The Great Phase Transition: The Post-Oil Era

[chlamor]

The Great Phase Transition: The Post-oil Era

by  Jorge Figueiredo
www.globalresearch.ca 3 APRIL 2005

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/FIG503A.html

One must now ask: What will happen when the high costs in international transportation threaten the present globalized model of trade and distribution, in which goods have to be transported over distances of thousands of miles?

A tentative answer: there could be a return to the theory — confirmed all over millennia — of the countries seeking self-sufficiency in food production.  This intuitive theory, full of good sense, however, has been brutally destroyed by modern-day capitalism (Cuba, with its post-1989 experience, could then lecture the world).

But will this system have the intelligence, the rationality and the resolve, with a view  to promoting significant changes in social class relations? A return to of food self-sufficiency would mean, by itself, an authentic revolution pertaining to the dominant oligopolistic structures of trade and distribution which prevail in today’s world. We can predict that monopoly capital will ferociously combat such course and do every possible and imaginary effort to prevent the adoption of such route.

<snip>

• In agriculture, we verify that the intensive type (the so-called agribusiness) rests on inputs whose origin lies on oil — that’s the case of nitrogenous fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides, fuel for agromachinery, etc. Consequently, oil scarcity will tend to reduce work productivity and the profitability provided by land. And this would occur more intensely in "fatigued" lands, which have been producing for many generations and whose fertility can only be restored by artificial means. Mankind has been extracting fertilizers from the land almost for 200 years now and discarding them out in the cities sewers.
• In the case of small-scale agriculture the prospect would naturally be less serious in comparison to the first one. However, we still need to know in what way this could produce a sufficient surplus able to restore the losses of intensive agriculture. Propriety relations will certainly have to be altered in order to allow land access to millions of new farmers.

<snip>

For individuals imbued with neoliberal ideology, the predatory actions upon natural resources for the benefit of capital is considered "normal". This way, forests are being irreversibly annihilated at a worldwide level, phreatic freshwater is being exhausted, land and water are being contaminated, fishing grounds are being exhausted by catches that don’t allow for the renewal of the stocks , etc, etc — and oil is being decimated in a barbaric way at the rhythm of 82 million barrels/day (4,1 thousand million tons/year). The new trend in the USA is the so-called Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), potent monsters that devour gas at a scale never witnessed before.

<snip>

Another type of negationist thinking pertains to those who bear a boundless faith in technological progress. Such type of negationism is more frequent among those who know nothing about science, but who, so to speak, rely on science to resolve the problem. This kind of negationism is visible at the political level, among politicians, mainly heads of State and heads of government.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/FIG503A.html

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. this could have easily been avoided

Carter started conservation measures, which, if kept up, would very likely have resulted in less dependence on oil.

In my neighborhood, most of my friends farm organically. One neighbor raises and sells heirloom, open pollinated plants (read not hybrid, so you can save the seeds). Most live in houses wired both AC and DC so it won't be hard to go off the grid. But even we will be hit by the repercussions of the folly of not doing something about this sooner.

[mhr]

2. Agree With Your Sentiments - Some Of Us Live In The Concrete Jungles

And Urban badlands of large cities.

Growing my own food - not possible.

Out my front door is concrete.

Out my back door is concrete.

No terrace or porch to speak of.

I can't even imagine trying to till up the concrete.

[hatrack]

14. You may want to check into community gardens in your area

Since I don't know where you live, I can't really give specific advice. However, there are lots and lots of community gardens in cities across the country.

In many cases, they emphasize teaching people how to grow and save their own food. In nearly all cases, in exchange for your work you get a plot of your own to raise whatever you want, or you can take X amount of whatever is produced.

Your local extension service or garden store should have information on programs like this.

[phantom power]

6. The problem is...

300 million people can't all "get off the grid". It's just not possible. Take away the "grid", and 250 million people will probably starve, or kill each other fighting over resources.

[Coastie for Truth]

3. I have some problems with the Figueiredo and Kuntsler Scenarios

First off - we are not going to run up against a brick wall with respect to crude oil. It will get scarcer (worse deposits in worse places where the crude is more expensive to refine). As a thoroughly indoctrinated techie of the Stan Ovshinsky - Amory Lovins persuasion, I buy into the scenario in Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth S. Deffeyes. The Deffeyes model (which is also the Ovshinsky and Lovins models) is that as crude oil becomes more expensive only its "highest and best uses" will be justified. Or, "at $125/bbl it's too expensive to burn."

When you realize that the combined total of

1. The agricultural non-fuel uses of petroleum (nitrogen fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides), and
2. The specialty chemical uses of petroleum (plastics, pharmaceuticals)

is under 15% of the petroleum drilled - we could, theoretically kill off 85% of our petroleum production - or pay well over $125/bbl (and it would still be "cheap").

