Don't Tell me Technology Will Save Us, Please!

Let me first apologize to those who may find this piece a bit over the top, polemic and bleeding heart. From time to time the idealist in me pushes me to rail at the injustices we inflict upon ourselves as a species, upon the other species with whom we begrudgingly share this planet and upon this, our home planet, all in the name of the pursuit of profits and power. If I bottle up that frustration it taints everything I write so I find it more productive to say/write my feelings, vent my frustrations, get it over with and get on with my normal routine and work.

Peak oil is upon us, or just around the corner. Global warming will continue to worsen as there are no foreseeable energy options that will allow us to replace our profligate use of fossil fuels. Global dimming, which has been weakening the impact of global warming over the past several decades, is now on the wane as we have declared war on the visible air pollutants responsible for it, clearly achieving a hollow victory in the process. This will allow the full impact of anthropogenic global warming to become very apparent over the coming decade. But please, please, please don't tell me that technology holds the solutions to these or other global problems, that technology will save us. Don't tell me about hybrid vehicles, EVs, carbon sequestration, bio-fuels, bio-diesel, tidal power generation, thin film solar, the hydrogen economy, nuclear pebble bed reactors, clean coal, GTL, CTL, LNG, space mirrors, genetically modified GW-resistant plant species, scattering particulate matter in the upper atmosphere to neutralize global warming. Don't tell me that Monsanto or Dupont or Cargill will genetically engineer some new grain seed that will double global grain production and save billions from starvation. They've done enough damage with their GMO monstrosities to last forcountless generations. It is our pursuit of and overuse of technology, including our flagrant abuse of genetic technology, that has driven us to this cliff in the first place. A problem cannot be its own solution.

Tell me, instead, that people are learning that we must reduce our energy consumption. Tell me that politicians are ready to negotiate our lifestyle, with our blessing and support. Tell me that the global bullies will not invade or economically destroy more poor, weak nations that just happen to have fossil fuel resources. Tell me that multinational corporations are ready to put the health of the earth and the survivability of our future generations ahead of their greed for short-term profit. Tell me that we are embarking on a cooperative global effort to reverse the trend of the past century and steadily reduce the global energy consumption per capita to pre-industrial levels. Tell me that governments throughout the planet are cooperating to dismantle the personhood of corporations and the easily abused economic and political power that grants them. Tell me that all air conditioners and furnaces are going to be sold with governors on them to restrict the temperature range in which they can be set. Tell me that the electric can opener has been banned. Tell me that the 48" television has been banned. Tell me that all goods being transported over 100 miles are going by rail. Tell me that all municipalities embrace mixed residential/retail zoning. Tell me that governments have declared a moratorium of indefinite length on highway construction. Tell me that municipal public transit is free, subsidized through punitive urban road tolls. Tell me that we as a species have experienced an epiphany and are moving toward embracing simplicity rather than sinking ever-deeper into the abyss of complexity that has so disenfranchised the majority of the world's population. Tell me that New Yorkers or Torontonians understand and accept that fresh, field-grown tomatoes in February are no longer an option. Tell me that the right to control the global food supply has been stripped from corporations and that the right to produce food has returned to being an inalienable human right. Tell me that the corporate-friendly Codex Alimentarius is dead and that people have the inalienable right to grow and use their own medicinal herbs. Tell me that we are going to stop poisoning and destroying the natural fertility of the soil that we so desperately need to grow the food we need to feed our dangerously growing human population. Tell me that we are going to look to the plant kingdom rather than the feedlot for the majority of our protein intake. Tell me that the average person on the street understands that the earth's resources are finite and we are rapidly depleting them. Tell me that the rights to control the planet's fresh water has been stripped from corporations and that the right to clean water is again an inalienable human right. Tell me that the average person finally understands that exponential population growth is not sustainable. Tell me that a big-screen television is no longer included in anyone's definition or list of needs. Tell me that there is an international political effort to require environmental cost to be built into the cost of every product. Tell me that the average person understands that our collective energy use grants us all an equivalent of 300 wage slaves per person. Tell me that the average economist and energy analyst, let alone the average person, understands the peak oil implications of entering a period of perpetually shrinking global economies, signals the end of the growth of the money supply. Tell me that people in general realize and understand that peak oil is not going to be like the oil crises of the 1970s and '80s.

