Book: The Post Carbon Reader

The Post Carbon Reader
Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises

Edited by Richard Heinberg and Daniel Lerch
In the 20th century, cheap and abundant energy brought previously unimaginable advances in health, wealth, and technology, and fed an explosion in population and consumption. But this growth came at an incredible cost. Climate change, peak oil, freshwater depletion, species extinction, and a host of economic and social problems now challenge us as never before. The Post Carbon Reader features articles by some of the world’s most provocative thinkers on the key drivers shaping this new century, from renewable energy and urban agriculture to social justice and systems resilience. This unprecedented collection takes a hard-nosed look at the interconnected threats of our global sustainability quandary—as well as the most promising responses. The Post Carbon Reader is a valuable resource for policymakers, college classrooms, and concerned citizens.

Table of Contents

Preface Richard Heinberg and Daniel Lerch, Editors
Foreword Asher Miller

Part I - Introduction
1. Foundation Concepts

• Richard Heinberg: "Beyond the Limits to Growth"
• Richard Heinberg: "What is Sustainability?"
• Bill Rees, "Thinking 'Resilience'"

Part II - Planet
2. Climate

• Bill McKibben, selection from Eaarth
• Richard Douthwaite, "The international response to climate change "
• Mark Sandler, SIDEBAR: "Cap and Dividend in the U.S."
• David Orr, selection from Down to the Wire

3. Water

• Sandra Postel, "Water: Adapting to a new normal"

4. Biodiversity

• Stephanie Mills, "Peak Nature?"

Part III - Civilization
5. Food

• Michael Bomford, "Energy and the food system"
• Wes Jackson, transcript from 1/25/10 presentation at Univ. of California - Berkeley
• Erika Allen, transcript from 1/24/10 conversation: "Growing community food systems"

6. Population

• Bill Ryerson, "Population: The Multiplier of Everything Else"

7. Culture & behavior

• Peter Whybrow, "Dangerously Addictive"
• Gloria Flora, "Remapping Relationships: Humans in nature"
• Bill Rees, "The Human Nature of Unsustainability"

Part IV - Modern Society
8. Energy

• Daniel Lerch, selection from Post Carbon Cities
• David Hughes, "Hydrocarbons in North America"
• David Fridley, "Nine Challenges of Alternative Energy"
• Tom Whipple, "Peak Oil and the Economy"

9. Economy

• Josh Farley, "Ecological Economics"
• Richard Douthwaite, SIDEBAR: "Money and Energy"
• Michael Shuman, "The Competitiveness of Local Living Economies"

10. Cities, towns, and suburbs

• Warren Karlenzig, "The Death of Sprawl"
• Deborah Popper and Frank Popper, "Smart Decline in Post-Carbon Cities"
• Hillary Brown, "Buildings"
• John Kaufmann "Local Government in a time of Peak Oil and Climate Change"

11. Transportation

• Richard Gilbert and Anthony Perl, "Post-carbon mobility"

12. Waste

• Bill Sheehan and Helen Spiegelman, "Climate Change, Peak Oil and the End of Waste"

13. Health

• Cindy Parker and Brian Schwartz, "Human Health and Well-Being in an Era of Energy Scarcity and Climate Change"

14. Education

• Zenobia Barlow and Michael Stone, "Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability"
• Nancy Lee Wood, "Community Colleges"

Part V - Next Steps
15. Building resilience

• Chris Martenson, "Personal preparation"
• Rob Hopkins "Transitioning community"

16. Vision for a post-carbon century

• Asher Miller, "What Now? The Path Forward Begins with One Step"

President Obama on the Oil Spill and Alternative Fuel Sources

Watch the full video or read the full transcript of Remarks by the President to the Nation on the BP Oil Spill.

Top Energy Crisis Resources

In this 125th Best of the Energy Crash & Limits to Growth blog post I have collected the top links on the topic of energy crisis and resource depletion.