Also, the nitrogen fertilizers do not come from the carbon - but from "Haber Nitrogen Fixation" of the "byproduct hydrogen." This byproduct hydrogen could be obtained the same way we will obtain hydrogen for transportation -- electrolysis of water by nuclear generated electricity.

I do not agree with Figueiredo's observation that

Demographic consequences are also a distinct possibility, both at the level of the population growth rate as well as pertaining to the spatial distribution of population — namely a de-urbanization, with a return to the countryside in order to farm the land. The present proportion in developed countries, in which 10% of the population feeds the remnant 90%, in all likelihood cannot be maintained. More people will have to dedicate themselves to farming

We will "farm smarter" rather then "farming harder".

I do agree with Figueiredo's observation that

Industry will be directly affected, naturally beginning by the most "energivorous". The obsolescence of some parts of the world’s industrial park constitutes a strong possibility, as well as the dumping and discarding of many of them (oil refineries, factories of conventional vehicles, etc). We might see the emergence of smaller industries more self-sufficient in the use of energy, following the lines advocated by Schumacher. Therefore, it will not represent a return to the historical past because now mankind benefits from a patrimony of acquired knowledge that can be put to the service of producing in new moulds (electronics devours less energy and can be at the service of production). This process would most certainly lead to the development of renewable forms of energy (solar thermal and photovoltaic, wind-power, tides, waves, geothermic, hydroelectric, biogas and biomass, etc), of natural gas (whose Hubbert’s Curve appears more linear, more extensive in time and with a less defined peak) and of nuclear.

We will see "manufacturing smarter" and "manufacturing smarter things" - just compare last years CRT displays and Vacuum picture tube televisions with today's flat panel liquid crystal technology - for an energy saving in excess of 97%.

But I do not agree with Figueiredo's observation that

Less certain are the prospects of the hydrogen, since the latter is not a primary energy source (Its advocates, like Rifkin and the European Union, have not yet explained where it can be extracted from at sustainable costs when natural gas and oil come to an end — there’s also an energy waste in order to obtain hydrogen from water!)

Hydrogen is not energy - it is a means of moving chemical energy around from one place (electrolysis of water by nuclear power generated electricity at a massive central station) to another place (local village fuel cell to generate electricity locally for local consumption --- this is my latest project).

I am also becoming a convert to Berkeley's Stu Cohen and his "Urban Land Use Coalition" that "personal motor vehicles" are an endangered species - and that we have to return to pedestrian friendly urban communities where all of life's necessities are within walking distance (as Stu would say with a twinkle in his eye "Like the San Francisco Bay Area's urban cores.")

Personally and professionally, I do regard Figueiredo's comment

"Another type of negationist thinking pertains to those who bear a boundless faith in technological progress. Such type of negationism is more frequent among those who know nothing about science, but who, so to speak, rely on science to resolve the problem. This kind of negationism is visible at the political level, among politicians, mainly heads of State and heads of government."

as being incorrect -- as one who has the dirty and cracked fingernails of an old fashion engineer whose career started when FORTRAN was a gleam in Backus' eye and Fourier Transforms required pencil and paper (before "MatLab for Windows"):-)

[mhr]

4. Well, If You Buy Into This

"I am also becoming a convert to Berkeley's Stu Cohen and his "Urban Land Use Coalition" that "personal motor vehicles" are an endangered species - and that we have to return to pedestrian friendly urban communities where all of life's necessities are within walking distance (as Stu would say with a twinkle in his eye "Like the San Francisco Bay Area's urban cores.")"

Why do you have a problem with the new urbanism espoused by Kunstler?

[Coastie for Truth]

8. I agree with Stu, and with Kuntsler where he agrees with Stu

but, based on the excerpts from Kuntsler's The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century (which hasn't shipped yet - I have pre-ordered from Amazon), I have to disagree with the scenarios he postulates where he diverges from Stu Cohen.

As an engineer who helped bring EV and hybrid cars and fuel cells and photovoltaics from the "gleam in the inventor's eye" state to the "ready for the venture capital markets and manufacturing engineers" state - I have to say that I find Stu Cohen's political scenarios and the scenarios in Ken Deffeyes' Beyond Oil : The View from Hubbert's Peak more realistic and believable the the scenarios postulated by Kuntsler.

Maybe it's just my bias and prejudice as a research engineer.

[ixion]

5. I'm going to have to disagree with a couple points you made

From what I gather, these are your solutions to the problems we will face:

Point 1:


We will "farm smarter" rather then "farming harder".


- and -

Point 2:


We will see "manufacturing smarter" and "manufacturing smarter things"



There is no good precedent for humans every doing anything smarter. If anything, history indicates that, collectively, we do the same things over and over and over again, rather like someone with obsessive/compulsive behaviour disorder -- expecting a new outcome from the same action.

