THE ULTIMATE ROLLER COASTER RIDE: A Brief History of Fossil Fuels by Richard Heinberg
Fossil fuels have powered human growth and ingenuity for centuries. Now that we're reaching the end of cheap and abundant oil and coal supplies, we're in for an exciting ride. While there's a real risk that we'll fall off a cliff, there's still time to control our transition to a post-carbon future.
And now, for your viewing and sharing pleasure we bring you 300 YEARS OF FOSSIL FUELED GROWTH IN 5 MINUTES:
Written and narrated by PCI Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg. Animated by the wonderful team at MONSTRO DESIGN.
On October 7, 2010, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing on challenges facing the oil industry to keep pace with rising global demand, and the potential implications for oil prices, national security, and the world economy. Numerous sources project demand for liquid fuels to rise to historically unprecedented levels once the global economy recovers from the recent recession. Global oil production, meanwhile, has leveled off since 2005, real oil prices have roughly doubled, and spare capacity has tightened, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Potential constraints on global oil production have raised concerns among industry observers, military leaders, and policymakers. This briefing examined the economic, technical, and political factors that influence the rate at which oil is extracted and processed, and how patterns of global oil production are changing.
The challenge facing world oil production is not a problem of how much oil is in the ground (i.e. resources), but rather the rate at which oil can be economically recovered from proven reserves. That rate is constrained by a complex combination of economic, technical, geologic, and geopolitical factors.
The International Energy Agency projects that production of conventional oil from currently developed fields will decline by 20-30 million barrels per day by 2020. Meanwhile, global demand is projected to rise from approximately 85 million barrels per day at present to nearly 100 million barrels per day by 2020.
To date, growth in estimated world oil reserves has kept up with growth in global consumption. Most of this increase, however, has been from adjustments in the estimates of existing reserves. The rate of discovery of new oil fields has been dropping steadily since the 1960s, and is now well below the rate of global consumption.
As the world faces recession, climate change, inequity and more, Tim Jackson delivers a piercing challenge to established economic principles, explaining how we might stop feeding the crises and start investing in our future.
About Tim Jackson
Tim Jackson studies the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment to question the primacy of economic growth.
Human growth has strained the Earth's resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us in his TED talk, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine "planetary boundaries" that can guide us in protecting our planet's many overlapping ecosystems.
If Earth is a self-regulating system, it's clear that human activity is capable of disrupting it. Johan Rockstrom has led a team of scientists to define the nine Earth systems that need to be kept within bounds for Earth to keep itself in balance.
Johan Rockstrom is a leader of a new approach to sustainability: planetary boundaries. Working with a team of 29 leading scientists across disciplines, Rockstrom and the Stockholm Resilience Centre identified nine key Earth processes or systems -- and marked the upper limit beyond which each system could touch off a major system crash. Climate change is certainly in the mix -- but so are other human-made threats such as ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, chemical pollution.
"Rockstrom has managed in an easy, yet always scientifically based way, to convey our dependence of the planet's resources, the risk of transgressing planetary boundaries and what changes are needed in order to allow humanity to continue to develop."
In 1972, the now-classic book Limits to Growth explored the consequences for Earth’s ecosystems of exponential growth in population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion. That book, which still stands as the best-selling environmental title ever published, reported on the first attempts to use computers to model the likely interactions between trends in resources, consumption, and population. It summarized the first major scientific study to question the assumption that economic growth can and will continue more or less uninterrupted into the foreseeable future.
The idea was heretical at the time, and still is: During the past few decades, growth has become virtually the sole index of national economic well-being. When an economy grows, jobs appear, investments yield high returns, and everyone is happy. When the economy stops growing, financial bloodletting and general misery ensue. Predictably, a book saying that growth cannot and will not continue beyond a certain point proved profoundly upsetting in some quarters, and soon Limits to Growth was pilloried in a public relations campaign organized by pro-growth business interests. In reality, this purported “debunking” merely amounted to taking a few numbers in the book completely out of context, citing them as “predictions” (which they explicitly were not), and then claiming that these predictions had failed. The ruse was quickly exposed, but rebuttals often don’t gain nearly as much publicity as accusations, and so today millions of people mistakenly believe that the book was long ago discredited.
In any case, the underlying premise of the book is irrefutable: At some point in time, humanity’s ever-increasing resource consumption will meet the very real limits of a planet with finite natural resources.
The co-authors of The Post Carbon Reader believe that this time has come.
