Ironically, nineteenth century British economists worried a great deal about running out of coal and worried a lot about the consequences of running out of coal. They understood that energy is fundamental and not "just another commodity."
Where cornucopian economists go wrong, in my opinion, is in their unwavering belief that good substitutes for oil exist or soon will be found. This issue comes down to technology: Are there good substitutes or are there not? My own opinion (and I'm an economist) is that for many uses there are no good substitutes for oil and natural gas. To some extent we may be able to substutute electricity generated from nuclear power for oil and natural gas--but this is not a quick or easy or complete substitution by any means. Biofuels have limited potential as substitutes for oil. Solar and wind power are more silver BBs, but again are not a quick or easy substitute for oil. Unconventional oil will help as will coal-to-liquids, but these are slow, difficult, and high-cost technologies with significant environmental concerns. Call them tarnished silver BBs.
The Econ 101 graphs work only where good substitutes exist. I think this is the essence of the issue: If there are good substitutes for oil, then Peak Oil is nothing to worry about. Because, in my opinion, there are only difficult and expensive substitutes for oil, Peak Oil is a Big Deal that will transform our lives.
"Because, in my opinion, there are only difficult and expensive substitutes for oil, Peak Oil is a Big Deal that will transform our lives."
1) I mostly agree -- depending on how we define the word "transform". I am certainly no "doomer", but finite resources are a constraint. Accordingly, I have already begun educating my boys on PO, its implications for the future, and for the types of job openings likely to be in demand in 10 years when they finish college.
2) This implies that the price of oil will rise faster than inflation in the years to come. If we add geopolitical concerns on top of this, we get that we all should be hedging this risk by owning domestic reserves in our portfolio. The energy index funds contain exposure to refining and the drillers, but there are a few publically traded firms that are more narrow.
3) I hope those who post here that truly believe in peak oil have been investing what funds they have accordingly. There's an old saying that goes roughly as follows, "If you want to know what someone believes in, flip through their checkbook". (A variation of "preferences are revealed through choice" phrase so often used by those in econ departments.) I hope the more vocal posters here are investing according to their beliefs.
Sonic - I adopted this very strategy last year, dumping many higher risk oil and mining stocks, to focus on companies with reserves concentrated in the OECD. Encana is I believe 100% N America, but the list of companies not exposed to political risks is pretty short. Quality exploration potential and growing production tends to be outside the OECD. So you got to balance growth prospects against safety.
I invest in small US e&p's with positive net and growing reserves. To sort, I try to extrapolate future net and compare with present EV,
reserves/ q production x q net/EV; the result should be at least 1.0; not many are.
Of US e&p's I have found 3 above 1; ard/gpor/gmxr
The first two are oils, the latter ng... imo the potential for increase in NA ng price is much higher than for world oil.
"imo the potential for increase in NA ng price is much higher than for world oil."
Many people agree with you that the odds of, say, a near-term 2X price increase is greater for NA nat gas than world oil. I don't know, but I am certainly not going to take the other side of your position.
Both oil & nat gas prices concern me. With my electricity mostly coming from NG, I have been one busy person lately: I've doubled my attic venting (all passive), added some radiant barrier stuff (if interested, see savenrg.com), and will soon add some solar shading on a few windows to reduce the a/c bill this summer. (If I install any more compact flourescents in the house, I think my wife will slug me.)
I used something similar to the membrane: it's a major hassle to install (I got the stuff I used on an "inventory clearance sale"). The RB chips are FAR easier to install, but pricey. The TCM product, due to it being multi-layered, is not adversely affected by dust when placed over the attic insulation. Dust accumulation is not a major problem in my attic. Therefore, a single-layer, double-sided product (like the one I installed) installed over the insulation should perform well for many years -- at least I hope it will.
Best I can tell, dust problems are most prevalent for attics with powered gable fans: they seem to draw the dust in on one side of the house and deposit it along the way to exit fan. For these, the two savenrg products would work best.
The next house that I build (assuming it's in the South or Southwest) will be wrapped in the multi-layered TCM product. I also hope to avoid placing the a/c units & ducting in the attic. Homes with such setups (like my current home which I did not build/design) get a triple penalty from attic heat: the heat eventually seeps through the insulation, the insulation acts as a heat sink so that heat continues to radiate in after sundown, and the a/c ducts get super-heated. Just wonderful. When I moved into my current home, the attic would hit 120-130 when the outside air temp hit 100: that meant I was trying to get sub-80 degree air out of my a/c unit at a time when the ducts were 120-130. Surprise, surprise -- it took a very long time to get cool air out of ducts and into the house.
My experience (via electric bills normailized for avg temp) is that increased attic ventillation is a first order magnitude effect as is sealing the ducts for leaks: I lose less cool air due to leaks and have less of a temperature loss through the ducts since the ducts (& attic) are no longer 120-130 (just a chilly 110+!).
I found the radiant barrier to be a second order effect, but only if the attic is ventilated properly. RB installed over the insulation reduces the heat sink effect of the insulation by eliminating it from absorbing any radiant heat directly (it still gets heated by other means, hence the need for excellent ventilation to keep the attic relatively cool). A faculty member at Texas A&M has a study/note on RB placement -- something I'd like to quote right now, but can't seem to find. NOTE: In some cases, adding RB to a poorly ventilated attic can actually make the a/c bill worse, especially if the RB is installed up on the rafters.
Thanks for your words Don, I guess you got the main problem:
I think this is the essence of the issue: If there are good substitutes for oil, then Peak Oil is nothing to worry about.
Substituting Oil is not solely about technology. Alternatives do exist on that basis, but what none other source seems to provide is the colossal energy flow that Oil allows.
You are correct that technology is not the only problem in finding substitutes. Another problem is that the "Great Transition" away from oil will require truly humongous investments in nuclear energy, wind power and other alternatives. Oil infrastructure is already in place, but to find the funds and get the land, skilled labor, and capital (including energy, a special kind of capital) and management together is a prodigeous task.
How well will market forces work to facilitate this prodigeous task? Most economists think it will work fast and with great power. I am concerned about the dynamics, the time lags, the nuts and bolts of making the Great Transition away from oil, and while I grant the power of market forces I also see their limitations.
If I were dictator of the United States I'd implement a World War Two type of mobilization and put half of all resources into dealing with Peak Oil using the command mode of organization. I think five years of such effort would do the trick, because with wartime priorities we could build (for example) hundreds of nuclear power generating plants in five years.
With business as usual, I expect major disruptions and serious hard times coming--and coming pretty darn quick, i.e. within the next few years.
Another problem is that the "Great Transition" away from oil will require truly humongous investments in nuclear energy, wind power and other alternatives.
In reading economists theorizing one frequently sees words and phrases such as "eventually the market comes into balance..." and "in the long run..." implicitly ignoring what goes on during the transition between one 'balanced' state and the next. If the doomster's dieoff occurs, the market will indeed come back into balance through demand destruction of the worst sort. Wasn't it Keynes who quipped "In the long run, we are all dead."
