Energy crunch is getting scary - for the lives we know, for the damaged planet
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Posted on November 9, 2007
Filed Under Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
[WARNING: Once again, a longish post. Can’t help myself with this oil business.]
The energy crunch, evidenced by rising oil prices, inadequate supply for rising demand, and the inability of oil producers to increase production enough to meet that demand, is starting to hurt. But if we think it’s a problem now, just wait.
This would be a very good time to begin living on as little oil as possible and replacing this so-called ‘black gold’ not with other Earth-fouling fossil fuels, but with efficiency, downscale living, and the development of only, and we mean only, planet-friendly fuels.
Thirty years ago, we got all upset when President Carter told us to start doing this. Thirty years later, we see what denial has wrought.
Not only will this impact us in economic terms and in the crimp on our energy-wasteful lifestyles, but oil is now rearranging the politics of our world at a dizzying pace. It is clear that our political culture does not have a clue how to respond.
The New York Times has been doing some good reporting on this, and I am learning a lot from their, and others’, articles analyzing the situation. So here is another good one from the Times front page today, this time about how, Rising Global Demand for Oil [is] Provoking New Energy Crisis. What they point out is that this time around the energy crisis is different because it is driven not by shortages but by rising demand. As economies around the world grow at breathtaking pace, it is quite clear that there will not be enough oil to support that growth. Something has to give.
If the Chinese and Indians consumed as much oil per person as Americans do, the world’s oil consumption would be more than 200 million barrels a day, instead of the 85 million it is today. No expert regards that level of production as conceivable.
They go on to talk about how supply is stretched so far that there is no room to absorb even seemingly minor shocks — like a good hurricane or political turmoil in Nigeria. And that’s at 85 million barrels per day. Just imagine the frenzied quest for every drop of oil among the rising powers of the world along with the oil-guzzling powers like us as the crunch worsens over time.
By 2030, India and China together will import as much oil as the United States and Japan.
There is more than one path to peak oil. One is simply the inevitable depletion of oil fields around the world, something that has already happened in the US, including Alaska, in Mexico, and some experts believe Saudi Arabia as well, very soon. The other path, the accelerated path, is this one, the exponential increase in consumption as the oil fields are being depleted.
Now, the other worry is the extent of ecological damage we are going to be doing to this Earth in our attempts to get every accessible drop of oil out of the ground. Here is just one example, the extreme levels of carcinogens in the areas around the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, one of the most environmentally destructive ways of getting oil ever conceived — it’s right up there with blowing up mountains to get to coal veins.
[For some great background on the meaning of tar sands in Alberta, read this post on the UK’s The Guardian website. It will make you weep, if you love the planet.
An excerpt: “The extraction of the oil requires heat, and thus the burning of vast amounts of natural gas - effectively one barrel of gas to extract two of crude - and some estimate that Fort McMurray and the Athabasca oil sands will soon be Canada’s biggest contributor to global warming; nearly as much as the whole of Denmark. This in an area that has already seen, according to David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, two degrees of warming in the past 40 years.
“The oil sands excavations are changing the surface of the planet. The black mines can now be seen from space. In 10 years, estimates Schindler, they are “going to look like one huge open pit” the size of Florida. Acid rain is already killing trees and damaging foliage. The oil companies counter that they are replanting - grass for bison, 4.5m trees by Syncrude alone - but the muskeg (1,000-year-old peat bog and wooded fen, which traps snow melt and prevents flash floods, and is home to endangered woodland caribou) is irreplaceable.
Now many analysts believe that the steep rise in the price of crude is being driven by speculation. Speculators love to distort markets like this one, investing like crazy to drive up prices — which is why some think another shock could be in the wind, a sudden drop in prices. The Washington Post reported it like this today:
Estimates of where crude prices will head from here vary. Many analysts expect prices to rise to at least $100 a barrel, but a growing chorus is warning that futures are due for a sharp downturn soon…
Few analysts believe the underlying fundamentals of supply and demand support such high prices. Many blame speculative investing fueled by the weak dollar for oil’s recent run-up. Oil futures offer a hedge against a weak dollar, and oil futures bought and sold in dollars are more attractive to foreign investors when the U.S. currency is falling.
So, take your pick — we’re going to $120 per barrel; we’re falling back to $70. Who knows? That’s the volatile situation in which the global economy finds itself. Some say that as US consumers get hit by gas prices and the collapse of the housing market, along with being buried under the weight of personal debt, demand for oil will drop. But remember also that the global economy depends upon you and me buying stuff and charging it on our credit cards.
Is this insane, or what? We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. We must keep up demand or prices collapse, and that’s not good. We must cut back on demand or we will hit the supply crunch and drive prices even higher, hurting the economy across the board. Human beings with intelligence actually created a world like this.
In any case, don’t expect, whatever happens, that you will be paying much less at the pump any time soon. Most believe high prices are here to stay.
Meanwhile, the crisis created in part by financial institutions who bought into the subprime mortgage mess, along with oil prices, along with reports that consumers are keeping their credit cards in their wallets as the holidays approach, has sent Wall Street into a tailspin this week. Yes, folks, we are going to pay a high price for the reckless way in which this economy has functioned over the past couple of decades.
So what a good time for us as a nation to start reexamining our values, who we are and what really matters in this life. We can get out of this economy anytime we want. But doing this as individuals is only one small step in the larger social project ahead of us. Until we begin to change our values as a nation, unless we turn this political culture away from growth economies based on consumption, we give the world little hope in the days ahead, those days that will really challenge our children and grandchildren through the remainder of this century.
This site is about ecological hope. Maybe hope has its best chance when all around us seems to be falling apart.
Technorati Tags: price of oil, energy crunch, black gold, downscale living, alberta tar sands, subprime mortgage mess
Photo credit: Jeff McIntosh/AP
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