There is no question that we are a very adaptive, inventive, creative, innovative species. We've proven it over and over, especially over this last century. We could even create (perhaps we should) a monument to our creativity, place it outside the United Nations maybe, show it on the morning sign-on of TV networks and stations throughout the world. We are the greatest! Now, can we just move on? Can we strive for wisdom maybe? We seem to be a little light in that department. Where is it written that every piece of technology we can imagine should be invented? Why should the majority of our labours be devoted to the development and production of so-called labour-saving devices? Shouldn't the first question an inventor ask be "Is this needed?" or "Does this invention improve the long-term survivability of our species or the health of the planet?" Why should the first application of so many technologies and breakthroughs be in the development of weapons? If our lifestyle will be unsustainable twenty or thirty years in the future is it not also unsustainable today? Do we have to prove that we are the only species capable of destroying this planet by doing it? Is our species ego that fragile? Maybe that's another monument we should erect in front of the UN; "R.I.P. Here lies Man, the only species capable of destroying this planet, and we proved it!"

Sorry. I just had to get all of that off my chest.

Global Dimming, Global Warming & Peak Oil

Okay. Hands up all of those who have even heard of Global Dimming. You'd be forgiven if you hadn't. After all, it hasn't exactly been the bread and butter of the morning newspaper or the evening TV newscast. The majority of those, in fact, in the Peak Oil movement and a good share of those in the Global Warming movement haven't yet heard of it either. If you are not yet aware of it I suspect it will distress you to hear that it may be more important and more serious and more complicated than either Peak Oil or Global Warming, and is intricately bound to both.

The Global Dimming phenomenon is not new to those like Stanhill and Cohen or Farquhar and Roderick(2,3) who have been studying it for over a decade. It is only in the past three or four years, however, that it has been understood and accepted by a significant portion of the climate science community. Despite that it still seems to have not made it into the 2007 IPCC report that has raised such a clamour in recent weeks, a shortcoming that will hopefully be corrected in the next report.


What is Global Dimming? Briefly, Global Dimming is the reduction of sunlight striking the planet's surface from a combination of factors such as particulate matter suspended in the atmosphere from pollution such as soot, ash, sulfur
emissions, volcanic eruptions, CFCs, chemtrails, contrails, and from increased cloud formation and cloud density, also at least partially a result of atmospheric pollution. Atmospheric pollution increases the density of clouds by causing greater water droplet formation around microscopic specks of pollution.(1, 2, 4) That all means that a greater amount of the sunlight striking the earth is being reflected back into space, reducing the amount striking the earth's surface.


Okay. So what? That can't be all bad. Can it?

That depends, of course, on your perspective. Scientists now understand that this has had two effects on global warming, one predictable and one quite surprising. Understandably the decrease in sunlight striking the earth's surface has had a significant neutralizing effect on the potential global temperature increase caused by anthropogenic Global Warming. It may, in fact, be responsible for slowing that temperature increase to a fifth or a tenth what it would have been without Global Dimming. This has raised doubts and concerns about efforts throughout the world to reduce visible atmospheric pollutants. "We're going to be in a situation, unless we act, where the cooling pollutant is dropping off while the warming pollutant is going up. That means we'll get reduced cooling and increased heating at the same time and that's a problem for us," says Dr Peter Cox, one of the world's leading climate modellers.(2) Climate experts are beginning to believe that we could be facing as much as a 10C rise in global temperature by 2100.

The surprising finding was to do with plant photosynthesis. It had long been believed that a reduction in sunlight would decrease the amount of plant photosynthesis. It is now understood that quite the opposite is true. The amount of photosynthesis actually increases. It is thought this is a function of the sunlight being more diffuse due to the same conditions causing the global dimming. The more diffuse light reaches more of the plants below the forest canopy increasing their photosynthesis while having only a small negative impact on the photosynthesis in those plants normally exposed to the sunlight. This greater level of photosynthesis increases the amount of CO2 being absorbed by plants, thus reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, one of the primary Greenhouse Gases responsible for Global Warming.