Books

• Environment, Power and Society for the Twenty-First Century: The Hierarchy of Energy
• Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
• Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air
• The Limits to Growth - The 30-Year Update

Movies

• Blind Spot
• Collapse
• In Transition
• Natural Regression
  
• Project HOME - A hymn for the planet
• What a Way to Go - Life at the End of the Empire

Research Reports

• Global Oil Depletion Report 2009 (UKERC)
• Growth isn't Possible
  
• Planetary Boundaries
• Project Discovery: Energy Market Scenarios (Ofgem)
• Searching for a Miracle: ‘Net Energy’ Limits & the Fate of Industrial Society
• The Oil Crunch - a wake-up call for the UK economy
• Tipping Point: Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production
  
• Top Ten Things to Know about Oil Supply

Videos

• How Food Shapes Our Cities
• The Landscape of Oil
• Transition to a World Without Oil

Recommended further resources

• The Oil Drum
• Energy Bulletin
• Earth Policy Institute
• Energy Export Databrowser
  
• Gapminder
• Post Carbon Institute
  
• Transition Network
  

Bogotá: Building A Sustainable City

Bogota: Building a Sustainable City - documentary by PBS e2 series. Narrated by Brad Pitt. During his tenure as mayor of Bogota, Colombia, Enrique Penalosa was both revered and scorned for his urban planning and transportation policies. His public works projects, which largely favored the pedestrian experience, were unlike anything previously built in Bogota. Penalosa describes the environmental and social importance of minimizing automobile culture.

America's Energy Future and PickensPlan

Milken Institute Global Conference Panel:
Ted Turner and T. Boone Pickens on America's Energy Future

Speakers:

• T. Boone Pickens, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist; Founder, BP Capital
• Ted Turner, Chairman, Turner Enterprises Inc.

Moderator:

• Michael Milken, Chairman, Milken Institute

Ted Turner didn't mince words: "We've gotta get off the Titanic before it sails." He and T. Boone Pickens argued passionately that America has to start weaning itself off foreign oil imports — and do it now.

Their session began with a recap of how president after president has pledged to achieve energy independence, while the percentage of U.S. oil imported from foreign sources in volatile regions has continued to climb. Today the nation imports some two-thirds of its oil.

"We're paying for both sides of the war," said Pickens, insisting that oil money sent to the Middle East is paying for terrorists and the Taliban. He expressed optimism that President Obama has pledged to end oil imports from the Middle East within 10 years, but was quick to add: "We have to remind him." Pickens pointed out that the U.S. represents about 4 percent of world's population but consumes 25 percent of the world's oil, an equation that's just not sustainable. He called for transitioning the nation's fleet of 18-wheelers to natural gas immediately.


The big question of the day is whether Washington has the political will to effect a fundamental change in America's energy consumption. Turner expressed worry about the influence of special interests and argued that the U.S. has to end oil and coal subsidies to level the playing field for renewables.

Pickens pointed out that China is already moving to ensure its energy independence, and the United States can, too. He believes strongly that we will see a strong energy bill passed this year or next, noting how many millions had signed onto the Pickens Plan online. He believes the grassroots effort can make something happen — and "scare the hell out of those politicians."

Both men agreed that time is of the essence and acting is crucial to our children's livelihoods and lives. Reducing America's reliance on foreign oil, transitioning to natural gas and turning to renewable sources will be a win all around, in terms of national security, economic stability, jobs, cleaning up the environment and fighting climate change.

"We have to go to wind and solar eventually," said Turner. "Why not now? . . . Let's do the right thing and we'll all get rich!"

Watch the full panel discussion online at Milken Institute's web page.

The Crisis

Our dependence on foreign oil forms the intersection of the three most critical issues America currently faces: the economy, the environment and our national security.

The Pickens Plan

America is blessed with the world's greatest wind power corridor and enormous reserves of clean natural gas. The Pickens Plan utilizes these tremendous resources to build a bridge to the future — a blueprint to reduce foreign oil dependence by harnessing domestic energy alternatives and buying time for us to develop even greater new technologies and distribution systems.

The Plan calls for building new wind generation facilities that will produce 20% of our nation's electricity while using our abundant domestic natural gas supply as a transportation fuel as well as for power generation. The combination of these domestic energies can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports. And we can do it all in 10 years.

Transition in Action: Energy Descent Action Plan of Totnes and District

‘Transition in Action’ is the UK’s first comprehensive Energy Descent Action Plan designed for and by a local community. It sees the changes necessitated by climate change, peak oil and the UK’s debt crisis not as a crisis, but as a huge opportunity for entrepreneurship, creativity, community, enhanced resilience and a greater quality of life. In these pages you will find not just a vision of a more resilient world, but practical steps to reach it, key research, inspired ideas and a glimpse into the town’s recent past and what we can learn from it. The online version of the Totnes and District Energy Descent Action Plan is available here.