The fact that war is still considered the 'ultimate' response to redress of grievances is evidence of this.

It seems to me that you're giving a great deal of credit to those people who are in charge of implementing these 'smarter' changes, namely politicians. Historically speaking, I would always bet against these people making the 'smart' decision.

The other facet to these 'smart' solutions is that it takes energy (read: oil) to fabricate the materials for these better solutions that we don't have yet. Hydrogen is a great example. From what I've read, the hydrogen extraction process is running at a net energy loss. That is, it takes more energy to extract than is produced by the process. While this may not be true across the board, it does point out an interesting paradox: many of these smarter implementations are based on the notion that the current infrastructure is still in place and fully-operational. The cost of oil is already trickling down through the various industries, and pressure will increase, not decrease, and these smarter solutions are still only a gleam in the inventor's eye.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm all for smarter solutions. I would love to see it. My point is this: if history is any indication, we won't address this issue from a collective standpoint until it becomes critical, at which point it will be too late.

[Coastie for Truth]

7. I most strongly disagree

First some background reading--

1. They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine by Harold Evans

2. Engineering in History by Richard Shelton Kirby

3. A History of Mechanical Inventions by Abbott Payson Usher

4. The Existential Pleasures of Engineering by Samuel C. Florman

5. A LIFE OF DISCOVERY (Biography of Michael Faraday) by James Hamilton

and on the practical side (closer to the theme of the thread)
a. SMART ENVIRONMENTS by Diane J. Cook and Sajal K. Das

I would have to take strong exception to your statement that-- "There is no good precedent for humans every doing anything smarter. If anything, history indicates that, collectively, we do the same things over and over and over again, rather like someone with obsessive/compulsive behaviour disorder -- expecting a new outcome from the same action." which is clearly contrary to the observed history of human endeavor in, for example, agriculture, manufacturing, communications, and transportation.

As to your statement that "The other facet to these 'smart' solutions is that it takes energy (read: oil) to fabricate the materials for these better solutions that we don't have yet. Hydrogen is a great example. From what I've read, the hydrogen extraction process is running at a net energy loss. That is, it takes more energy to extract than is produced by the process. While this may not be true across the board, it does point out an interesting paradox: many of these smarter implementations are based on the notion that the current infrastructure is still in place and fully-operational. The cost of oil is already trickling down through the various industries, and pressure will increase, not decrease, and these smarter solutions are still only a gleam in the inventor's eye."

1. You stated that "...t takes energy (read: oil) to fabricate the materials for these better solutions that we don't have yet."


Energy is NOT identically equal to oil.

2. You stated that "Hydrogen is a great example. From what I've read, the hydrogen extraction process is running at a net energy loss. That is, it takes more energy to extract than is produced by the process."

Hydrogen is not energy. It is a "carrier" or "transporter" of energy. We put electrical energy into water to get hydrogen and oxygen. We recover the hydrogen and put it into a an alloy (that's all a metal hydride alloy electrode in an NiMH battery is -- an alloy for storing hydrogen) and we release the hydrogen at another point where we want to more conveniently use the energy that we get from recombining the hydrogen with oxygen - either by burning it or electrolytically recombining it at a fuel cell electrode. We "get back" about 80% of the energy we put in. That's the Third Law of Thermodynamics.

BTW - compare the electricity consumed by a conventional television set or convention CRT computer display -- and compare it to the energy consumed by a flat panel display (tv or computer display) - almost a 100 fold difference.

Or compare the power consumption of an early 1980's IBM PC with the power consumed by a modern laptop -- remember you are comparing an 8088 processor with a 2.4 G processor -- and far less energy is consumed.

Or compare the fuel burn per passenger mile of a modern jet airliner with the fuel burn of the highest end prop airliner - the DC7 and the Constellation.

My first car was a 62 Chevie - lasted 30K miles and burned 14 mpg - my latest car is a Prius.

The issue is not that "these smarter solutions are still only a gleam in the inventor's eye" -- it is a two fold problem:

1. Crude has not gone up high enough to make them cost effective (many of the bio fuels and other alternatives are not cost effective until crude hits $80-$100/bbl on the way up).

2. The venture capital market - having been burned by too many on-line grocers and pet food stores - is not investing in anything.

There are differences in outlook between Deffeyes and Lovins and Ovshinsky and Goodstein on the one hand and Rifkind and Kuntsler on the other. As a PhD engineer who has worked with Lovins and Ovshinsky - I have to come down on the Lovins-Ovshinsky side.

[ixion]

9. A couple points...

1) Thanks for the book references. :-)

2) Your rebuttal examples are out of context of my original premise.

Certainly there have been technological and mechanical innovations. These innovations are generally the result of an individual's efforts. Not exclusively, but more often than not.