At first glance, therefore, Global Dimming appears to a blessing in disguise. It reduces two of the prime contributors to Global Warming; increased surface temperature and increased CO2. The prime contributor to anthropogenic Global Warming, however, is our burning of fossil fuels, a source of both Global Warming (in CO2 and other GHG emissions) and Global Dimming (in atmospheric particulate matter like soot, ash and smoke). But we are fast approaching peak oil, peak natural gas and even peak coal. Once we pass peak our burning of all these fossil fuels will gradually decrease on the downslope on the other side of the peak. Once that reduction begins, the short term problem is that the particulate matter in the atmosphere that causes Global Dimming will quickly begin to settle out of the atmosphere while the Greenhouse Gases like CO2 and Methane will continue to increase. These gases will also take much longer to settle out of the atmosphere than do suspended particulates.

There will also be an unusual side effect which will be important from a perspective of global carrying capacity. As the concentration of suspended particulates reduces and the effects on global cooling diminish, the enhanced levels of photosynthesis will reduce as well. This will reduce the amount of CO2 uptake by plants, meaning it will take longer for earth to cleanse the atmosphere of anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases. It also, unfortunately, means that the level of plant photosynthesis will be declining at the same time as our ability to produce and afford petrochemical agricultural additives like artificial fertilizers and pesticides will be on the decline. With the wholesale destruction of natural soil fertility throughout the planet over these past fifty years through the use of those petrochemicals, we will be faced with a double hit in our ability to produce enough food to support our still exponentially growing population.

There is a very good documentary produced by BBC which I strong suggest you should watch to understand the interconnections between Peak Oil, Global Warming, and Global Dimming. It is available on Google Video at;

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=39520879762623193&q=global+dimming

Global Dimming is also believed to be responsible for other important events and impacts. It is now believed that Global Dimming is responsible for blocking the seasonal shift of the Monsoon Belt from the tropics into the northern hemisphere sub-tropics. This is believed to have been responsible for the droughts in the 1970s and '80s that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Ethiopia. The fear is that if it halts the monsoons in Asia it could affect billions, half the world population. The potential impact would dwarf the loss of life in the African droughts.(2)

More on this important topic later.

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1) Global dimming
2) Global Dimming
3) Goodbye sunshine
4) LARGE VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS HELP PLANTS ABSORB MORE CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE ATMOSPHERE

Peak Oil is not About Running Out of Oil!!!!

I'm getting tired of hearing it. Some economist or financial analyst or some talking head in the employ of one of the oil majors gets in front of a camera and declares something to the effect that, "The peak oil theory is dead wrong. We are not running out of oil!" The only people who ever connect peak oil and running out of oil are those who do not understand the peak oil theory, those who have a vested interest in creating confusion about peak oil because there's far too much profit to be made in people not knowing, and those attempting to discredit the peak oil theory. No one in the peak oil movement, unless they too are new to the movement and do not yet understand, ever says, or ever would say, that peak oil means the end of oil, means we are running out of oil. Most in the peak oil camp, in fact, believe we will never consume all of the oil there is, for a wide variety of reasons. In general only about thirty percent of the oil in a reserve is recoverable so there is always going to be oil left over in a field after the last well has been shut down.

Peak oil is about a global society and global economy that have become hopelessly dependent on an ever-increasing supply of cheap, high-grade oil, increasingly dependent also on natural gas and coal, the other main fossil fuels. It is about the impact on that global society and global economy when the supply of oil can no longer be increased, when the demand for oil exceeds what the world's oil fields can produce, when the primary sources of oil remaining contain only low-grade, high sulfur crudes, when we have to increasingly rely on expensive, low-output sources like tar sands and deep water wells, when the majority of the oil reserves left are in areas of high political volatility or under the control of governments increasingly intent on preserving their resources for their own future use, when there is no longer a supply buffer available to absorb market disruptions, when we have to increasingly rely on synthetic crudes produced from coal, natural gas, bio-mass, tar sands and oil shales, when all sources can no longer produce enough energy to support a growth economy and the perpetual-growth global economy begins to go into irreversible contraction.