I'm admittedly fairly ignorant of the current state of economics thought (I read Heilbroner and others in the 60s), so I'll pose the question, "does educated economic thinking take the 'transition' into account as to how long in might be, how difficult it might be, what the human cost in suffering might be.", and so on. You seem to indicate that the answer to this is a qualified 'no' which leaves me more skeptical of the academic discipline of economics than ever.
Most of economics at the undergraduate level is comparative statics and has nothing to say about dynamics (the path from one point to another) at all--or there is sometimes a very simple growth model.
At higher levels of economics the problems of dynamics are well understood. Keynes was a prominent advocate of looking at the costs of change as well as the benefits from the final position; he was a practical man who understood the real world as well as he did economic theory. However, economics is only as good as its assumptions. A key assumption of most economists is that there are ALWAYS substitutes lurking out there--real or potential ones that will be developed in response to higher price.
The education of most economists is deplorable. They learn economics and math but not much else. Although engineering is essentially applied economics ("An engineer is somebody who can do for a dollar what any damn fool can do for five dollars.") few economists can or do communicate with engineers. Indeed, outside of their specialties, most economists are woefully ignorant: They become captives of their elegant mathematical models and quite unable to think critically about the quality of their premises.
Now, having said all this, I do not mean to include all economists within my sweeping generalizations. The great economists of the past were also great critical thinkers--Keynes, whom I've already mentioned, Alfred Marshall and the other great nineteenth century economists, Kenneth Boulding and others.
To some extent I blame the writers of economics textbooks. To make a complex subject intelligible to undergraduates they oversimplify. Premises are left hidden and seldom are examined deeply (or at all, for that matter). The logic of economics is powerful, but its assumptions are often questionable. Most questionable in the context of Peak Oil, I think, is the question of the availability of substitutes for oil and natural gas.
For example, many economists seem to assume that because coal-to- liquids technology exists, and because coal is abundant, then there can be no Peak Oil problem, because coal-to-liquids (or some other and better) technology will save us. In a weird way, the economists are sort of right: If we could get effective carbon sequestration at reasonable cost, then (by itself) coal-to-liquids or coal-to-gas technologies could defer the harsh consequences of Peak Oil for several decades. In other words, oil production will probably not diminish faster than coal-based substitutes could be developed; the financial constraints are formidable but not insurmountable, and the binding constraint of not enough engineers could probably be relaxed in half a dozen years, if we really put our minds to it.
But for now carbon sequestration is a dream, not an on-the-shelf technology, and for now we have too few engineers--and most of them are not far from retirement.
If we could get effective carbon sequestration at reasonable cost, then (by itself) coal-to-liquids or coal-to-gas technologies could defer the harsh consequences of Peak Oil for several decades.
But if carbon sequestration is skipped, then CTL would defer PO even better, no? I'm afraid that is what will happen, and the climate will be ignored, since today's crisis takes precedence over tommorrow's even-bigger crisis.
Even if carbon sequestration technology existed, it would not be actually used if and when an energy "crisis" is upon us, because carbon sequestration necessarily uses up a significant fraction of the energy output, i.e., it lowers the EROEI, net energy output, and profits. Without stringent enforcement it would be turned off - and will the political will for such enforcement be there when CTL is not quite meeting the "demand" for liquid fuels?
But for now carbon sequestration is a dream, not an on-the-shelf technology,
And thus it (sequestration) will be ignored for most part. I'm finding it hard to believe that coal will not be that magical substitute turned to as oil and NG get more difficult to deliver to the customer.
Reminds me of a favorite physics problem. Lean a ladder against a wall and then imagine that the bottom starts to slip, how fast does the person (say, 3/4 of the way up the ladder) fall. The important thing to realize is that it's actually two problems. At some point the ladder stops touching the wall, and then it behaves in an entirely different manner, the guy just falls as if there were no ladder at all. The important thing is to realize when "the wheels fall off" of the original equations, and figure out the consequences of that.
Long story short, scientists learn early on that equations are only valid in certain domains, and you have to be careful to consider what happens when the situation leaves the domain in which your equations are valid. It seems that economists don't think this way. When the earth holds infinite (or effectively infinite) oil then the economic models work, but at some point it is clear that no matter the price production will be zero, so the model breaks down somewhere. The important thing is to realize where that boundary is, and account for it. Economists don't bother with such trivialities, so their equations become insanity at some point.
Reminds me of the extensive work put into divisia for EROEI calculations, but clearly nobody ever asked "why are we doing this.", because it is not in general a terribly useful thing to do, no matter how interesting the math. Let me just pose it in this way, if I ask how many barrels of ethanol the US can produce, I expect an answer in barrels of ethanol. EROEI is a dimensionless quantity, so in order to produce the answer, given an EROEI, you need to multiply by.... barrels of ethanol. Given EROEI, you can only compute the answer if you already knew the answer, not terribly useful it seems. Try it yourself and you'll see that EROEI is not useful for computing the answer to this problem. No matter how you go about calculating the answer it always ammounts to just throwing out the EROEI and computing from first principals. Given that, why bother with the EROEI at all if you'll just throw it out whenever you're asked an actual question of relevance?
With all due respect Slaphappy, I believe you mischaracterize the position of most mainstream economists. Few scientists, including economists, would argue that standard models begin to break down at boundary conditions.
What is important to remember is that under any reasonable oil depletion scenario there will be a non-trivial amount of oil being produced 50, 75, or even 100 years from now. So while you are correct in theory that the models will eventually break down, econometric modeling is in fact a very useful tool for analyzing and predicting the possible effects of peak oil and its after-effects even decades after peak.
I've only ever seen two things come from these models.
1) We'll always find more oil, so it isn't a problem. If the price goes up, there's oil to be had.
or.
2) The price of oil will diverge towards infinity as we pass the peak, and therefore everything will become arbitrarily expensive and we'll all die.
It's rare to see any argument that rests upon economic principals to not fall into one of those two camps, both of which are entirely unrealistic. Might as well be talking about dragons and unicorns at that point. Any argument that rests upon actual science (hmmmm, where are we planning to get energy, and is this a viable option) almost always avoids both of those pitfalls.
Slaphappy, I don't know what / who you've been reading. Most likely you are simply misunderstanding economists because neither of your two scenarios are predicted by economics.
What an economist will tell you is that we are currently seeing market forces at work. The high prices of the last two years has encouraged:
1) Increased efforts to pump conventional crude (with questionable results)
2) Increased production from non-conventional sources (tar sands, biofuels, etc.)
3) Increased efficiency and conservation, and in the long run, structural changes to the global economy to make it less dependent on oil.
The sum total of all three means that supply can be down slightly over the last two years without causing any major problems. If we've really peaked and supply continues to drop, prices will rise further, encouraging 1, 2, and 3 above.