What is an Energy Descent Action Plan?

An Energy Descent Action Plan is a guide to reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and reducing our carbon footprint over the next 20 years, during which we expect many changes associated with declining oil supplies and some of the impacts of climate change to become more apparent. In this EDAP we have built a picture of this future scenario based on visions of a better future. What we have tried in the process to invite the community to dream how the future could be, and to then work out the practical pathways by which we actually get there.

"Transition in Action, Totnes 2030, an Energy Descent Action Plan" by Transition Town Totnes has been scripted & edited by Jacqi Hodgson with Rob Hopkins

Our Future and the End of the Oil Age: Building Resilience in a Resource-Constrained World

A new presentation from ClubOrlov by Dmitry Orlov:



In conclusion

• Many people can't be persuaded by either fact or reason. Let's hope you are not one of them.
• Running out the clock on our current living arrangement is a bad idea: the longer you wait, the fewer options you will be left with
• A rather exciting time to be alive, wouldn't you say?

21 Hours - Why a Shorter Working Week Can Help Us All to Flourish in the 21st Century

A ‘normal’ working week of 21 hours could help to address a range of urgent, interlinked problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life.

This new report by nef sets out arguments for a much shorter working week. It proposes a radical change in what is considered ‘normal’ – down from 40 hours or more, to 21 hours. While people can choose to work longer or shorter hours, we propose that 21 hours – or its equivalent spread across the calendar year – should become the standard that is generally expected by government, employers, trade unions, employees, and everyone else.

The shape of the report
The report first describe the way people use their time today. Next, it looks at experiments with shorter working hours and some of their effects. It considers how our notions of ‘normal’ working hours emerge, and then set out reasons why a move towards 21 hours could help meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. Finally, it explores the main problems that arise and how these might be addressed.

In conclusion
We are at the beginning of a national debate. This report makes the case for a substantial reduction in paid working hours, aiming towards 21 hours a week as the norm. The current norm of a nine-to-five, five-day week in paid employment does not reflect the way most people use their time. Unpaid work is generally overlooked and undervalued. A much shorter working week offers very considerable benefits to the environment, to society, and to the economy. There are serious problems to confront in the transition from where we are to where we want to be: they are mainly concerned with the impact on earnings and on employers’ balance sheets. We have set out suggestions for addressing these problems, acknowledging that an important pre-condition is a strong democracy and an effective and accountable government. Our suggestions include ways of incentivising employers, compensating lost earnings, sharing unpaid time more equally between women and men, and changing the climate of opinion. None of these options will work on its own and there are doubtless many more possibilities. The next step is to make a thorough examination of the benefits, challenges, barriers, and opportunities associated with moving towards a 21-hour week over the next decade. This will be part of the ‘Great Transition’ to a sustainable future.

Check out the full report on the web site of the new economics foundation. It is available for download in pdf.

Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero!

At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world's energy future, describing the need for "miracles" to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he's backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.



Today Bill Gates talked about the nuclear reactor project, TerraPower, at TED 2010. As an investor in several promising energy projects, Gates said it is our responsibility to pursue technologies that achieve cheap energy with “zero carbon” emissions.

TerraPower determined a new type of traveling-wave reactor would be the best approach to meeting the world’s energy demand. Our team decided to pursue nuclear energy after investigating many different technologies and solutions. With advances in computing power in just the past few years, we are able to make radical contributions to science that weren’t possible a few years ago. We believe the traveling-wave reactor concept provides the kind of innovation that society needs.

This video explains the traveling-wave reactor and how it works.

[via Intellectual Ventures Lab]

Publications by the new economics foundation

nef (the new economics foundation) is an independent think-and-do tank that inspires and demonstrates real economic well-being.

Growth isn't Possible

Four years on from nef's Growth isn’t Working, this new report goes one step further and tests that thesis in detail in the context of climate change and energy. It argues that indefinite global economic growth is unsustainable. Just as the laws of thermodynamics constrain the maximum efficiency of a heat engine, economic growth is constrained by the finite nature of our planet’s natural resources (biocapacity).

The Cuts Won't Work

Why spending on a Green New Deal will reduce the public debt, cut carbon emissions, increase energy security and reduce fuel poverty.