Peak oil is not about the oil! It is about what we do with it. It is not about motor fuel. There are over 300,000 other products in everyday use around the globe made from oil or oil derivatives. Peak oil is about the gradual disappearance of one after another of those 300,000 products because their producers can no longer afford or obtain the raw materials. Most importantly, peak oil is about the ubiquitous agrochemicals that our modern agriculture has become critically dependent on, about our ability to feed ourselves. We have so denuded our commercial agricultural soils of their natural fertility that, without petrochemical inputs, many experts suggest those soils will, at least temporarily, only be able to produce one tenth to one fifth the crop yields that are being produced through the artificial fertility achieved with petrochemical inputs.

Quite literally, the lives of billions of people will be affected by peak oil and the ensuing decline in oil and the other fossil fuels. We can't produce enough food now to feed our 6.6 billion population. Every day 20-40,000 people around the world are dying of starvation and other nutrition-related diseases and illness. If the agrochemicals modern agriculture needs have to compete for raw materials with other, high-profit uses of oil, under the normal functioning of the market the high-profit uses will get the oil because they can afford to absorb higher costs than pesticides and fertilizers. If we leave it to the markets to transition us through peak oil into the long slope of oil decline we can expect those ever-dwindling reserves of oil to follow the money and go where the profits are.

With these stakes I would strongly suggest that we cannot tolerate any person, corporation, organization or government intentionally creating confusion about the state of the world's oil supply, about when we will hit peak (if, indeed, we have not already hit it which we very much appear we might have), about how the use of the remaining oil reserves will be prioritized for social need rather than corporate profits. Sooner, rather than later, those nations sitting on significant remaining oil reserves are going to decide that those reserves are far more important as a future resource for their own nation and people than they are as a means of enriching a few of the world's most profitable corporations. Sooner or later energy sovereignty is going to trump corporate globalization. Sooner or later producers are going to be unwilling to part with their precious remaining oil reserves at any price. When we reach that point, those nations which are net oil importers are going to be the first and hardest hit on the downslope. The only question then remaining is whether the people of those importing nations are going to insist or even accept their nation fighting resource wars around the planet in order to maintain their lifestyle.

Post-Peak Agricultural Capacity

Agricultural Capacity is affected by a number of important variables; crop variety, water (both rainfall and irrigation), natural soil fertility, artificial inputs, climate, and length of the growing season. Of the total global land mass, about 35 percent is arable land, 31 percent forested and 34 percent is either desert, tundra and permafrost or dedicated to other uses such as urbanization and other human activity such as mining. Globally there are about 7.8 billion acres that are potentially arable of which 3.5 billion acres are known to be productively being used to produce food. Statistics are scanty from poor nations where the bulk of farming activity is at the subsistence level. The unused potential land is generally in areas lacking essential transport for moving product to market or infrastructure needed for the maintenance of commercial food production.(1) An unknown portion of this is in use by indigenous peoples for subsistence agriculture.

Of the 35 percent of the total global land mass that is arable or suitable for agriculture, 24 percent or about two thirds is pasture or meadowland used for animal production. Another 10 percent (about 350 million acres) is used for grain and cereal production (75 percent or about 270 million acres), much of that also used for animal production, and for annual root, tuber, vegetable and fruit crops (about 25 percent or 80 million acres). Despite the global attraction of and growth in permaculture, only 1 percent of arable land is dedicated to permanent crops such as fruits and nuts. Essentially, all of human food production, excluding meat, dairy and sea food, is grown on less than 400 million acres. Each of those acres is, therefore, feeding about 15-17 people.