None of this implies that either of your two scenarios will come to pass.
"good substitutes for oil exist or soon will be found" NOT.
I'm afraid I have to repeat your other admirers. It all has to do with substitutes. What does one eat in Ireland during the Potato Famine? Grass etc.. was a very poor substitute. Die Off (and move-off, of course, cause there was somewhere else to go) happened, und the pop. is still a little more than a third of what it was back then.
What do we substitute during an oil famine? Well..
"The Stone Age didn't end for a lack of stones". Clearly we'll find something better than oil. From an energy density point of view that would be ... let's see ... nuclear fission ... nuclear fusion ... antimatter. Hmm, Houston, we have a problem!
"What do we substitute during an oil famine? Well.."
We substitute busses and trains. We substitue the common sense NOT to live 50 miles from work but only five. We substitute solar and wind and well insulated windows for 3/8" panes of glass that were installed in the 1920s when the houses were heated with coal and wood.
We substitute smarts for desperation and a good sense of humor for doomerism. Once we do that, we'll be fine. Even you, my friend.
I just spend 70.000 Euro with a new roof (14cm of the best insulation you can imagine), solar panels to support the heater and hot water, new heater with an 800lt storage tank in the basement, windows, new facing insulation etc, etc, etc..
I ride the train to work every day.
I share a car with one of the neighbors and drive only when really necessary.
My point has nothing to do with an economy based on TRANSITION away from FF. This is doable. There will most certainly be JOLTS (discontinuity) to our system along the way, which our system MAY or may not survive.
Again: what substitutes do you use during a famine (electricity black-out, for instance) at the moment of the famine, when the UN can't come running to your aid. Have you ever experienced a famine?
Let me see... you are doing all the right things, yet, you are worried. Why is that? I am not questioning that you are worried, I am simply wondering why you are worried since you know the right answers already.
The "jolt" hypothesis as well as the "may not survive" hypothesis have very, very little in common with reality. What are your indicators that there will be serious jolts or that there even might be famine?
The last time I was in Germany, food was plentiful and there was not a single thing missing from the stores.
Now... in my oppinnion doomerism is essentially an American export, just like creationism.
As I see it: my diet as well as the diet of my former Americans is mostly protein based. Meat protein takes enormous amounts of food starch to produce (approx. an order of magnitude more than what we would consume directly). Moreover, my daily caloric intake is probably 50% above what I need. In order for there to be famine, we would have to lose MOST of our agricultural production capacity, not just some. Would we have to change our diet? Yes. Would we starve? No.
Energetically speaking... I can cut down on my electricity demand by half without doing much else than by buying a European size fridge and by not using the stove as often as I do (or by using a slow cooker instead of evaporating water as I do in most of my dishes). I can cut down on my heating without being truly cold by insulating the windows better and putting on a sweater. I can cut down on my transportation fuel demand by having twice as many people use the train I am on. It would certainly be less comfortable but not impossible. I can also work from home four days a week, if necessary.
Look, the US is using 10kW/capita where Europe is using only 4kW/capita. We are not achieving anything that the Europeans can't achieve and don't achieve regularly. And I bet, you can get by on 3kW with some efforts. 3kW/capita is an amount of energy that can be generated with renewables, even in Europe and more easily so here in the US.
Reality is: there is not the smallest sign that there will be famines in the US or Europe. Not one. Every number derived from reality you look at points to the one conclusion: Americans are fat and they will have to lose some weight. Europeans are somewhat leaner but they won't be starving, either. We might have to go back to diets that look more like those of our grandparents (more beans, potatoes and veggies) but that's it. No famine. Just a more healthy lifestyle.
On the other hand, if you want famine, I would suggest you relocate to the Sahel. They have it there all the time. They use way less energy per capita, too. Probably more like a couple hundred Watt, one twentieth of what you have.
I am doing the right things. This works great in a system that TRANSFORMS, which you ASSUME will happen. This is MY hope.
"The "jolt" hypothesis as well as the "may not survive" hypothesis have very, very little in common with reality. What are your indicators that there will be serious jolts or that there even might be famine?"
1st - not food famine but energy famine - usually known as a shortage. More specifically, Russia cutting off its nat. gas, or not being able to deliver everywhere it delivers now; lines at the gas station, without knowing when the next delivery will be there; blackouts, especially in Italy and the US-NE.
*I* will do fine through all this as long as "the system" continues to work. As long as I keep my well-paying job. As long as the socialistic German government continues to provide a social net. But an individual is 98.5% dependent on the system he lives in. If something goes wrong with the system, then it really doesn't matter what precautions *I* made.
I believe that our energy systems, especially oil and gas, are very prone to disruptions. VERY prone.
If you want to call this doomerism, go ahead. I call it a basic REALISTIC distrust. I hope that the system will always continue to work - it has for the past 60 years! I doubt that it will, though, continuously the next 2-3 decades.
I consider your TRUST in the system, once oil and gas producion begins decreasing at 4% per year, as naive at best.
Cheers, Dom
ps If you only knew of the constructs of solar sails and space elevators and solar collection systems etc etc that I have constructed ON PAPER, I think you would understand better..
Actually there was an abundant and readily available substitute for potatoes during the famine in Ireland. It was called wheat. The problem was that it was too expensive for most irish peasants to buy, they simply could not afford this substitute. Also the wheat, barley and copious ammounts of other agricultural products, like pigs and beef were being exported to mainland britain. Apparently in some areas soldiers guarded the wheat fields and wagons carrying the wheat to the coastal ports.
The british government did try to find a substitute for the blighted potatoes. It had to be a cheap substitute though. It was known as indian corn and mainly imported from North America. Unfortunately the irish peasants had not experience of indian corn. Also it was so hard one needed a special iron grinder to mill it into flour. The whole scheme was academic anyway as the government didn't buy enough corn quick enough, or enough grinders, and the means to distribute this substitute and the central organization required to aleviate the worst effects of the famine were woefully inadequate. Government inspectors tried in vain for years to get London to react to the escalating crisis, but to no avail. Simply put the required solutions to the potato blight, solutions that in retrospect appear obvious today, failed because they contradicted the accepted economic and social dogma of the times. All this has of course little to do with Peak Oil, or does it?
This is another area where some economists address the underlying issue, but many don't. That is simply the issue of having enough trading capital (money) in circulation to be able to act upon an existing demand. The dirt poor people of Haiti certainly have a demand for food and shelter, but nothing with which to trade.
Yes, a potato famine seems to be a great metaphore.
Actually I wasn't really thinking about the Irish potato famine because of the surrounding "politics". I was thinking of a potato famine in Saxony in the second half of the 18th century. There were no "normal" ways of feeding the population. The option was eating grass or leaving house and home to go begging hundreds of miles away...
Economics tends to describe a system of continuity, but not of Discontinuity.