The Great Transition

Creating a new kind of economy is crucial if we want to tackle climate change and avoid the mounting social problems associated with the rise of economic inequality. The Great Transition provides the first comprehensive blueprint for building an economy based on stability, sustainability and equality.

The Consumption Explosion

Overconsumption, not overpopulation, is the real threat to the environment. Even the recession has had little impact on our burgeoning ecological debt.

Ecological Debt

This book explores a great paradox of our age: how the global wealth gap was built on ecological debts, which the world's poorest are having to pay for.

A Green New Deal

The global economy is facing a ‘triple crunch’: a combination of a credit-fuelled financial crisis, accelerating climate change and soaring energy prices underpinned by encroaching peak oil. It is increasingly clear that these three overlapping events threaten to develop into a perfect storm, the like of which has not been seen since the Great Depression, with potentially devastating consequences.

Hooked on Oil

How fossil fuel profits could be taxed to fund a clean energy economy.

In Transition 1.0 Movie - From Oil Dependence To Local Resilience

‘In Transition’ is the first detailed film about the Transition movement filmed by those that know it best, those who are making it happen on the ground. The Transition movement is about communities around the world responding to peak oil and climate change with creativity, imagination and humour, and setting about rebuilding their local economies and communities. It is positive, solutions focused, viral and fun.

‘In Transition’ has been shown in communities around the world to enthusiastic audiences, and is now available as a special edition 2 disc DVD set, beautifully packaged in entirely compostable packaging, featuring the film itself (with subtitles in Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano,and Nederlands) and an embarrassment of outtakes and extras, with interviews, films about Transition you’ve been searching high and low for quality copies of, and other gems. It is a must-have for anyone with an interest in this new take on responding to the challenges of the 21st century. You can watch the film, in full, here:

Rob Hopkins: Transition to a world without oil

In his new TED talk Rob Hopkins reminds us that the oil our world depends on is steadily running out. He proposes a unique solution to this problem -- the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build systems and communities that are completely independent of fossil fuels.



Rob Hopkins is the founder of the Transition movement, a radically hopeful and community-driven approach to creating societies independent of fossil fuel.

Rob Hopkins leads a vibrant new movement of towns and cities that utilize local cooperation and interdependence to shrink their ecological footprints. In the face of climate change he developed the concept of Transition Initiatives -- communities that produce their own goods and services, curb the need for transportation and take other measures to prepare for a post-oil future. While Transition shares certain principles with greenness and sustainability, it is a deeper vision concerned with re-imagining our future in a self-sufficient way and building resiliency.

Transforming theory to action, Hopkins is also the co-founder and a resident of the first Transition Initiative in the UK, in Totnes, Devon. As he refuses to fly, it is from his home in Totnes that he offers help to hundreds of similar communities that have sprung up around the world, in part through his blog, transitionculture.org

Hopkins, who's trained in ecological design, wrote the principal work on the subject, Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, a 12-step manual for a postcarbon future.

Economic Scenarios for an Age of Declining EROIs

One of the most interesting presentations on the ASPO USA Peak Oil Conference 2009 was delivered by Charlie Hall (ESF) and Hannes Kunz (IIER). This is a short overview of their research.

They suggests that a fundamental change in economic dynamics requires a new approach to macroeconomics. Instead of the traditional "Growth" paradigm their research has lead to a much wider system definition which includes

• Financial systems (money supply, credit, prices, etc.)
• Resource systems (energy, human labor, other natural resources)
• Global flows of goods, energy and funds (exports, imports, balances)
• Population development

The New Paradigm: Decline is as much part of a human ecosystem as is growth

Energy and GDP

Economic Scenarios for an Age of Declining EROIs describes consistent correlations of Energy use and GDP:

GDP$ per Energy Unit Consumed is defined as Total Global GDP (in US$ PPP) divided by the sum of Human Labor and External Primary Energy Inputs.

Primary Energy inputs and economic output are highly correlated, even before eliminating distortions from globalization. Mining, agricultural inputs, raw materials and manufacturing contain a significant amount of “energy accounted for elsewhere”, which is not included in traditional energy efficiency reviews. Most differences can be explained from energy transfers from industrial processes. The result is a rough average of 133 US$ purchasing power parity of GDP produced per GJ of energy input.

