Joseph Romm on Climate Change and Peak Oil

[GliderGuider]

Joseph Romm normally writes on climate change issues. Here he takes on Peak Oil in the context of climate change.

Peak Oil? Bring it on!

I have a http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/28/peak_oil_solutions/">new article in Salon on perhaps the most misunderstood subject in energy: peak oil.

Here is the short version:

1. We are at or near the peak of cheap conventional oil production.
2. There is no realistic prospect that the conventional oil supply can keep up with current projected demand for much longer, if the industrialized countries don't take strong action to sharply reduce consumption, and if China and India don't take strong action to sharply reduce consumption growth.
3. Many people are expecting unconventional oil -- such as the tar sands and liquid coal -- to make up the supply shortage. That would be a climate catastrophe, and I (optimistically) believe humanity is wise enough not to let that happen. More supply is not the answer to either our oil or climate problem.
4. Nonetheless, contrary to popular belief, the peak oil problem will not "destroy suburbia" or the American way of life. Only unrestrained emissions of greenhouse gases can do that.
5. We have the two primary solutions to peak oil at hand: fuel efficiency and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles run on zero-carbon electricity. The only question is whether conservatives will let progressives accelerate those solutions into the marketplace before it is too late to prevent a devastating oil shock or, for that matter, devastating climate change.

(Emphasis in the original, more at the link)

I have tremendous respect for Joseph Romm when he speaks on CC issues. I think "Hell and High Water" is one of the best layman's books on climate chaos in print today. He is obviously aware of Peak Oil issues in some detail. In my opinion however he misses two points -- a specific one regarding Peak Oil and a more general one -- and that limits the usefulness of his insights for me.

The crucial Peak Oil point he misses is the Net Oil Export Problem, as described by Jeffrey Brown in his Export Land Model. In a nutshell, oil exports from a post-peak oil producing country have the potential to decline much faster than their raw production if the government decides to satisfy growing domestic demand before supplying the export market. The corollary is that while raw global oil production may never decline to zero, the international export market can, and could empty out very rapidly once the process begins. this will put enormous pressure on highly industrialized oil-importing nations like the USA, and could trigger dislocations much more rapidly than the aggregated global supply situation might seem to predict. This effect can be seen in Mexico, where production declined by 6.4% last year while exports declined by 14.6%

The general point I think Romm misses (or at least refuses to discuss) is that the converging crisis we face over the next two decades probably doesn't have a general technological solution. The "problem" is multi-factorial and all the various components interact. This complexity means that technological solutions (and I include policy changes in this domain) are at least as likely to worsen the overall situation as improve it. Of course some technologies may help for some time in some places. However, to ensure our continuation on this planet, our ultimate response to this crisis must be to establish a long-term sustainability for the human presence similar to the situation that obtained for a few hundred thousand years before the development of totalitarian agriculture 10,000 years ago. I do not see how such a long-term situation can be achieved through technological means, especially when one of the fundamental psychological effects of technology is to reinforce the separation of man from nature by giving us ever-greater means to manipulate our environment.

I emphatically do not mean that we must immediately and voluntarily discard technology, reverting to tribal organizations and hunter-gatherer practices. Such expectations are as foolish as the the opposite expectation that our current way of doing things would be permanently sustainable if only we could be a little more clever about managing things. What I mean is that efforts directed towards healing human dualism, promoting values that re-unite us with the interdependent universe in which we live in both physical and ethical terms, are more likely to bear lasting fruit than efforts directed at building better energy mousetraps or forcing policy changes in the absence of underlying, supporting belief systems -- as happened with Kyoto and Bali, for instance.

Even if we do direct more energy, time and money in that direction there will be all the room in the world for the wind and solar geeks, the policy wonks and the conservation activists to make their essential contributions. However, if we do all that without at the same time trying to coax humanity back into the web of life, it will ultimately all be for naught.

Paul Chefurka

[Zachstar]

1. Humanity is not going to be urged back into anything but learning how to burn wood for energy.

Loss of cheap oil + super high energy bills = People inventing homebuilt steam engines burning anything they can find to power stuff.

And stuff like that..

You see with population expected to reach 8 billion in two decades there is not going to be any sane method of reverting to any kind of lifestyle that is tuned with the natural way of earth. Humans have to be active and not passive so to speak.

Ok solutions

Electric motors have almost nill research compared to gas hogs. Research will improve them...

EEstor batteries.. Lockheed will use them so they likely are real.. Nuff said...

Fusion... Ok I know this is a dirty word for some but I am serious. There are more than one project working on the issue of long term fusion power. And even heat fusion is expected to be online by 2030. Others such as EMC2 can be online in massive amounts by 2015 if we are lucky. More like 2020 tho.