Where cornucopian economists go wrong, in my opinion, is in their unwavering belief that good substitutes for oil exist or soon will be found. This issue comes down to technology: Are there good substitutes or are there not?
Yes, it does come down to technology, which presumably will invent these "perfect" substitutes. However, forecasting technology trends is impossible. No one knows if some breakthrough in battery technology, fuel cells, cellulosic ethanol etc. will occur or not. Right now, energy is a "hot" investment and a lot of start-up capital is getting thrown at the problem of creating these substitutes. There are no guarantees. So, to various degrees, one hears statements that express "faith" that breakthroughs will occur. Some breakthroughs will occur. On the other hand, many envisioned, widely anticipated technologies will never come online.
While there may not be substitutes for oil, there are subsitutes for the primary user of oil, the automobile. The vast majority of us profoundly do not want to even contemplate such a world. Some of us are willing to contemplate moving out of the box that so desperately wants to maintain "easy motoring", especially those of us who have actually lived in vibrant communities and areas where the auto is not necessary, and is even less convenient than the alternatives.
One's views on this matter also depend on how serious one takes peak oil and global warming. Every single alternative, including EV, implemented by itself without any change in behavior or radical increases in efficiency will not be sufficient to do what is necessary to stabilize global warming. Many are excited about the fact that we have learned to make SUV hybrids and are convinced we can have our cake and eat it too. This will be woefully inadequate in a world where we need to cut energy use by at least 80%.
Yes, a miracle or a series of miracles may appear. That is what our society is counting on because the prospect of changing its lifestyles, travel habits, location, infrastructure, etc. is just too horrible to even think about.
Does it make sense to bet the planet's future on the efficacy of ethanol, fuel cells, or even plug in hybrids when there is little to no serious discussion at the political level to cut back our consumption? Well, if I had a farm I wouldn't be betting it.
This will be woefully inadequate in a world where we need to cut energy use by at least 80%.
On what do you base that 80% figure?
It's certainly not an argument based on capability to generate energy - there's plenty of that even after oil peaks. So I'm assuming it's an argument based on carbon emissions, and presumably believing they need to be reduced to near zero. Even then, though, current nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, and storage technologies would allow us to generate over 20% of global energy demand with little or no carbon emissions.
So why 80%?
That is what our society is counting on because the prospect of changing its lifestyles, travel habits, location, infrastructure, etc. is just too horrible to even think about.
I don't see why people keep claiming this.
It's probably not that it's too horrible to think about, but that it's not salient enough to most people to think about. There's only minimal discussion regarding changing lifestyles now because most people haven't been given a sufficiently compelling reason to consider it. If there becomes a compelling reason for them - either due to government action or due to high costs from other alternatives being insufficient - then people can radically change their habits in a short time (historical times of crisis have proved that), and will probably do so.
That most people don't see the current situation as providing the compelling reasons that you see doesn't mean they'll never be compelled, it just means they haven't been yet. Being fatalistic about their behaviour is like giving up on a first-grader because he doesn't know calculus.
Does it make sense to bet the planet's future on the efficacy of ethanol, fuel cells, or even plug in hybrids when there is little to no serious discussion at the political level to cut back our consumption?
There's plenty of serious discussion on that matter, even if the US is lagging in that regard. If conservation is crucial (as I think it is), then the US will come around. It's not a question of if, but of when, and of how much harder the delay will make the problem.
Re: without any change in behavior or radical increases in efficiency and there is little to no serious discussion at the political level to cut back our consumption
Everytime I make the observation on TOD that no changes in human behaviour are being demanded by those who advocate half-way (or much worse) measures like those you mentioned, I am usually criticized right away or ignored. Yet, it all comes down to voluntary, wise changes in behaviour based on foresight. There is no free lunch.
This brings up the more interesting interesting question of whether such behavioural changes are possible at all — or whether crises will force the issue. Usually, this is couched in terms of economic concepts like "demand elasticity" and other similar arguments. Demand did indeed go down during the 70's and early 80's in response to very high prices. However, that will not do the trick this time around. The large supply response in the 80's (North Sea, Prudhoe Bay, etc) following the oil shocks can not happen again, should we experience a new round of catastrophic geopolitical events. Over the longer term, there is just no option. The oil supply will contract, global warming must be mitigated. Lowered demand due to price helps us muddle through, but does can not solve the underlying problems.
There is a deep question about human nature here. I myself feel that humans can not make significant changes in their behaviour without being forced to do so. Others may be optimistic — in which case, my response is like that of Missouri's U.S. congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver (1897 - 1903) —
While a member of the U.S. House Committee on Naval Affairs, Vandiver attended an 1899 naval banquet in Philadelphia. In a speech there, he declared, "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me."
All this is complicated by the optimistic forecasts of CERA, ExxonMobil, Saudi Arabia, Michael Lynch et. who, by reassuring the public that there is no problem, make any potential behavioural response utterly impossible. No one will change their behaviour when such "authorities" like these tell them that it is completely unnecessary to do so. This is where psychology and human nature enter the argument. Such statements (by CERA et. al) are in the realm of Freud's defence mechanisms in which the rationalization for not changing how we live reinforces the underlying reality — we are incapable of changing our behaviour. There are exceptions, but these are relatively few and far between. Sometimes these exceptional oddballs people get together — this is called a "peak oil" or a "climate change" conference.
The question then becomes this: if everybody across the board was giving gloomy forecasts like some of us do here at TOD, would people be able to change their habits? Would they elect politicians that would enable such changes? Is this even possible?
Please look to Europe for guidance. People there do not waste nearly as much as the people in the US do and they are perfectly happy. Europe is humming along in an intellectual renassaince which the US can't even imagine. Every time I go there (or just watch it on tv), I think, this is what the roaring twenties must have been like. At the same time I love living in the US... I just think it should be a little bit more like Europe: upbeat and less fanatic about having to be No. 1 in everything, including waste. Being No. 2 or even No. 3 has an advantage: you get to do more fun stuff because if the savings.
The good news is: everything that worked for Europe would work for the US. That includes gas tax, higher efficiency standards and wind and solar energy. It just happens that the US is behaving like the faithful man on the roof of his flooded house who says: "God will help me!" every time a boat comes by to pick him up. Let's hope the US will not end up having to listen to God telling it "But I sent you the gas tax, did I not? And did I not send you the higher EPA standards? Did I not give you the most sun on the planet? It is not my fault that you turned down all the help I sent you."
Absolutely. The Europeans love their cars just as much as the Americans do. Probably even more, given the fact that the only truly beautiful cars are all made by Italians... :-)
The point is that people can learn and people do learn given the right incentives. There will always be some who will drive a 9mpg Lamborghini. And you know what? It doesn't matter if one person in a hundred thousand has one of those. Actually, they are lovely to look at and I marvel at them every time I see them. What really matters for PO is that less than one in two people in the US drive an ugly and useless pickup or SUV.
infinate - I sure agree, I was looking around today and 50% of the vehicles on the road in the US ("silicon valley" area in california) are either SUVs or those huge pickup trucks that are never used for work because it might get 'em dirty.