The first conclusion of the presentation is that most of our increased “productivity” comes from replacing human labor with fuel and machinery. The “productivity increase” leads to immediate gains for an economy and rising standards of living.

The Energy Squeeze-Out

Over the past decades, our fossil energy sources have become less efficient. Independent of the arrival of “Peak Oil”, increasing amounts of upfront energy are required to explore the next new units of energy. The concept of EROI (Energy Return on (Energy) Investment) describes this as: Energy Units Gained from one Energy Unit Used.

A change of EROIs from 80:1 to 20:1 (current estimate for global oil production) equals a “salary increase” of physical work from oil by a factor of almost 4, significantly reducing benefits to our economy. Higher energy cost quickly reverses previous gains from increased “productivity”.

Looking at EROIs and expected changes shows significant trouble ahead. Transportation will be highly affected by declining EROIs (and thus higher cost). The highest impact however will be seen in agricultural production.

High contribution of energy to food production (4-5% of global non-renewable energy consumption goes into food); in OECD countries, another 10-15% is used for processing and transporting food. With rising energy prices, farming and food processing will have to reduce input and thus output directly with higher fuel prices (less fertilizer equals less crop). Food prices will still rise both due to shortages and higher production cost and squeeze out poorer countries.

Lower EROIs will start squeezing out low-efficiency applications of energy. A significant number of industrial transportation and production chains will become unmanageable.

• Cost of commodity transportation becomes significant
• Global arbitrage of labor cost for low-cost/high-volume goods will become unattractive over long distances
• A substantial portion of global trade (the lower cost bracket) will be unattractive
• Food production and processing will no longer work on todays levels, with more local food and less processing
• Results might be very different compared to most people’s expectations

Download the full presentation in pdf to learn more.

The Future is All About Resilience

Asher Miller has recently gave a presentation about resilience. He became the Executive Director of Post Carbon Institute in October 2008, after having served as the manager of the Relocalization Network.

His presentation sets out Transition Towns as a response to the converging crises in the economy, energy and the environment.

The future is all about resilience

View more documents from Post Carbon Institute.

Peak Oil for Dummies

Peak Oil for Dummies is a new post on Seeking Alpha by Lionel Badal. A short overview:

Introduction

Over the past decade, a fierce debate has emerged amongst energy experts about whether global oil production was about to reach a peak, followed by an irreversible decline.

This event, commonly known as “Peak Oil” far outreaches the sole discipline of geology. From transportation to modern agriculture, petrochemicals and even the pharmaceutical industry all of them rely on one commodity: cheap and abundant oil. In order to sustain the needs of an ever globalized world, oil demand should double by 2050.

Nonetheless, geological limitations will disrupt this improbable scenario. In fact, a growing proportion of energy experts argue that Peak Oil is impending and warn about the extraordinary scale of the crisis.

42 Years of Oil Left?

According to the 2009 BP Statistical Review, the world has precisely 42 years of oil left. Those numbers come from a very simple formula, the R/P ratio, which consists of dividing the official number of global oil reserves by the level of today’s production.

Nevertheless, this methodology is dangerously defective on several key points as it ignores geological realities. Oil production does not consist of a plan level of production that brutally ends one day; it follows a bell-shaped curve.

Indeed, the important day occurs when production starts to decline, not when it ends. As it is a non-flexible commodity, even a small deficit in oil production can lead to a major price surge.

Finally, the R/P ratio does not acknowledge that production costs increase over the time; the first oil fields to be developed were logically the easy ones and so the most profitable. It is well recognized that remaining oil fields consist of whether poor quality oil or remotely located fields which need high technologies and expensive investments.

Therefore, relying on the R/P ratio gives a false impression of security while the actual situation is critical.

Global Oil Reserves: Lies and Manipulations

Oil is a strategic resource; therefore having oil is a key political and economical advantage for a state. This is why politics interfere in the evaluation of oil reserves, especially in countries with poor accountability records; that is, the majority of OPEC countries.

At this point, we should not forget that oil reserves reported by these countries are not audited by independent experts. In 2006, the notorious Petroleum Intelligence Weekly said it had access to confidential Kuwaiti reports which stated that reserves were half the official numbers.

The question of oil reserves is most relevant. As oil exporting countries have less oil in their ground, Peak Oil will arrive faster. Oil optimists who argue Peak Oil is still decades away rely on these same erroneous data.