All of our food crops are produced on about 400-million acres out of a total global land mass of about 20-billion acres. That is at once a very discomfiting statistic and a clear sign of hope for the post peak world. It is discomfiting knowing that the entire 6.6 billion human population is dependent on such a small portion this planet for producing its food. And we are systematically destroying the natural fertility of that land through unwise agricultural practices. It is hopeful in that there are 4.3 billion acres of potentially arable land not currently in use under managed agricultural practices. If, as many experts generally concur, our agricultural productivity will, at least temporarily, be reduced to 10-20% our current levels with the loss of fossil fuel based agrochemicals, there is cause for hope in that that land currently producing our non-animal foods is less than ten percent of the potentially arable land not currently in use for agricultural production. If we bring all of that land into agricultural production, however, with the same patterns as at present (85%+ for food-animal support) we would net very little additional food-production land (about 600 million acres) to offset the 80-90% drop in productivity on those current 400 million acres. This would barely allow us to absorb the impact of a 25% drop in productivity.

But there is one other simpler and overriding problem. The unused potentially arable land is not in the same place as the 6.6 billion of us for whom it could reduce the impact of soil productivity loss following peak oil. That unused potentially arable land is not sitting there in some undiscovered country which can be populated by billions of food refugees. It exists in pockets within the boundaries of already sovereign nations throughout the world, nations which themselves may be impoverished and unable to currently produce enough food for their own people. Much of it may be in extremely isolated mountain valleys, in need of massive reclamation projects, in national parks and wildlife preserves, in areas where there are extreme water shortages. Much of it is in private holdings intentionally held back from agricultural production in order to facilitate future expansion.

For this land to be brought under agricultural production as a solution to the post-peak food crisis, assuming it is even possible to do so, without some form of global population redistribution, would still necessitate the maintenance of a heavily-energy-dependent global food distribution system (in an environment of declining energy availability) to move that food to the people who need it. It is this same global food distribution system that is already taxed to the limit moving food from those few nations that can and do produce surpluses to the more than half the planet's countries that are seriously dependent on it for survival. To create and maintain the additional infrastructure that would be necessary to bring these additional lands into productivity would add considerable cost to the global production of food. In all likelihood, based on current patterns, developing these lands would far more likely be focused on high-profit crops such as corn, soy and sugar cane that can be used to produced bio-fuels in a world increasingly deficient in fossil fuel energy.
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1. Agribusiness in a Global Environment Comparing Global Agricultural Production Systems
http://www.ais.msstate.edu/age/Lesson2Print.pdf
2. Global Water Shortage Looms In New Century
http://cals.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/dec99/Feature2.htm
3. To Fertilize or Not to Fertilize .. That is the Question
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/newslett.nsf/all/wfbg7088
4. Global study reveals new warning signals: Degraded agricultural lands threaten world's food production capacity
http://www.wri.org/newsroom/newsrelease_text.cfm?NewsReleaseID=76

The High Cost of that Last 2% of Certainty

It is odd for me how one personal event can draw into crystal clarity both what is terribly wrong with the current medical systems (specifically here in Canada but, in general, all western nations), and the terrible medical risks before us as we slide down the downslope on the other side of peak oil. It is also odd to me the extreme contrast between how I viewed this event over the past few days and how I would have viewed it even five years ago. But five years ago I still hadn't evolved myself and my view of the world as much as I have now.

A little over a week ago I was developing what I thought were cold or hay fever symptoms; inflamed sinuses, difficulty breathing, dry raspy cough. Been there, done that, may times. By this past weekend, however, it blew way past being annoying and started to develop into a bit of a crisis. That shortness of breath was now into the extreme range. I was severely weakened. I had pains in my chest, which I assumed were from the dry cough. I was having difficulty sleeping at night because of the laboured, shallow breathing.

At 9:00am on Monday morning I walked (under considerable duress) into Emergency at the local hospital. I sat down in Emerg-Triage and, between frantic attempts at taking a breath, explained what was happening and answered all the questions of the Triage nurse. The very fact that Emergency has a Triage function is a sign of one of the things that is seriously with our medical system. They are there to sort out the sore toes and runny noises and overindulgent gassiness (all of those who should have gone to their family doctors or one of the numerous available walk-in clinics) from those small percentage of people who really do need Emergency services.