The Pivotal Role of energy
During the past two centuries, an explosion in population, consumption, and technological innovation has brought previously unimaginable advances in health, wealth, transport, and communications. These events were largely made possible by the release of enormous amounts of cheap energy from fossil fuels starting in the mid-nineteenth century.
Increased consumption of fossil fuels has produced both economic growth and population growth. However, a bigger population and a growing economy lead to more energy demand. We are thus enmeshed in a classic self-reinforcing (“positive”) feedback loop. Crucially, the planet on which all of this growth is occurring happens to be limited in size, with fixed stores of fossil fuels and mineral ores, and with constrained capacities to regenerate forests, fish, topsoil, and freshwater. Indeed, it appears that we are now pushing up against these very physical limits:
The world is at, nearing, or past the points of peak production of a number of critical nonrenewable resources—including oil, natural gas, and coal, as well as many economically important minerals ranging from antimony to zinc.
The global climate is being destabilized by greenhouse gases emitted from the burning of fossil fuels, leading to more severe weather (including droughts) as well as melting glaciers and rising sea levels.
Freshwater scarcity is a real or impending problem in nearly all of the world’s nations due to climate change, pollution, and overuse of groundwater for agriculture and industrial processes.
World food production per capita is declining and the maintenance of existing total harvests is threatened by climate change, soil erosion, water scarcity, and high fuel costs.
Earth’s plant and animal species are being driven to extinction by human activities at a rate unequaled in the last 60 million years.
Chatham House-Lloyd's 360 Risk Insight White Paper by Antony Froggatt and Glada Lahn, June 2010
As the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has amply demonstrated, growing global energy demand and the anticipated restricted availability of some conventional fossil fuels pose an escalating threat to the security of energy supply for global businesses. Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic Risks and Opportunities for Business, produced jointly by Chatham House and Lloyd's, reveals multiple vulnerabilities in our current energy system and urges both business strategists and government policy-makers to take into account a range of encroaching risks and be bold in making plans for a more resilient and low carbon energy future.
This report, jointly produced by Lloyd’s 360 Risk Insight programme and Chatham House, should cause all risk managers to pause. What it outlines, in stark detail, is that we have entered a period of deep uncertainty in how we will source energy for power, heat and mobility, and how much we will have to pay for it.
Is this any different from the normal volatility of the oil or gas markets? Yes, it is. Today, a number of pressures are combining: constraints on ‘easy to access’ oil; the environmental and political urgency of reducing carbon dioxide emissions; and a sharp rise in energy demand from the Asian economies, particularly China.
Executive Summary
Businesses which prepare for and take advantage of the new energy reality will prosper - failure to do so could be catastrophic
Market dynamics and environmental factors mean business can no longer rely on low cost traditional energy sources
China and growing Asian economies will play an increasingly important role in global energy security
We are heading towards a global oil supply crunch and price spike
Energy infrastructure will become increasingly vulnerable as a result of climate change and operations in harsher environments
Lack of global regulation on climate change is creating an environment of uncertainty for business, which is damaging investment plans
To manage increasing energy costs and carbon exposure businesses must reduce fossil fuel consumption
Business must address energy-related risks to supply chains and the increasing vulnerability of 'just-in-time' models
Investment in renewable energy and 'intelligent' infrastructure is booming. This revolution presents huge opportunities for new business partnerships
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.
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.
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!"
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.
In a short, funny, data-packed talk at TED U, Catherine Mohr walks through all the geeky decisions she made when building a green new house -- looking at real energy numbers, not hype. What choices matter most? Not the ones you think.
Catherine and Paul Mohr live in Silicon Valley with their daughter Natalie and cats Loki and Tia. In addition to building a green house, they both work on designing and building surgical robots at Intuitive Surgical.
Their 301 Monroe blog has entries about our house building process including:
“Energy” for posts that are particularly concerned with energy calculations and energy savings
“Sustainability” spans many subjects and includes many of the energy and water and strawbale posts, but also includes posts about sustainability of other materials
The Embodied energy calculations discussed in Catherine’s TED talk can be found on the Embodied Energy Blog post.
Feasta aims to identify the characteristics (economic, cultural and environmental) of a truly sustainable society, articulate how the necessary transition can be effected and promote the implementation of the measures required for this purpose.
Feasta has released a new report Tipping Point: Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production, by David Korowicz of Feasta and the Risk/Resilience Network, is now available for download. The report argues that the defining dynamic of our civilisation is the withdrawal of energy from a complex and integrated system adapted only to growing. A managed "de-growth" is impossible; what is required is rapid emergency planning coupled with a plan for longer-term adaptation.