In addition, if importing countries assume oil reserves are abundant as they do, the crisis will be unexpected, unprepared and misunderstood; in one word: overwhelming. Similarly, once oil shortages occur, oil importing countries may assume that exporting countries are deliberately reducing their oil exports to harm their national interests.

Such a flawed assumption from oil importing countries is likely to have serious repercussions, and eventually lead to new oil wars.

The Imminent Decline of Global Oil Production

By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 MBD… The implications for future conflict are ominous...

At this pace, global oil production could decline by 50% from its current level, as soon as 2030.

A Contested Reality: By Whom and Why?

For many years, Peak Oil was ignored by officials from oil companies and governmental agencies such as the IEA. They negligently repeated that production was not at risk.

Any Viable Alternative Energy?

There is no easy, present, solution to the crisis. Alternatives to oil are still far from being a feasible replacement; hydrogen for example would require 30 to 50 years to replace oil economies.

Meanwhile, the automobile industry is now planning to develop electric cars in the near future. While the first electric cars are expected to come on line in 2010-12, in order to replace 50% of the car fleet, the world would need between 10 to 20 years.

Besides, as manufacturing a single car requires at least 20 barrels of oil, once oil production starts to decline, in 2011-2013, it will increasingly become difficult to develop the electric car on a massive scale.

In fact, the closer we get to Peak Oil, the more difficult a massive and costly emergency plan to develop alternative energies will become.

The Industrial Civilisation at a Turning Point

A former director at the IEA, who used to be the superior of Dr. Fatih Birol, told me during a discussion that,

The current (economic) crisis was caused by the insufficiency of (oil) supply from 2007 onwards, an avatar of Peak Oil.

This extract from the Energy Watch Group study on oil production provides useful additional information:

The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life... The now beginning transition period probably has its own rules which are valid only during this phase. Things might happen which we never experienced before and which we may never experience again once this transition period has ended.

Temporary Recession or the End of Growth?

This is a guest post on The Oil Drum by Richard Heinberg. Richard is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and author of five books on resource depletion and societal responses to the energy problem. He can be found on the web at www.richardheinberg.com and www.postcarbon.org. Here is a short overview of his new post:

Everyone agrees: our economy is sick. The inescapable symptoms include declines in consumer spending and consumer confidence, together with a contraction of international trade and available credit. Add a collapse in real estate values and carnage in the automotive and airline industries and the picture looks grim indeed.

But why are both the U.S. economy and the larger global economy ailing? Among the mainstream media, world leaders there is near-unanimity of opinion: these recent troubles are primarily due to a combination of bad real estate loans and poor regulation of financial derivatives.

This is the Conventional Diagnosis. But what if this diagnosis is fundamentally flawed? The metaphor needs no belaboring: we all know that tragedy can result from a doctor’s misreading of symptoms, mistaking one disease for another.

In short, I am suggesting an Alternative Diagnosis. This explanation for the economic crisis is not for the faint of heart because, if correct, it implies that the patient is far sicker than even the most pessimistic economists are telling us. But if it is correct, then by ignoring it we risk even greater peril.

Economic Growth, The Financial Crisis, and Peak Oil

For several years, a swelling subculture of commentators has been forecasting a financial crash, basing this prognosis on the assessment that global oil production was about to peak.

Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet. The unfairly maligned Limits to Growth studies, published first in 1972 with periodic updates since, have attempted to answer the question with analysis of resource availability and depletion, and multiple scenarios for future population growth and consumption rates.

Energy is the ultimate enabler of growth. Industrialism has been inextricably tied to the availability and consumption of cheap energy from coal and oil (and more recently, natural gas).

About 85 percent of our current energy is derived from three primary sources—oil, natural gas, and coal—that are non-renewable, whose price is likely to trend sharply higher over the next years and decades leading to severe shortages, and whose environmental impacts are unacceptable. While these sources historically have had very high economic value, we cannot rely on them in the future; indeed, the longer the transition to alternative energy sources is delayed, the more difficult that transition will be unless some practical mix of alternative energy systems can be identified that will have superior economic and environmental characteristics.

My conclusion from a careful survey of energy alternatives, then, is that there is little likelihood that either conventional fossil fuels or alternative energy sources can be counted on to provide the amount and quality of energy that will be needed to sustain economic growth—or even current levels of economic activity—during the remainder of this century.