I was fast-tracked and deep into the bowels of middle earth Emergency by 9:30am. Over the next one and a half hours I was attended or examined by two doctors, three nurses, had been X-rayed, had my blood pressure checked three times, my blood sugar and blood oxygen levels checked twice, and had given up three vials of blood for them to run blood work. All of this was done by 11:00am. It was not until nearly ten hours later, around 9:00pm, after mildly displaying my impatience at the length of the wait, that a new doctor finally deigned to come talk to me about the results of the tests that had been completed ten hours earlier. About 8:00pm the night shift ER nurse had come and given me an injection in my stomach with no explanation as to why.

The doctor, when he arrived, explained that there was either a blood clot or fluid in my right lung and that they were going to have to run several more diagnostic tests the next morning. He told me he wanted to keep me in overnight so we could get right to those tests in the morning. I explained that unless there was a medical reason for me to stay in overnight, like maybe they wanted to keep me under observation, I would prefer to go home. I lived just five minutes away, after all, and was up by five every morning. Unless their diagnostic labs were up and running at 4:00am I would be up and ready long before they were ready for me. He quickly retreated from the suggestion that I stay overnight, said the lab would call me in the morning when they were ready. He prescribed me a water pill (because of the fluid build up in my lower legs) to be started in the morning.

I received two phone calls from two different departments before 8:30am. Over the next several hours I was put through a CT-cardiograph scan, an echo-cardiogram, an ultrasound, a PFT (Pulmonary Function Test) and had three more vials of blood drawn for more analysis, had my blood pressure checked a couple more times, as well as my blood sugar and blood oxygen levels, then had to go back through Emergency Triage and check-in (because I had gone home for the night and was now classed as an outpatient). A close friend of the family who is in hospital services (not at the same hospital) estimates that all of the tests I was put through add up to more than $8,000.

Another ER doctor sat down with me when the results of all of these tests were completed. He explained that they were still not certain what we were dealing with, that he had set me up with the hospital's Urgent Care Clinic for ongoing testing and observation and that they would be contacting me over the next couple of days to come in for a consultation.

Now after two days, several doctors and nurses and technicians and over $8,000 in diagnostic testing, I still knew no more than what the Triage nurse hinted at five minutes after I entered the doors of Emergency, a hint that conformed to the same uninformed self-diagnosis I had made before I even headed for the hospital. And I still very strongly suspect in the end, when they finally do make a diagnosis, it will pretty much conform to my own pre-hospital self-diagnosis made on Monday morning, actually Sunday afternoon.

Here's the rub. We have already spent close to $10,000 trying to close that gap between 98% certainty and an actual diagnosis. The best of a physician's diagnostic skills (assuming they are even taught true diagnostic skills in medical school) seems now to simply serve as a basis for deciding which expensive diagnostic equipment and technicians need to be scheduled to help close that 2% gad to arrive at a diagnosis. When did skilled hands and training of the physician go from being the difference between life and death to being just a part of the input stream to a technological process where machines are the trusted end authority in the diagnosis?

And here's the real rub? As we pass peak oil and the availability of energy begins to get prohibitively expensive, erratic, and increasingly unavailable, and all of that technology becomes an expensive pile of wires and electrodes that can't be run for want of power, where are the doctors that have the diagnostic skills to diagnose a patient's condition without all of those technological inputs? Just as modern day business farmers have lost touch with the soil and no longer know traditional, non-mechanized farming skills, our modern doctors have lost touch with the patient and the traditional, non-mechanized diagnostic skills that has made medicine such an important force in our lives since the Industrial Revolution. Health care has become the greatest single social cost we have and the bill has been growing at a super-exponential rate for the past half-century. Doctors have become slaves to all that technology that is intended to close that last 2% gap and in the process have been losing the skills responsible for that first 98% of the diagnosis.

As the technology begins to go dormant for want of energy there is going to be a dangerous and growing gap in our medical coverage that will, in my opinion, be exacerbated at a rate much more rapid than the rate of decline in energy. Medical dependence is going to prove a very risky condition.

End of rant.

Responsibility in Communicating the Peak Oil Message

I have a confession to make. From time to time I feel seriously insecure about continuing to write about peak oil. Added to the constant awareness that people simply do not want to hear the message, that becomes a conflict for me. You see, I am not, nor have I ever been, an oil expert, a geologist, geophysicist or even a professional energy analyst. Hell, I don't even have a college degree, of any type, ended my "formal" education in grade 12. Like Richard Heinberg and Matt Savinar I came to the peak oil issue as an outsider looking in. It seemed to fit in with much about which I was already passionate.