Also we are facing a huge issue when it comes to food. A solution may be to get people to start growing their own veggies in massive amounts at home. During WW2 victory gardens supplied so much food that the soldiers were able to be well fed. And growing technology today is more more advanced than WW2. The same plot of land can grow 2x what it could in WW2 with some basic effort.

etc etc..

[GliderGuider]

2. The point is not to change people's behaviour directly though either edict or moral suasion

I think the most effective and ethical approach will be to change peoples' attitudes as widely as we can, and than let them make their own decisions about their behaviour. We must make sure they have appropriate technological tools at their disposal, but the world will not be "saved" (whatever that may mean) by old minds running new programs.

[Zachstar]

3. Some old minds are giving us the tools to continue.

EEstor major future user = Lockheed

First uses of EMC2 fusion = US NAVY as they are the ones funding the team.

Victory Gardens = .gov program during WW2

[GliderGuider]

4. Of course, and good for them.

Here are some questions.

How long do we want to (or will we be able to) "continue" before making fundamental changes in the way our civilization conducts itself?
What will happen if we don't make those fundamental changes?
What sort of changes should they be?
What could help us make them, aside from being forced into them by circumstances?

[Zachstar]

5. Answers

#1 5 years
#2 Climate Collapses and those who survive will have to deal with hell on earth.
#3 Active CO2 control, Massive boycotting of nonliving CO2 producing entities. (Gas Engines)
#4 Nothing

[GliderGuider]

6. Your perspective is strangely familiar...

Especially your answers to 1 and 4.

Up until a very few months ago, I agreed completely. Two things have changed for me since then. The first was that I realized the global situation is far too complex for that to be an useful description of the future. The second was the dawning understanding that this outlook was coloured more strongly by my own personality than by the facts. The facts of our situation are "true" at least in some sense. Our interpretations, projections and conclusions aren't -- they are our attempts to give personal meaning to those facts.

[Zachstar]

7. They arent personal views. Thats what I conclude based on simple facts.

Personal Views is when I throw in things like spirit and the ability for humans to adapt when things get bad.

Sadly tho more and more I see more and more evidence that it is less than possible for humanity to properly adapt this time around. Nobody gives a flying frak about what is going on anymore so whatever happens will be followed by surprise followed by blame games and rapid movement to restore their status before.. Things such as badly constructed steam generators will pop up all over and vastly accelerate deforestation and use of any coal one can find. Heck I suspect even plastics will be thrown in as streets get desperate to run their Xbox systems again.

I watched 100 years for ice loss turn into 5 right before my eyes. I watched oil skyrocket right before my eyes. I watch tons of people who care little for what the effects of loss of cheap oil and global climate change but care more about if the next Xbox will have more gigs or whatever.

There is no room here for personal views anymore. The only complexity here is the hole we dug ourselves into by not doing more in the 80s and 90s when NASA was warning us.

Simple points

#1 No more Cheap oil. China is not going to stop growing.
#2 Oil peaked years ago. Any serious economist can tell you that times are perfect for more extraction to take advantage of prices. They arent growing and some countries are finally admitting they are at max.
#3 The earth is changing much faster than anyone could have anticipated.
#4 Nobody is going to seriously consider reverting back to a simple lifestyle in this day and age. Atleast here if you do not have a computer the only job you can get is flipping burgers.

As you can tell I have seriously little hope. Yet the remaining hope I do have is because there are children in my family. It is my responsibility to urge changes now so that they don't become adults in a world of hell.

In my view we are past the tipping point with oil energy economy and climate change. From this point forward earth is going to need active assistance. The economy needs fusion and renewable policies taking over the smaller power needs of the communities.

[wordpix]

18. there are not enough trees to go around for everyone - take a look at your closest city

and see how far away you closest large forest is, and how easy (not!) it would be to get lumber and firewood from there to where most of the people are.

We are in for VERY hard times and major dislocations unless we have a Manhattan-type Project and WPA-type Green Progress Administration (GPA) to get solar panels on every roof, wind generators on every coastline and prairie, and every building well insulated.

I am not kidding---we have got to elect a good president this time and get this done NOW!

[kristopher]

8. The question you seem to need an answer for

The question you seem to need an answer for regards our ability to alter the fundamental structure of a culture's values, beliefs and consequent actions. Ask yourself this, how did we get the values and beliefs we now hold dear? I don't believe they are the result of deliberate intent so much as an evolutionary adaptation through culture to greater or lesser degrees of energy availability. Since culture is a composite of individual beliefs and values, there is going to be ample evidence pointing to individual efforts to alter the course of events but I don't think that negates the evolutionary nature of culture as a sort of entity with it's own rules of behavior.

Do you believe that our ability to adapt is so weak that we can't adjust to dramatic ecological changes and still live happy lives? I can understand the urgency you feel, but I don't subscribe to the belief that coping with declining fossil fuel reserves means catastrophe. I think we are fortunate that the time scale of this transition is a process that will play out over several decades.

