Report from a reality based conference
Among modern events that future historians will regard as significant (but predictably ignored by the mainstream press), surely the Energy and Sustainability Conference (http://www.beyondpeak.org/) that took place this past May in Washington, DC will rank high. Notables such as environmental author Bill McKibbern, Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, William Catton, who penned the seminal Overshoot in 1980, David Pimental, agronomist from Cornell and expert in biofuels, Edward Tainter, who wrote the highly influential Collapse of Complex Societies (many years before Jared Diamond’s work) James Hanson, NASA Climate Scientist, and Time Magazine 100 Notables of the Century, Herman Daly, the founder of Ecological Economics and Robert Costanza, Gund Institute Director and the first to place a price on global ecological services, Michael Klare, expert on oil and geopolitics, and Richard Heinberg, author of two leading works popularizing Peak Oil, or the global peak in oil production.
The consensus of the presenters was that the peak in global production would occur in the nearterm. Near term in this sense is guided by the analysis of Robert Hirsch and coauthor Roger Bezdek (who presented the first evening), that the U.S. would need 15 -20 years in order to bring substitutes online to compensate for the expected decline rate of production (2-3% per year). All were highly critical of the claim by the oil optimists, such as Michael Lynch (of the influential ENERGYSEER, Strategic Energy and Economic Research, Inc.) and historian Daniel Yergin, that peak would not take place for another thirty years, assuming that another trillion barrels was yet to be discovered. This would, in effect, double what most “peakers” assume. Ken Deffeyes of Princeton, a former colleague of M. King Hubbert at Shell (who accurately predicted the peak in U.S. production in 1970), asked rhetorically, how another Middle East plus a North Sea equivalent in petroleum could have been overlooked by geologists, who have been scouring the globe with ever more sophisticated equipment for many decades, but had yet to find such massive reserves. Indeed, the peakers point out that world discovery of petroleum maxed out in the early sixties, and has never recovered despite massive investment in exploration with highly advanced technology.
Whether we are at peak now, or have some years before the maxima, no one doubts
that supply is tight; there is barely enough production to meet demand. This has much to do with the astounding growth rates of China and India, countries with enormous populations, and enormous appetites for energy as they attempt to copy western lifestyles, and therefore consumption patterns. Lester Brown focused on the incompatibility with this trajectory with reality. China has now overtaken the U.S. in all commodity consumption, except for oil. And, at the present rate of growth, within 25 years China would consume two thirds of the global grain harvest alone, and world paper consumption would double. China’s (and India’s) oil consumption is following suit, and is hastening the date of peaking. What was markedly clear from Brown’s presentation is that the western economic model will not work for these countries, at least not for very long. As this model continues to be the aim of the leaders of these populous countries, the global resource base will draw down, leading inevitably to greater competition for what remains.
Michael Klare, professor at Hampshire College, spoke on likelihood of global conflict as oil, in particular, becomes scarce. Without a strategy in place to tame consumption, and switch to renewables, conflicts are certain. Internal strife from resource depletion will place increasing pressure on nations to capture what remains, and deprive rivals of the dwindling supply. Besides Iraq, and the Middle East (which holds 60% of the remaining reserves) the East China Sea is expected to be contested, perhaps militarily, between China and Japan, as each vie for claim of the natural gas and oil that lie in the region.
As the business as usual approach to economics and development undermine the global resource base, so too does it endanger our collective futures by overwhelming the planet’s “sinks.” Chief among these is the ability of the atmosphere to absorb greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane. Author Richard Heinberg described this as the flipside to the fossil fuel dilemma. NASA climatologist James Hanson, who recently chided the Bush Administration for trying to silence recent research findings, described that the “climate dice are now loaded.” Fossil fuel combustion is forcing climate into a radically new regime, and our likely response to oil and gas depletion, a turn to coal (without clean coal technologies and carbon sequestration) could make the situation much worse.
By day three of the conference, the focus directed to solutions to the multidimensional problem of peak oil, sustainability, climate change and global conflict. With a general agreement that a day of reckoning has come for contemporary economics, Herman Daly laid the basis for a switch to, what classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo expected, and John Stuart Mill favored, as a “stationary state.” A stationary or “steady state” economic model would imply a maximum of energy and material throughput, and would reconcile human activities with the real world (the world of limits). Daly suggested first to stop taxing income that is value added by labor and capital, and tax what is most scarce. Throughput should be taxed instead, thereby reducing resource depletion and pollution (which are costs to society), and encouraging frugality and efficiency (which have high value for society in a resource depleted world).
Richard Heinberg addressed the complicated problem of competition for petroleum as we enter the age of scarcity, with the proposal of what he, and oil geologist Colin Campbell have termed, the “Oil Depletion Protocol.” The aim would be to reduce conflict, and maximize social cohesion by anticipating the near term peak, and voluntarily reducing consumption by the geologically imposed decline rate (of approximately 2%/year). Every nation would adhere to the protocol, which would encourage conservation, research into alternatives, and provide stability for financial markets, as the supply would be anticipated, reducing the price volatility that would otherwise manifest from the tight supply/demand constraints that we are already experiencing.
The first step in meeting these challenges, that will grow more evident as our society reaches global limits, is to educate ourselves and our elected representatives. Understanding limits, and altering our individual and collective contribution to resource depletion and pollution is the basis for a sustainable society.