In essence, humanity faces an entirely predictable peril: our population has been growing dramatically for the past 200 years (expanding from under one billion to nearly seven billion), while our per-capita consumption of resources has also grown. And yet all of this has taken place in the context of a finite planet with fixed stores of non-renewable resources (fossil fuels and minerals), a limited ability to regenerate renewable resources (forests, fish, fresh water, and topsoil), and a limited ability to absorb industrial wastes (including carbon dioxide). If we step back and look at the industrial period from a broad historical perspective that is informed by an appreciation of ecological limits, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are today living at the end of a relatively brief pulse—a 200-year rapid expansionary phase enabled by a temporary energy subsidy (in the form of cheap fossil fuels) that will inevitably be followed by an even more rapid and dramatic contraction as those fuels deplete.

If humanity has indeed embarked upon the contraction phase of the industrial pulse, we should assume that ahead of us lie much lower average income levels (for nearly everyone in the wealthy nations, and for high wage earners in poorer nations); different employment opportunities (fewer jobs in sales, marketing, and finance; more in basic production); and more costly energy, transport, and food. Further, we should assume that key aspects of our economic system that are inextricably tied to the need for future growth will cease to work in this new context.

Is it too late to begin a managed transition to a post-fossil fuel society? Perhaps. But we will not know unless we try. And if we are to make that effort, we must begin by acknowledging one simple, stark reality: growth as we have known it can no longer be our goal.

Resources

Richard Heinberg is the author of the following books about the energy crash and resource depletion:

• Blackout
• Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines
• Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World

Peak Oil From Above - Project Home

A hymn for the planet

HOME is an ode to the planet's beauty and its delicate harmony. Through the landscapes of 54 countries captured from above, Yann Arthus-Bertrand takes us on an unique journey all around the planet, to contemplate it and to understand it. But HOME is more than a documentary with a message, it is a magnificent movie in its own right. Every breathtaking shot shows the Earth - our Earth - as we have never seen it before. Every image shows the Earth's treasures we are destroying and all the wonders we can still preserve. "From the sky, there's less need for explanations". Our vision becomes more immediate, intuitive and emotional. HOME has an impact on anyone who sees it. It awakens in us the awareness that is needed to change the way we see the world. (HOME embraces the major ecological issues that confront us and shows how everything on our planet is interconnected.)



Synopsis

In 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high, but it is too late to be a pessimist: humanity has barely ten years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its spoliation of the Earth's riches and change its patterns of consumption.

HOME - a Film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

"We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate.

The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film.

HOME has been made for you: share it! And act for the planet."

The Project HOME movie was distributed online for free on YouTube.

EROEI - Energy Returned on Energy Invested

EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested), ERoEI, EROI (Energy Return On Investment) is the ratio of the amount of usable energy acquired from a particular energy resource to the amount of energy expended to obtain that energy resource. It is an important metric to decide on the strategy for the transition to renewable energy.

The Oil Drum has great posts on EROEI.

As production from fossil fuel deposits starts to decline, we are being forced to procure energy from other sources such as wind, tidal, solar, bio-fuel and nuclear. It is important to understand the energy efficiency of new energy procurement systems, if industrial society as we know it is to survive the next great energy transition away from fossil fuels.

The Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) provides one measure of the efficiency of energy procurement and is quite simply defined as:

Energy procured / Energy used to procure energy

The chart shows how the proportion of net energy available for society to use varies with ERoEI. There is in fact much uncertainty in the data displayed and many large gaps in knowledge. The shape of the curve shows that for ERoEI above 10, the bulk of energy procured is available to society – to power industry, transportation, schools and hospitals. With falling ERoEI below 10 there is an exponential increase in the amount of energy required to procure energy with a corresponding decline in net energy available for society.

High per-capita energy use is considered desirable as it is associated with a high standard of living based on energy-intensive machines. A society will generally exploit the highest available EROEI energy sources first, as these provide the most energy for the least effort. With non-renewable sources, progressively lower EROEI sources are then used as the higher-quality ones are exhausted.

For example, when oil was originally discovered, it took on average one barrel of oil to find, extract, and process about 100 barrels of oil. That ratio has declined steadily over the last century to about three barrels gained for one barrel used up in the U.S. (and about ten for one in Saudi Arabia). The EROEI of wind energy is about 20:1 which is driving its adoption.