Excellent article!
Ironically, nineteenth century British economists worried a great deal about running out of coal and worried a lot about the consequences of running out of coal. They understood that energy is fundamental and not "just another commodity."
Where cornucopian economists go wrong, in my opinion, is in their unwavering belief that good substitutes for oil exist or soon will be found. This issue comes down to technology: Are there good substitutes or are there not? My own opinion (and I'm an economist) is that for many uses there are no good substitutes for oil and natural gas. To some extent we may be able to substutute electricity generated from nuclear power for oil and natural gas--but this is not a quick or easy or complete substitution by any means. Biofuels have limited potential as substitutes for oil. Solar and wind power are more silver BBs, but again are not a quick or easy substitute for oil. Unconventional oil will help as will coal-to-liquids, but these are slow, difficult, and high-cost technologies with significant environmental concerns. Call them tarnished silver BBs.
The Econ 101 graphs work only where good substitutes exist. I think this is the essence of the issue: If there are good substitutes for oil, then Peak Oil is nothing to worry about. Because, in my opinion, there are only difficult and expensive substitutes for oil, Peak Oil is a Big Deal that will transform our lives.
"Because, in my opinion, there are only difficult and expensive substitutes for oil, Peak Oil is a Big Deal that will transform our lives."
1) I mostly agree -- depending on how we define the word "transform". I am certainly no "doomer", but finite resources are a constraint. Accordingly, I have already begun educating my boys on PO, its implications for the future, and for the types of job openings likely to be in demand in 10 years when they finish college.
2) This implies that the price of oil will rise faster than inflation in the years to come. If we add geopolitical concerns on top of this, we get that we all should be hedging this risk by owning domestic reserves in our portfolio. The energy index funds contain exposure to refining and the drillers, but there are a few publically traded firms that are more narrow.
3) I hope those who post here that truly believe in peak oil have been investing what funds they have accordingly. There's an old saying that goes roughly as follows, "If you want to know what someone believes in, flip through their checkbook". (A variation of "preferences are revealed through choice" phrase so often used by those in econ departments.) I hope the more vocal posters here are investing according to their beliefs.
Sonic - I adopted this very strategy last year, dumping many higher risk oil and mining stocks, to focus on companies with reserves concentrated in the OECD. Encana is I believe 100% N America, but the list of companies not exposed to political risks is pretty short. Quality exploration potential and growing production tends to be outside the OECD. So you got to balance growth prospects against safety.
I invest in small US e&p's with positive net and growing reserves. To sort, I try to extrapolate future net and compare with present EV,
reserves/ q production x q net/EV; the result should be at least 1.0; not many are.
Of US e&p's I have found 3 above 1; ard/gpor/gmxr
The first two are oils, the latter ng... imo the potential for increase in NA ng price is much higher than for world oil.
"imo the potential for increase in NA ng price is much higher than for world oil."
Many people agree with you that the odds of, say, a near-term 2X price increase is greater for NA nat gas than world oil. I don't know, but I am certainly not going to take the other side of your position.
Both oil & nat gas prices concern me. With my electricity mostly coming from NG, I have been one busy person lately: I've doubled my attic venting (all passive), added some radiant barrier stuff (if interested, see savenrg.com), and will soon add some solar shading on a few windows to reduce the a/c bill this summer. (If I install any more compact flourescents in the house, I think my wife will slug me.)
- Sonic
Which savenrg.com product did you use, the chips or the membrane?
I used something similar to the membrane: it's a major hassle to install (I got the stuff I used on an "inventory clearance sale"). The RB chips are FAR easier to install, but pricey. The TCM product, due to it being multi-layered, is not adversely affected by dust when placed over the attic insulation. Dust accumulation is not a major problem in my attic. Therefore, a single-layer, double-sided product (like the one I installed) installed over the insulation should perform well for many years -- at least I hope it will.
Best I can tell, dust problems are most prevalent for attics with powered gable fans: they seem to draw the dust in on one side of the house and deposit it along the way to exit fan. For these, the two savenrg products would work best.
The next house that I build (assuming it's in the South or Southwest) will be wrapped in the multi-layered TCM product. I also hope to avoid placing the a/c units & ducting in the attic. Homes with such setups (like my current home which I did not build/design) get a triple penalty from attic heat: the heat eventually seeps through the insulation, the insulation acts as a heat sink so that heat continues to radiate in after sundown, and the a/c ducts get super-heated. Just wonderful. When I moved into my current home, the attic would hit 120-130 when the outside air temp hit 100: that meant I was trying to get sub-80 degree air out of my a/c unit at a time when the ducts were 120-130. Surprise, surprise -- it took a very long time to get cool air out of ducts and into the house.
My experience (via electric bills normailized for avg temp) is that increased attic ventillation is a first order magnitude effect as is sealing the ducts for leaks: I lose less cool air due to leaks and have less of a temperature loss through the ducts since the ducts (& attic) are no longer 120-130 (just a chilly 110+!).
I found the radiant barrier to be a second order effect, but only if the attic is ventilated properly. RB installed over the insulation reduces the heat sink effect of the insulation by eliminating it from absorbing any radiant heat directly (it still gets heated by other means, hence the need for excellent ventilation to keep the attic relatively cool). A faculty member at Texas A&M has a study/note on RB placement -- something I'd like to quote right now, but can't seem to find. NOTE: In some cases, adding RB to a poorly ventilated attic can actually make the a/c bill worse, especially if the RB is installed up on the rafters.
Thanks for your words Don, I guess you got the main problem:
Substituting Oil is not solely about technology. Alternatives do exist on that basis, but what none other source seems to provide is the colossal energy flow that Oil allows.
You are correct that technology is not the only problem in finding substitutes. Another problem is that the "Great Transition" away from oil will require truly humongous investments in nuclear energy, wind power and other alternatives. Oil infrastructure is already in place, but to find the funds and get the land, skilled labor, and capital (including energy, a special kind of capital) and management together is a prodigeous task.
How well will market forces work to facilitate this prodigeous task? Most economists think it will work fast and with great power. I am concerned about the dynamics, the time lags, the nuts and bolts of making the Great Transition away from oil, and while I grant the power of market forces I also see their limitations.
If I were dictator of the United States I'd implement a World War Two type of mobilization and put half of all resources into dealing with Peak Oil using the command mode of organization. I think five years of such effort would do the trick, because with wartime priorities we could build (for example) hundreds of nuclear power generating plants in five years.
With business as usual, I expect major disruptions and serious hard times coming--and coming pretty darn quick, i.e. within the next few years.