This conference, marking Feasta's tenth anniversary, analysed the systems and the mindsets that have steered the world onto its grotesquely unsustainable current path. Discussions focussed on the new systems (financial, energy, food) and ways of thinking that are urgently required to correct the situation and bring about a rapid transition to a more secure future. Many of the ideas explored were Feasta's. Others were presented by international speakers who broadly share Feasta's analysis of what needs to be done to build a truly sustainable world.
That's it for the 100th post on the Energy Crash blog.
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.
Bertrand Piccard circumnavigated the Earth in a hot-air balloon. Now he wants to circle it in an airplane powered only by solar energy.
For the dawn of a new decade, adventurer Bertrand Piccard in this TED Talk offers us a challenge: Find motivation in what seems impossible. He shares his own plans to do what many say can't be done -- to fly around the world, day and night, in a solar-powered aircraft.
Bertrand Piccard was born in a family of firsts. His father, Jacques, together with Dan Walsh of the US, was the first man to reach the deepest point of the world's oceans, the Mariana Trench, in 1960. Almost 30 years earlier, his grandfather, Auguste, first ballooned into the stratosphere. While they went up and down, Bertrand went horizontal and in 1999, together with Brian Jones of Britain, completed the first-ever nonstop balloon circumnavigation of the globe, flying more than 45,000 km in 20 days.
In a world depending on fossil energies, the Solar Impulse project is a paradox, almost a provocation: it aims to have an airplane take off and fly autonomously, day and night, propelled uniquely by solar energy, right round the world without fuel or pollution. An unachievable goal without pushing back the current technological limits in all fields...
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.
Peak Moment Episode 155: Peak Oil: Adapting for Big Changes Ahead by Yuba Gals Independent Media
With a long-time eye to declining energy resources, Bart Anderson envisions a very different society in five years. The former editor of Energy Bulletin.net offers advice for post-oil living: Understand the problem. Prepare psychologically for big shifts and the unexpected. Find your niche and get good at it. See what your great grandparents did as a model for living well within limits. "Live poor and learn to do it well" as Bart did as a graduate student. Things will be very different, he said, but we'll make it through.
In stunning large-format photographs, Edward Burtynsky follows the path of oil through modern society, from wellhead to pipeline to car engine -- and then beyond to the projected peak-oil endgame.
To describe Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky's work in a single adjective, you have to speak French: jolie-laide. His images of scarred landscapes -- from mountains of tires to rivers of bright orange waste from a nickel mine -- are eerily pretty yet ugly at the same time. Burtynsky's large-format color photographs explore the impact of humanity's expanding footprint and the substantial ways in which we're reshaping the surface of the planet. His images powerfully alter the way we think about the world and our place in it.
With his blessing and encouragement, WorldChanging.com and others use his work to inspire ongoing global conversations about sustainable living. Burtynsky's photographs are included in the collections of many major museums, including Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A large-format book, 2003's Manufactured Landscapes, collected his work, and in 2007, a documentary based on his photography, also called Manufactured Landscapes, debuted at the Toronto Film Festival before going on to screen at Sundance and elsewhere. It was released on DVD in March 2007.
When Burtynsky accepted his 2005 TED Prize, he made three wishes. One of his wishes: to build a website that will help kids think about going green. Thanks to WGBH and the TED community, the new site, Meet the Greens, debuted at TED2007. His second wish: to begin work on an Imax film -- and this work is now ongoing. And his third wish, wider in scope, was simply to encourage "a massive and productive worldwide conversation about sustainable living." Thanks to his help and the input of the TED community, the site WorldChanging.com got an infusion of energy that has helped it to grow into a leading voice in the sustainability community.
"One possible rap against his portfolio -- it prettifies the terrible. Burtynsky calls his images 'a second look at the scale of what we call progress,' and hopes that [they] acquaint viewers with the ramifications of our lifestyle."
Every day, in a city the size of London, 30 million meals are served. But where does all the food come from? In this new TED video Architect Carolyn Steel discusses the daily miracle of feeding a city, and shows how ancient food routes shaped the modern world.
Food is a shared necessity -- but also a shared way of thinking, argues Carolyn Steel. Looking at food networks offers an unusual and illuminating way to explore how cities evolved.
The Energy Crash Blog features news, reports, opinions and videos on the challenge to keep our society running with less and more expensive fossil fuels on which we depend on.
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