Rich Lyon said:
<snip> Hydrocarbon reserves are now, in the main, inaccessible (to Western Governments), diminishing, and contested. The danger is not of permanently high oil prices. The danger is the collapse of the way of life we recognise as "civilisation". Our civilisation has been hard-wired around the unique characteristics of hydrocarbons - millions of years of solar energy have been released in 130 years - there is no other energy source that can be extracted, transported, stored and converted into energy with such convenience and efficiency.
It represents a Single Point of Failure for us - every other energy system relies on a hydrocarbon platform. You can't manufacture wind turbines using wind energy. You can't realise biofuel crop yields using biofuel fertilisers, pesticides and irrigation power systems. The "hydrogen economy" is a delusion.
Our towns and manufacturing systems are predicated on the presumption of ubiquitous transport, and there is no means of sustaining that transport system at lower fuel power densities. Our financial systems are no longer connected to a hard currency base because of unsustainable growth brought on by "free" energy", and will collapse.
Complex systems (like our civilisation) don't "wind down". Power outages, food supply failures and warfare will cause parts to fail, and once failed, will be impossible to restart. The 2004 large-scale failure of the power grid in the US, and the gas supply crisis in the UK this Winter, are both early examples evidence of what will become an escalating series of emergencies leading to widespread political, financial and social breakdown.
The pre-hydrocarbon population of the Earth was around 1 billion. The current population of the Earth is around 6.5 billion. The 5.5 billion net are surplus to the base carrying capacity, sustained only through the availability of hydrocarbon, and destined to die off as it runs out.
Where are they? Look at a satellite picture of the Earth at night. The bright bits are where the dead people will be ...
A couple of points in response to this.
I think it's quite important to consider the transition period between a fossil fuel based system and one that has no signifiant quantities of fossil fuels. I keep bringing up Cuba during the
Special Period as an interesting test case, because they lost most of their oil, pesticide and fertiliser inputs almost overnight and still found ways to cope. In the case of peak oil, the transition is likely to take place over a considerably longer period. So I don't think it's right to assume we're all automatically fucked. A great deal depends on just how the transition is managed, and on what political and economic forces are in play.
Peak oil is by no means the only, or even the most serious problem. I'd put soil erosion somewhat higher on the list (at least in global terms, it's a bit less pronounced with our heavy soils in the UK) because there is no doubt that it is happening right now, nor is there any real doubt about the horrific rates of loss we're experiencing. What's particularly worrying is that it interacts strongly with oil based agriculture and that serious oil price rises and shortages tend to exacerbate the problems caused by erosion. Ultimately, losing the ability to use oil to compensate through imports, means you tend towards becoming stuck with the land you're actually living on and having to live within the outputs that it can produce. That means you have competition between food, energy and habitation in terms of how that land is being used.
For example, let's take the UK. We presently have about one acre of land per capita. To sustain our present lifestyle with no oil, using that land as it currently is, we'd need about seven acres per human, for crops, pasture and energy systems. (estimates are from Pimentel: "Food, Energy and Society")
That's a limit case however, assuming no oil, but also assuming no further loss of arable land to various forms of industrial degradation, no change in population and no severe climate change impacts, nuclear industry accidents etc. In practice, what we'd actually experiene is a transition over a number of decades during which time all of those things may happen. We can also probably do quite a bit better than 7 acres per capita if we reduce consumption and exercise our ingenuity in other ways.
In terms of population, while I think bigfish is being a prat again, I do think that one should be extremely careful when discussing how population comes into this question.
This arithmetic mentality which disregards the social context of demographics is incredibly short-sighted. Once we accept without any reflection or criticism that we live in a "grow-or-die" capitalistic society in which accumulation is literally a law of economic survival and competition is the motor of "progress," anything we have to say about population is basically meaningless. The biosphere will eventually be destroyed whether five billion or fifty million live on the planet. Competing firms in a "dog-eat-dog" market must outproduce each other if they are to remain in existence.
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Taking these things into account, I think that the right approach is to start putting in place alternatives that can function in the absence of both oil and capitalism, with the intent of expanding them rapidly when the wheels start falling off the present global system. Otherwise, the only solutions are likely to be ones created by and for capitalism, which to my mind are no solutions.
Here's a model I like as the starting point for creating those alternatives.
Fields, Factories and Workshops