In reading economists theorizing one frequently sees words and phrases such as "eventually the market comes into balance..." and "in the long run..." implicitly ignoring what goes on during the transition between one 'balanced' state and the next. If the doomster's dieoff occurs, the market will indeed come back into balance through demand destruction of the worst sort. Wasn't it Keynes who quipped "In the long run, we are all dead."
I'm admittedly fairly ignorant of the current state of economics thought (I read Heilbroner and others in the 60s), so I'll pose the question, "does educated economic thinking take the 'transition' into account as to how long in might be, how difficult it might be, what the human cost in suffering might be.", and so on. You seem to indicate that the answer to this is a qualified 'no' which leaves me more skeptical of the academic discipline of economics than ever.
Most of economics at the undergraduate level is comparative statics and has nothing to say about dynamics (the path from one point to another) at all--or there is sometimes a very simple growth model.
At higher levels of economics the problems of dynamics are well understood. Keynes was a prominent advocate of looking at the costs of change as well as the benefits from the final position; he was a practical man who understood the real world as well as he did economic theory. However, economics is only as good as its assumptions. A key assumption of most economists is that there are ALWAYS substitutes lurking out there--real or potential ones that will be developed in response to higher price.
The education of most economists is deplorable. They learn economics and math but not much else. Although engineering is essentially applied economics ("An engineer is somebody who can do for a dollar what any damn fool can do for five dollars.") few economists can or do communicate with engineers. Indeed, outside of their specialties, most economists are woefully ignorant: They become captives of their elegant mathematical models and quite unable to think critically about the quality of their premises.
Now, having said all this, I do not mean to include all economists within my sweeping generalizations. The great economists of the past were also great critical thinkers--Keynes, whom I've already mentioned, Alfred Marshall and the other great nineteenth century economists, Kenneth Boulding and others.
To some extent I blame the writers of economics textbooks. To make a complex subject intelligible to undergraduates they oversimplify. Premises are left hidden and seldom are examined deeply (or at all, for that matter). The logic of economics is powerful, but its assumptions are often questionable. Most questionable in the context of Peak Oil, I think, is the question of the availability of substitutes for oil and natural gas.
For example, many economists seem to assume that because coal-to- liquids technology exists, and because coal is abundant, then there can be no Peak Oil problem, because coal-to-liquids (or some other and better) technology will save us. In a weird way, the economists are sort of right: If we could get effective carbon sequestration at reasonable cost, then (by itself) coal-to-liquids or coal-to-gas technologies could defer the harsh consequences of Peak Oil for several decades. In other words, oil production will probably not diminish faster than coal-based substitutes could be developed; the financial constraints are formidable but not insurmountable, and the binding constraint of not enough engineers could probably be relaxed in half a dozen years, if we really put our minds to it.
But for now carbon sequestration is a dream, not an on-the-shelf technology, and for now we have too few engineers--and most of them are not far from retirement.
For engineers there is no substitute.
If we could get effective carbon sequestration at reasonable cost, then (by itself) coal-to-liquids or coal-to-gas technologies could defer the harsh consequences of Peak Oil for several decades.
But if carbon sequestration is skipped, then CTL would defer PO even better, no? I'm afraid that is what will happen, and the climate will be ignored, since today's crisis takes precedence over tommorrow's even-bigger crisis.
Even if carbon sequestration technology existed, it would not be actually used if and when an energy "crisis" is upon us, because carbon sequestration necessarily uses up a significant fraction of the energy output, i.e., it lowers the EROEI, net energy output, and profits. Without stringent enforcement it would be turned off - and will the political will for such enforcement be there when CTL is not quite meeting the "demand" for liquid fuels?
And thus it (sequestration) will be ignored for most part. I'm finding it hard to believe that coal will not be that magical substitute turned to as oil and NG get more difficult to deliver to the customer.
Reminds me of a favorite physics problem. Lean a ladder against a wall and then imagine that the bottom starts to slip, how fast does the person (say, 3/4 of the way up the ladder) fall. The important thing to realize is that it's actually two problems. At some point the ladder stops touching the wall, and then it behaves in an entirely different manner, the guy just falls as if there were no ladder at all. The important thing is to realize when "the wheels fall off" of the original equations, and figure out the consequences of that.
Long story short, scientists learn early on that equations are only valid in certain domains, and you have to be careful to consider what happens when the situation leaves the domain in which your equations are valid. It seems that economists don't think this way. When the earth holds infinite (or effectively infinite) oil then the economic models work, but at some point it is clear that no matter the price production will be zero, so the model breaks down somewhere. The important thing is to realize where that boundary is, and account for it. Economists don't bother with such trivialities, so their equations become insanity at some point.
Reminds me of the extensive work put into divisia for EROEI calculations, but clearly nobody ever asked "why are we doing this.", because it is not in general a terribly useful thing to do, no matter how interesting the math. Let me just pose it in this way, if I ask how many barrels of ethanol the US can produce, I expect an answer in barrels of ethanol. EROEI is a dimensionless quantity, so in order to produce the answer, given an EROEI, you need to multiply by.... barrels of ethanol. Given EROEI, you can only compute the answer if you already knew the answer, not terribly useful it seems. Try it yourself and you'll see that EROEI is not useful for computing the answer to this problem. No matter how you go about calculating the answer it always ammounts to just throwing out the EROEI and computing from first principals. Given that, why bother with the EROEI at all if you'll just throw it out whenever you're asked an actual question of relevance?
With all due respect Slaphappy, I believe you mischaracterize the position of most mainstream economists. Few scientists, including economists, would argue that standard models begin to break down at boundary conditions.
What is important to remember is that under any reasonable oil depletion scenario there will be a non-trivial amount of oil being produced 50, 75, or even 100 years from now. So while you are correct in theory that the models will eventually break down, econometric modeling is in fact a very useful tool for analyzing and predicting the possible effects of peak oil and its after-effects even decades after peak.
I've only ever seen two things come from these models.
1) We'll always find more oil, so it isn't a problem. If the price goes up, there's oil to be had.
or.
2) The price of oil will diverge towards infinity as we pass the peak, and therefore everything will become arbitrarily expensive and we'll all die.
It's rare to see any argument that rests upon economic principals to not fall into one of those two camps, both of which are entirely unrealistic. Might as well be talking about dragons and unicorns at that point. Any argument that rests upon actual science (hmmmm, where are we planning to get energy, and is this a viable option) almost always avoids both of those pitfalls.
Slaphappy, I don't know what / who you've been reading. Most likely you are simply misunderstanding economists because neither of your two scenarios are predicted by economics.
What an economist will tell you is that we are currently seeing market forces at work. The high prices of the last two years has encouraged:
1) Increased efforts to pump conventional crude (with questionable results)
2) Increased production from non-conventional sources (tar sands, biofuels, etc.)
3) Increased efficiency and conservation, and in the long run, structural changes to the global economy to make it less dependent on oil.