Of course, we could get hit by an asteroid or there could be some other global disaster unrelated to the transition (ex: climate change). However, barring something like that, we know that there are alternative ways to satiate our energy appetite. I believe part of the process of the transition is going to be exactly the kind of global shift in values that you hope to encourage. The thing is, I think it will basically happen of it's own accord if we can simply continue to bring basic education to those lacking it. The key, in other words, is education to facilitate learning, followed by exposure to the problems of life related to excess energy consumption.

[Zachstar]

9. What?

I hate to say this but your belief in modern human culture to adapt to worsening conditions is unfounded.

There are still many people who think global climate change is a bunch of BS! While they load up TV for American Idol or load up Madden 08 on their Xboxes and then watch porn before sleeping.

This culture will not adapt. And worse than that we will not be as affected as the many millions around the world where simple changes in climate can mean starvation.

When the bills get high and the temperature rises the only adapting we will be doing is people inventing cheapo steam generator designs which will mean badly constructed steam generators popping up all over the place with people burning everything from wood (deforestion) to trash (acid rain) There is going to be few people with money that say "Ok I guess I need to read for a change rather than Watch American Idol on a huge TV I got with a fat cat loan"

This is why I urge fusion research forward. We simply are running out of time and we cant waste that with thoughts that humanity will adapt. As that wont happen and the result is the elephant in the room.

[kristopher]

10. What?

"I hate to say this but your belief in modern human culture to adapt to worsening conditions is unfounded."

What do you base that assertion on?

[Zachstar]

11. Years of being in several movements and RL experience with people.

Again let me state. There will be no adapting unless it is to restore lifestyle. Dirty Steam Boilers, Backroom deals, whatever... Followed by lies, bribes, and blames on whoever is the president and "dem green liberals!!"

I find it beyond silly to think at all that there will any adapting in the right direction. Environmentalism will be quickly destroyed, the economy will be in a continued mess, etc...

So it is wrong it is unfounded it is silly and detracts from the real issues. Getting people to adapt NOW actively not passively (Good luck with that BTW as I have already stated it wont happen easily)

And of course it is high time that we put serious calls out to the .gov to get fusion first and foremost. Stop fiddle farting with clean coal (ironic as hell) and hybrids. EEstor and EMC2 for the win NOW! Followed by a prize for a way to get max C02 extraction from the atmosphere when hooked up to fusion.

[GliderGuider]

12. That's precisely the question.

Until quite recently I thought that most of human behaviour and many of our values were genetically mediated. If that was the case then what you see is what you get, and we might as well give up on changing our behaviour enough to rescue anything from the jaws of ecological defeat. That's what you get for reading too much Jay Hanson, I guess.

That is most definitely not how it is. One of the more interesting and accessible writers on this aspect of culture is Daniel Quinn. His comments on the cultural effects of our development of totalitarian agriculture 10,000 years ago completely changed my perspective on the immutability of human nature. In his slim little post-Ishmael volume "Beyond Civilization" he writes about the minor genetic differences between human and chimpanzees, and draws a parallel with the short memetic distance between the Middle Ages and the Rennaissance. It takes very little change on that level to effect a wholesale revolution in worldview, and consequently values and behaviour.

I think fossil fuel depletion could easily cause catastrophes in many places, but they will be catastrophes in the classical sense of the word -- sudden and violent overturnings -- as opposed to the colloquial sense of disasters.

One of the things to keep in mind as we run up to the inflection point is that the memetic underpinnings of our present culture are being supported by the strongest set of institutions ever created by mankind. Our political and economic systems, our educational and communications institutions, our corporations and think-tanks -- all these structures reinforce the memes that form the blueprint of our current culture. In order to change this situation, these institutions will need to be dramatically weakened. It will take more than a single shock to start the necessary dissolution. Fortunately, we have a whole series of culture-shifting, foundation-shaking shocks lined up to do the heavy lifting. Once that process has started, change will follow inescapably.

[Zachstar]

13. Wall-o-Text, However

What do you mean by "Fortunately, we have a whole series of culture-shifting, foundation-shaking shocks lined up to do the heavy lifting. Once that process has started, change will follow inescapably."

If that is what I think it is then I have a simple response.

WTF?!

[GliderGuider]

15. What I mean

• Civilization is headed towards a cliff.
  
• We must change direction in order to avoid disaster.
  
• Our social/political/economic/educational institutions are guiding civilization in that direction.
  
• Those institutions also embody, protect, defend and promote the memes that make so many of us agree with going in that direction.
  
• We will not be able to turn from this path to calamity unless the memetic fabric of our culture is changed.
  
• Our institutions will not voluntarily agree to such a change.
  
• Our institutions not only preserve the structure of civilization, they depend on it for their very existence.
  
