t understand them except in a general way; we simply interact with them. Whenever we think we understand them, we learn we don’t. Sometimes spectacularly."
Youtube video: Global Warming and Other Catastrophes Humorous (?) look at previous botched predictions of pending world catastrophes in the media (to the soundtrack of REM's "It's the End of the World As We Know It")
"If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored." -- "God's Utility Function" Scientific American (November, 1995), p. 85