The sum total of all three means that supply can be down slightly over the last two years without causing any major problems. If we've really peaked and supply continues to drop, prices will rise further, encouraging 1, 2, and 3 above.
None of this implies that either of your two scenarios will come to pass.
"good substitutes for oil exist or soon will be found" NOT.
I'm afraid I have to repeat your other admirers. It all has to do with substitutes. What does one eat in Ireland during the Potato Famine? Grass etc.. was a very poor substitute. Die Off (and move-off, of course, cause there was somewhere else to go) happened, und the pop. is still a little more than a third of what it was back then.
What do we substitute during an oil famine? Well..
"The Stone Age didn't end for a lack of stones". Clearly we'll find something better than oil. From an energy density point of view that would be ... let's see ... nuclear fission ... nuclear fusion ... antimatter. Hmm, Houston, we have a problem!
"What do we substitute during an oil famine? Well.."
We substitute busses and trains. We substitue the common sense NOT to live 50 miles from work but only five. We substitute solar and wind and well insulated windows for 3/8" panes of glass that were installed in the 1920s when the houses were heated with coal and wood.
We substitute smarts for desperation and a good sense of humor for doomerism. Once we do that, we'll be fine. Even you, my friend.
"Even you, my friend"
I just spend 70.000 Euro with a new roof (14cm of the best insulation you can imagine), solar panels to support the heater and hot water, new heater with an 800lt storage tank in the basement, windows, new facing insulation etc, etc, etc..
I ride the train to work every day.
I share a car with one of the neighbors and drive only when really necessary.
My point has nothing to do with an economy based on TRANSITION away from FF. This is doable. There will most certainly be JOLTS (discontinuity) to our system along the way, which our system MAY or may not survive.
Again: what substitutes do you use during a famine (electricity black-out, for instance) at the moment of the famine, when the UN can't come running to your aid. Have you ever experienced a famine?
Cheers, Dom living in Munich
Let me see... you are doing all the right things, yet, you are worried. Why is that? I am not questioning that you are worried, I am simply wondering why you are worried since you know the right answers already.
The "jolt" hypothesis as well as the "may not survive" hypothesis have very, very little in common with reality. What are your indicators that there will be serious jolts or that there even might be famine?
The last time I was in Germany, food was plentiful and there was not a single thing missing from the stores.
Now... in my oppinnion doomerism is essentially an American export, just like creationism.
As I see it: my diet as well as the diet of my former Americans is mostly protein based. Meat protein takes enormous amounts of food starch to produce (approx. an order of magnitude more than what we would consume directly). Moreover, my daily caloric intake is probably 50% above what I need. In order for there to be famine, we would have to lose MOST of our agricultural production capacity, not just some. Would we have to change our diet? Yes. Would we starve? No.
Energetically speaking... I can cut down on my electricity demand by half without doing much else than by buying a European size fridge and by not using the stove as often as I do (or by using a slow cooker instead of evaporating water as I do in most of my dishes). I can cut down on my heating without being truly cold by insulating the windows better and putting on a sweater. I can cut down on my transportation fuel demand by having twice as many people use the train I am on. It would certainly be less comfortable but not impossible. I can also work from home four days a week, if necessary.
Look, the US is using 10kW/capita where Europe is using only 4kW/capita. We are not achieving anything that the Europeans can't achieve and don't achieve regularly. And I bet, you can get by on 3kW with some efforts. 3kW/capita is an amount of energy that can be generated with renewables, even in Europe and more easily so here in the US.
Reality is: there is not the smallest sign that there will be famines in the US or Europe. Not one. Every number derived from reality you look at points to the one conclusion: Americans are fat and they will have to lose some weight. Europeans are somewhat leaner but they won't be starving, either. We might have to go back to diets that look more like those of our grandparents (more beans, potatoes and veggies) but that's it. No famine. Just a more healthy lifestyle.
On the other hand, if you want famine, I would suggest you relocate to the Sahel. They have it there all the time. They use way less energy per capita, too. Probably more like a couple hundred Watt, one twentieth of what you have.
Dearest IP,
I am doing the right things. This works great in a system that TRANSFORMS, which you ASSUME will happen. This is MY hope.
"The "jolt" hypothesis as well as the "may not survive" hypothesis have very, very little in common with reality. What are your indicators that there will be serious jolts or that there even might be famine?"
1st - not food famine but energy famine - usually known as a shortage. More specifically, Russia cutting off its nat. gas, or not being able to deliver everywhere it delivers now; lines at the gas station, without knowing when the next delivery will be there; blackouts, especially in Italy and the US-NE.
*I* will do fine through all this as long as "the system" continues to work. As long as I keep my well-paying job. As long as the socialistic German government continues to provide a social net. But an individual is 98.5% dependent on the system he lives in. If something goes wrong with the system, then it really doesn't matter what precautions *I* made.
I believe that our energy systems, especially oil and gas, are very prone to disruptions. VERY prone.
If you want to call this doomerism, go ahead. I call it a basic REALISTIC distrust. I hope that the system will always continue to work - it has for the past 60 years! I doubt that it will, though, continuously the next 2-3 decades.
I consider your TRUST in the system, once oil and gas producion begins decreasing at 4% per year, as naive at best.
Cheers, Dom
ps If you only knew of the constructs of solar sails and space elevators and solar collection systems etc etc that I have constructed ON PAPER, I think you would understand better..
Actually there was an abundant and readily available substitute for potatoes during the famine in Ireland. It was called wheat. The problem was that it was too expensive for most irish peasants to buy, they simply could not afford this substitute. Also the wheat, barley and copious ammounts of other agricultural products, like pigs and beef were being exported to mainland britain. Apparently in some areas soldiers guarded the wheat fields and wagons carrying the wheat to the coastal ports.
The british government did try to find a substitute for the blighted potatoes. It had to be a cheap substitute though. It was known as indian corn and mainly imported from North America. Unfortunately the irish peasants had not experience of indian corn. Also it was so hard one needed a special iron grinder to mill it into flour. The whole scheme was academic anyway as the government didn't buy enough corn quick enough, or enough grinders, and the means to distribute this substitute and the central organization required to aleviate the worst effects of the famine were woefully inadequate. Government inspectors tried in vain for years to get London to react to the escalating crisis, but to no avail. Simply put the required solutions to the potato blight, solutions that in retrospect appear obvious today, failed because they contradicted the accepted economic and social dogma of the times. All this has of course little to do with Peak Oil, or does it?
Great post.
Potatoes as a metaphor for oil. Far more fitting than I would have guessed.
This is another area where some economists address the underlying issue, but many don't. That is simply the issue of having enough trading capital (money) in circulation to be able to act upon an existing demand. The dirt poor people of Haiti certainly have a demand for food and shelter, but nothing with which to trade.
Yes, a potato famine seems to be a great metaphore.