My comments about historical precedent are in a collective context, speaking of a reaction by the species to the environment as a whole.

Your work with hydrogen may be the missing link for the next generation's renewable fuel source; but what good is it if that patent is bought up by GE and filed away?

Beta was better than VHS, but look who won that battle of innovations.

MacOS and Unix/Linux are better than M$ Windows, but look who has the most marketshare.

The inventor of Styrofoam® didn't have the vision to see the Earth suffocating in mounds of garbage produced by the revolutionary material.

Humans have amazing powers of conception and the ability to fabricate, but collectively speaking we have almost NO vision whatsoever. If vision were part of our hard-wiring, the Great Civilizations of the past would still be with us today. Some individuals have vision, but they are normally ostracized from their respective communities in their lifetimes.

I'm not denying that there are indivduals who come along and advance common knowledge. I'm saying that collectively humans still act on adolescent impulses and tend to disregard logic and common sense.

That's my opinion, and I'm stickin' to it. ;-)

[Coastie for Truth]

10. Some thoughts on how fast ideas move--

Check out Thomas Friedman's article "It's a Flat World After All" in Sunday's NYTimes magazine at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/03DOMINANCE.html?

Your comment about PC operating systems " MacOS and Unix/Linux are better than M$ Windows, but look who has the most marketshare." is interesting. A little bit of ancient history -- both MacOS and Linux are children of Unix-- and when you get past the home and (very) small business market - the operating system world is all Unix and Unix descendants (including MacOS and Linux) - and when you go to embedded processors - it's totally a Unix/MacOS/Linux world.

Or consider digital cameras- As soon as the 4Meg barrier (price competitive with an entry level 35mm SLR) was crossed, the days of the entry level 35mm SLR were numbered -- and now that the 7 Meg barrier has been crossed, and the 1 hour finishing shops have digital kiosks (another example of rapid diffusion) - the entry level 35mm SLRs and mid level 35mm SLRs are on the road to oblivion.

Or as energy saving flat panel displays have reached approximate price competitiveness with CRT's - they have cleaned up.

Consider that wind turbines are cost competitive with natural gas fired plants -- and that even photovoltaics are cost competitive with that last KWHR generated in an old diesel plant on a hot, humid, Friday in August afternoon. (BTW - the big oil companies wre buying up photovoltaic patents from cash starved academicians through the 80's and 90's - didn't do them much good).

Society moves quickly - when "sold"

[chlamor]

13. Beware Technical Euphoria

The Arrogance of Humanism-David Ehrenfeld
The Technological Society-Jacques Elul
The Myth of the Machine-Lewis Mumford

Humans with their machines and techno-dreams tend to ignore and/or deny limits.
Nature is the law.

Here is an article to consider:
As the energy crisis intensifies, a myriad of technical solutions are being proposed. Most were investigated in depth during the first two energy crises of the 1970s. There is a wealth of information available from that period, plus all the results of research in the ensuing 25 years.

A serious societal problem is the lack of understanding of the energy options, their history and their limitations. History gives a sense of the possible speed and cost of implementation, as well as the limits of the technologies themselves. Governments, corporations and scientists are not offering new creative solutions, not because they are failing to make strong efforts, but because energy itself is a very mature industry.

It would seem that – in addition to Peak Oil – we are at a time of Peak Technology... there are no new technologies we can look to for solutions to the end of fossil fuels.

Finding a New Source of Energy

It is frequently stated in the press that “we must find a new source of energy,” preferably one that is both clean and inexhaustible. Although this seems to be a reasonable statement, it is somewhat equivalent to saying that we must find a new continent – it is no more likely that we will find some new mineral or mineral combination to replace the vast volume of hydrocarbons we have consumed. Minerals exist in the earth and water and new ones were found over the course of several centuries. But like the continents, there are a fixed number of them.

http://www.energybulletin.net/4256.html

[Eloriel]

12. Farm smarter? Oh, DO tell

I'd love to hear all about that.

[struggle4progress]

11. kick

[depakid]

15. I had an argument about this a few years ago

with a British economist. I believe it was on the Smirking Chimp- though it could have been here.

Anyway, I took the regional integration approach- and basically showed him how stupid it was for Oregon growers to be cutting down their pear orchards due to competition from artificially cheap (and potentially pesticide ridden) Chilean imports.

He was really good and countered with examples of how Japan's protecionism with with respect to their rice farmers hurt both the American and Japanese economies- and particularly Japanese consumers.

This went back and forth for 10 or 12 posts over several days- finally ending with an agreement to disagree.

He was one of those cornucopian types who believes (despite all of the scientific evidence to the contrary) that there's going to be some great technological fix for all this and that we'd find it before the situation became untenable.

I wonder, given the demand increases in China and India, whether he would be so strong a proponent of globalization today (with respect to food imports) as he was back around 2001?