“James Howard Kunstler, author of the Long Emergency, and Michael Lynch, President, Strategic Energy & Economic Research Inc., debate peak oil and the unsustainability of suburbia with on Open Source, a public radio show with Christopher Lydon.”
The US Energy Information Administration has forecast a 48% increase in heating costs for people heating with natural gas, which will affect 55% of American households, and Kunstler predicts that there will be more deaths this winter in the US from cold than there were from this summer hurricanes.
I heard this program or something like it. WRT oil, Kunsler seemed to be another doomsayer, really didn’t say anything to back up his positions. A few decades ago, we were gonna run out of oil, oh, right about now. It’s been pushed another decade into the future every decade. Before that fossil fuel was gonna be unnecessary except for transportation because we were going to rely entirely on nuclear energy. I happen to agree with him about suburbia, and I hate living in it. Yes, I could live in the country, but I think there’s a greater environmental (not to mention mental-health) problem associated with living 50 miles from work than with supporting the burbs.
The fact is, nobody knows what’s going to happen in 25 years. Debating it is healthy, and I enjoyed this program.
The fact is, nobody knows what’s going to happen in 25 years.
Definitely. I used to go to car shows in the 50s that
had real-size models of the cars of the future. These looked
nothing like the cars of the future, because the technology
that would determine what these look like hadn’t yet
been discovered/created. The models were projections
of current technology and aesthetics e.g. they tended to
have tail fins.
I wish I could drop back in in a century or so.
I suspect that the world is about to change more
in this coming century than it did in the last
two millenia.
I don’t know if anybody remembers when the world’s
population was predicted as its undoing–we were scheduled
to be buried in people by now. In fact, populations
are falling.
Then there were all the people I knew who banked
on Communism as the wave of the future.
While we don’t know what the world will be like in 25 years, we know that western industrialised countries rely to a huge amount on the consumption of oil. We also know that discovery of oil peaked in 1965.
" Oil is a finite resource.
Oil was formed in the geological past, and a growing number of the world’s leading petroleum geologists agree that more than 95 percent of all recoverable oil has now been found. We therefore know, within a reasonable degree of certainty, the total amount of oil available to us. As of this statement, we have consumed approximately half of the recoverable oil, and we continue to consume about 75 million barrels per day. Since 1981 we have consumed oil faster than we have found it, and the gap between our growing consumption and shrinking discovery continues to widen. Oil is now being consumed four times faster than it is being discovered, and the situation is becoming critical. " http://www.copad.org/
Drastic changes for oil dependant western societies are unavoidable, especially for the US of America, which is the most oil dependent western society of all.
PS: Drastic changes does not equate with doom or the end of the world. It means simplification of complex systems and increasing localisation.
All very hopeful in my eyes.
I remember an interview with the Saudi oil minister several years ago. He said they pegged Saudi’s oil to run out approx 2040. They were investing heavily in alternate fuel research. I suspect there is a lot more going on that we don’t know about (I mean in fuel research, not just the other stuff).
The population crunch is not supposed to affect us till the end of the century. It will come from the 3rd world, not from here. Already in France, the govt is offering bribes to get people to have more children. Apparently there just aren’t enough people in Europe to take on all the service jobs, and if the French don’t reproduce faster, they will have to let more North Africans in to fill the gap.
There is the potential all over the world for many different types of flare-ups: social, energy, economic, population, technology, etc. It just provides fuel for the doomsayers. Science and technology opens up as many problems as it solves. Medicine is no different. No-one predicted the Internet in its current form, and no-one can predict its shape in just a few years from now.
It take all this stuff with a grain of salt. We are short-term solution creatures. We will adapt when we have to, and no-one knows what the cumulative effect of our short-term changes will be or what shape our world will take in the future.
I am not so sure how adaptive we are as a species when I witness the long lines for 3 liters of water a day after the hurricane Wilma hit Florida. You would think that most intelligent people would have gallons of water set aside for such emergencies.
I agree with Hans. As a geologist, I understand that the reserves of oil is finite, and that at the current rate of consumption the reserves will be depleted during this century. It isn’t clear whether there will be new technologies that will take the place of oil. Without that possibility the prospects are rather grim in my opinion.
I didn’t say we were intellegent. Who would deliberately stay living in a place forecast to get more and worse hurricanes every year? It may take a while for the message to sink in, but I think people will either change their lifestyle in Forida etc. or just move away.
Gloomy Gus! It means we will live differently, not that we won’t live. Already I am seeing new trends in my workplace. I have only met my boss twice, and the rest of the members of my group once. We all work in different cities, and communicate through email, net-meetings, and voice mail. Many of us work from home. Obviously this is a tremendous savings in fuel, vehicle wear, and travel expenses. We may well run out of oil, but we will have largely adapted to some new alternative lifestyle before it comes to pass.
The critical point is not that we will run out of oil during this century, but that the demand for oil outruns the capacity to produce oil, with the consequence of steadily rising prices for oil, and possible supply shortages. And this is happening now, accelerated by Katrina and Rita. There will be no prospect that prices will drop again, like it happened after the oil crises in the 70’s.
Of course rising energy prices will make it more economical to introduce alternative energy, be it green or nuclear (I don’t call nuclear energy green). I don’t think we should put much hope in yet to be developed new technologies to deliver the energy we are taking from oil. Instead we need to drastically reduce energy use, which will mean much less reliance on transport, reducing all car, lorry and air transport drastically. And this implies a huge restructuring and simplification in all industries, including agriculture.
I really look forward to the rise of mixed farming everywhere. Perhaps even suburbia will become sustainable in food growing. It does not take much land to grow your own vegetables.
What really makes me mad is the thought that we will actually deplete all oil in the earth, and that pretty fast. Because of all the carbon released into the air we are experiencing global warming already now, and I can see this only getting worse. Mind you, it has been a pleasant experience here in the North of Scotland. It was warm like in summer here today. I was running around with tee-shirt and bare feet.
China is actively engaged in buying up oil country, though (e.g. Alberta tar sands). They are trying to emulate the US in ensuring their future supply, first through commerce and diplomacy, later … who knows?