Actually I wasn't really thinking about the Irish potato famine because of the surrounding "politics". I was thinking of a potato famine in Saxony in the second half of the 18th century. There were no "normal" ways of feeding the population. The option was eating grass or leaving house and home to go begging hundreds of miles away...
Economics tends to describe a system of continuity, but not of Discontinuity.
And an excellent comment, Don.
Yes, it does come down to technology, which presumably will invent these "perfect" substitutes. However, forecasting technology trends is impossible. No one knows if some breakthrough in battery technology, fuel cells, cellulosic ethanol etc. will occur or not. Right now, energy is a "hot" investment and a lot of start-up capital is getting thrown at the problem of creating these substitutes. There are no guarantees. So, to various degrees, one hears statements that express "faith" that breakthroughs will occur. Some breakthroughs will occur. On the other hand, many envisioned, widely anticipated technologies will never come online.
While there may not be substitutes for oil, there are subsitutes for the primary user of oil, the automobile. The vast majority of us profoundly do not want to even contemplate such a world. Some of us are willing to contemplate moving out of the box that so desperately wants to maintain "easy motoring", especially those of us who have actually lived in vibrant communities and areas where the auto is not necessary, and is even less convenient than the alternatives.
One's views on this matter also depend on how serious one takes peak oil and global warming. Every single alternative, including EV, implemented by itself without any change in behavior or radical increases in efficiency will not be sufficient to do what is necessary to stabilize global warming. Many are excited about the fact that we have learned to make SUV hybrids and are convinced we can have our cake and eat it too. This will be woefully inadequate in a world where we need to cut energy use by at least 80%.
Yes, a miracle or a series of miracles may appear. That is what our society is counting on because the prospect of changing its lifestyles, travel habits, location, infrastructure, etc. is just too horrible to even think about.
Does it make sense to bet the planet's future on the efficacy of ethanol, fuel cells, or even plug in hybrids when there is little to no serious discussion at the political level to cut back our consumption? Well, if I had a farm I wouldn't be betting it.
On what do you base that 80% figure?
It's certainly not an argument based on capability to generate energy - there's plenty of that even after oil peaks. So I'm assuming it's an argument based on carbon emissions, and presumably believing they need to be reduced to near zero. Even then, though, current nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, and storage technologies would allow us to generate over 20% of global energy demand with little or no carbon emissions.
So why 80%?
I don't see why people keep claiming this.
It's probably not that it's too horrible to think about, but that it's not salient enough to most people to think about. There's only minimal discussion regarding changing lifestyles now because most people haven't been given a sufficiently compelling reason to consider it. If there becomes a compelling reason for them - either due to government action or due to high costs from other alternatives being insufficient - then people can radically change their habits in a short time (historical times of crisis have proved that), and will probably do so.
That most people don't see the current situation as providing the compelling reasons that you see doesn't mean they'll never be compelled, it just means they haven't been yet. Being fatalistic about their behaviour is like giving up on a first-grader because he doesn't know calculus.
There's plenty of serious discussion on that matter, even if the US is lagging in that regard. If conservation is crucial (as I think it is), then the US will come around. It's not a question of if, but of when, and of how much harder the delay will make the problem.
Re: without any change in behavior or radical increases in efficiency and there is little to no serious discussion at the political level to cut back our consumption
Everytime I make the observation on TOD that no changes in human behaviour are being demanded by those who advocate half-way (or much worse) measures like those you mentioned, I am usually criticized right away or ignored. Yet, it all comes down to voluntary, wise changes in behaviour based on foresight. There is no free lunch.
This brings up the more interesting interesting question of whether such behavioural changes are possible at all — or whether crises will force the issue. Usually, this is couched in terms of economic concepts like "demand elasticity" and other similar arguments. Demand did indeed go down during the 70's and early 80's in response to very high prices. However, that will not do the trick this time around. The large supply response in the 80's (North Sea, Prudhoe Bay, etc) following the oil shocks can not happen again, should we experience a new round of catastrophic geopolitical events. Over the longer term, there is just no option. The oil supply will contract, global warming must be mitigated. Lowered demand due to price helps us muddle through, but does can not solve the underlying problems.
There is a deep question about human nature here. I myself feel that humans can not make significant changes in their behaviour without being forced to do so. Others may be optimistic — in which case, my response is like that of Missouri's U.S. congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver (1897 - 1903) —
All this is complicated by the optimistic forecasts of CERA, ExxonMobil, Saudi Arabia, Michael Lynch et. who, by reassuring the public that there is no problem, make any potential behavioural response utterly impossible. No one will change their behaviour when such "authorities" like these tell them that it is completely unnecessary to do so. This is where psychology and human nature enter the argument. Such statements (by CERA et. al) are in the realm of Freud's defence mechanisms in which the rationalization for not changing how we live reinforces the underlying reality — we are incapable of changing our behaviour. There are exceptions, but these are relatively few and far between. Sometimes these exceptional oddballs people get together — this is called a "peak oil" or a "climate change" conference.The question then becomes this: if everybody across the board was giving gloomy forecasts like some of us do here at TOD, would people be able to change their habits? Would they elect politicians that would enable such changes? Is this even possible?
Please look to Europe for guidance. People there do not waste nearly as much as the people in the US do and they are perfectly happy. Europe is humming along in an intellectual renassaince which the US can't even imagine. Every time I go there (or just watch it on tv), I think, this is what the roaring twenties must have been like. At the same time I love living in the US... I just think it should be a little bit more like Europe: upbeat and less fanatic about having to be No. 1 in everything, including waste. Being No. 2 or even No. 3 has an advantage: you get to do more fun stuff because if the savings.
The good news is: everything that worked for Europe would work for the US. That includes gas tax, higher efficiency standards and wind and solar energy. It just happens that the US is behaving like the faithful man on the roof of his flooded house who says: "God will help me!" every time a boat comes by to pick him up. Let's hope the US will not end up having to listen to God telling it "But I sent you the gas tax, did I not? And did I not send you the higher EPA standards? Did I not give you the most sun on the planet? It is not my fault that you turned down all the help I sent you."
:-)
Europe has some better policies, but they are in exactly the same "behavioural change" boat that we Americans are.
I remember when I lived in northern Italy in Torino. And to think that I once thought that it was only Americans who loved their cars too much!
Absolutely. The Europeans love their cars just as much as the Americans do. Probably even more, given the fact that the only truly beautiful cars are all made by Italians... :-)
The point is that people can learn and people do learn given the right incentives. There will always be some who will drive a 9mpg Lamborghini. And you know what? It doesn't matter if one person in a hundred thousand has one of those. Actually, they are lovely to look at and I marvel at them every time I see them. What really matters for PO is that less than one in two people in the US drive an ugly and useless pickup or SUV.
infinate - I sure agree, I was looking around today and 50% of the vehicles on the road in the US ("silicon valley" area in california) are either SUVs or those huge pickup trucks that are never used for work because it might get 'em dirty.