• Civilization-scale shocks are required to break the hold our institutions have on our belief fabric.
  
• There are many institutions and they are very powerful, so a single shock won't be sufficient to break their hold.
  
• There are many forces lined up to give our civilization a series of shocks, coming from all directions. These forces will probably include economic collapse, Peak Oil, climate change, food shortages and broad ecological collapse. None of these shocks will come about by design, but are inherent outcomes of our established direction.
  
• As the shocks occur, our institutions will start to erode, dissolve and crumble. They will resist this process with all their might.
  
• Once our institutions have lost enough integrity, their iron grip over the memetic fabric of our culture will start to diminish.
  
• As the controlling memes lose their force, they will be replaced by others that embody different values.
  
• As the new values take root, human actions will be influenced by them, resulting in new behaviours and new directions for our culture and civilization.
  
• It will not take as many changes as some of us think (certainly less than I thought) to effect major changes in the direction of civilization.
  
• As civilization fragments the changes will be strongly localized, and will be very different from place to place.
  
• This regrowth of cultural, memetic diversity is essential for the sustainable continuation of human presence on the planet.
  
• There is no guarantee that the changes will be positive, but their growing diversity makes it more probable that enough of them will be positive.
  
• These are the changes that will "save the world". New technologies will play at most a supporting role.
  

What does the phrase "save the world" mean?

[bananas]

14. Paul, if you have the time

could you watch and comment on this:

Alan Watts: A Conversation with Myself

A 1971 television recording with Alan Watts walking in the mountains and talking about the limitations of technology and the problem of trying to keep track of an infinite universe with a single tracked mind. Video courtesy of alanwatts.com home of the Alan Watts archives.

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aufuwMiKmE
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ8WeLrtFnY
Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RcjATFcbq4
Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOYIE-RX3No

[GliderGuider]

16. Ah, Alan Watts. A true blast from the past.

I don't have time to watch then right now, but I'll comment here later today or tomorrow.

Thanks for that.

[GliderGuider]

17. Watts was one of the true visionaries of the time

It was remarkable watching these clips and hearing words spoken 37 years ago that could have been uttered yesterday. Alan Watts (and a few others) knew in 1971 that our industrial civilization's race was run, that we were staring hard limits in the face, and that no amount of tinkering (what Daniel Quinn 25 years later called "old minds with new programs") would solve the dilemma.

The opening of Part 3 in particular, where he describes the abortive planning session for a "Global Alarm Conference" is just remarkable in its prescience and insight. The participants understood that you couldn't just run around screaming, "Oh my god we're screwed, everyone wake up and kiss your children goodbye!" At the same time they couldn't figure out what sort of communication might be helpful in the face of problems this big, so the whole thing just fell apart.

There has been a general increase in public awareness of the problems since then. Unfortunately, most people still don't realize the scale and immediacy of the problems or the fundamental nature of the social shifts required to deal with them -- either over the short term though mitigation or adaptation or over the long term by creating a truly sustainable culture that can co-exist with the other life on this planet. Among those who are aware of the size of the required shift, there is often a sense of helplessness caused by the overwhelming structural and institutional resistance toward any changes in direction whatsoever.

As Watts infers, any solution will have to occur at the personal level. Not the personal level of car pools, compact fluorescent lights and organic food (though those all have their roles) but a much deeper philosophical shift. It will require that many of us change our attitudes about man's place in the universe, how we define success, progress and happiness, accept that "enough is enough", realize that all other life has an intrinsic right to exist and flourish, and that we have no right, again in Quinn's word's to "lock up the food".

These changes will come about through a transformation in the memetic blueprint of our culture. That transformation will in turn be triggered by an obvious breakdown in the utility of the memes we've been using to guide our beliefs and behavior up to this point. Memes that seem good candidates to drop by the wayside are such ideas as "Growth is good", "Bigger is better", "My children must have a better life than I did", "Man was put on the world to conquer and rule it", "Everything on the planet belongs to us", and "This form of civilization is the way we were intended to live from the start, is in fact the only way mankind can live, and must be preserved at any cost".

I'm coming to understand that one of the most important roles of "Gaia's antibodies" -- those million or more small, local, independent environmental and social justice groups that are at work world-wide -- is to act as nurseries for the new memes that will replace those old, destructive ones that have so completely outlived their usefulness.

Just as very minor genetic differences give rise to species as distinct as chimps and humans, minor memetic differences give rise to very different cultures. A classic example is the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. If that holds true, then a small change in the weave of the memetic fabric of modern culture could easily give rise to a culture that rejects the notions of perpetual growth, hierarchy, dominance, exploitation and the separation of man from nature. I certainly hope that's true, because as Alan Watts would probably agree, it's the only thing that can ultimately "save" humanity and the rest of the biosphere.