I brought with me a lifetime concern about our gradual but obvious destruction of the environment, some early activism in that regard, a deep concern about our exponentially growing population and the limits to the earth's carrying capacity, deep angst and confusion over our belief in our entitlement to the earth's resources exclusive of the needs of other species, a deep concern over our destruction of soil fertility through our modern agricultural practices, an inquiring mind, a high degree of Mensa-level intelligence, a deep-seated and long-held concern and anger about the insidious influence and control corporations are exerting over our everyday lives and, particularly, over our governments. More importantly I brought an ability to write well with a balance of effective research, well thought out and reasoned argument and a deep feeling of passion. But I often wonder if all of that is enough.

The crux of my concern is this. There are many good writers out there on the subject. To a large degree we are all writing the same thing, feeding off each other and on common data, all drawing the same logical conclusions from that data. They may not say things in exactly the way I would but, so what?

My uncertainty, derived from a lifelong battle with a never-overcome inferiority complex, develops generally when I read a highly technical piece from one of the peak oilers who is an oil geologist or geophysicist. Not only could I not write the piece they did, half the time I struggle to understand what the hell they are talking about. It would be no less understandable if it were written in Swahili. And then I get angry because I realize it is the same thing all over again that I encountered when I was twenty-one. So please bare with me and let me explain that incident in order to clarify.

At twenty-one I was a computer programmer analyst with two years experience under my belt already. Our IS department's office was an open design with individual cubicles. It also had very poor acoustic design. You could hear every conversation in the whole office. Overhearing those discussions I grew agitated because I was stuck working on simple jobs while those around me, based on what I was hearing, were getting all of the nice, complex problems to work on. Most were college graduates which I assumed, and reluctantly accepted, was the reason they were given the more challenging assignments. Finally I summoned the courage to confront my boss on the issue. I told him I could handle tougher assignments like my co-workers were getting and I felt they should start to assign me to some of them.

I was totally crushed when he laughed in my face. Until he explained why.

"Believe me," he said (forgive my paraphrasing but I don't remember the conversation exactly after forty years), "but you couldn't be more wrong. If I get something complex across my desk, something new that needs some ingenuity and innovation, it goes straight to your desk. Those guys you are referring to complicate the simplest jobs and hide behind jargon when they talk about it. They create complexity where none exists. You go straight to the heart and essence of it, take complexity and make it simple, and get on with the job, and do it in half the time they would. And you explain things in English, not computereze."

That was an incredible life-lesson for me. I realized then that there is a tremendous difference between communicating and communication. The responsibility for the recipient's ability to understand rests squarely with the person doing the communicating. Communication rests not on the act of communicating but the method. If the recipient cannot understand then communication has not taken place and, therefore, the act of communicating has been wasted. My ability to understand a complex problem is of absolutely no value if I cannot help others to understand what I have understood. A man with the intellect of Einstein is only important insofar as he can communicate to others what he knows and help them to understand it. It was a responsibility I willingly assumed for the rest of my life.

That having been said, that is the reason I keep writing about peak oil. The essence of the peak oil issue, which is constantly lost in discussion and arguments about field reserves and oil grades and rates of extraction, is this. Peak oil is not about the oil!!!! So many of those involved in the peak oil discussion have not grasped that simple truth. That is the forest that is hidden by the trees.

The peak oil discussion and debate too easily and too frequently degenerates into a discussion about the price and availability of gasoline for the family car. That gasoline is only one of over 300,000 products insidiously integrated into our everyday lives. Oil is not only the energy that sustains our society's mobility. It is the physical structure of our society, the raw material for all of the plastics in our homes and offices and the infrastructure of our communities, the synthetic fibers with which we clothe ourselves, the chemicals on which agriculture has become hopelessly dependent for growing the food that sustains us, the drugs and pharmaceuticals responsible for our health and our lives, the ubiquitous additives and preservatives in our processed foods, the cleaning products under the sink, the asphalt on our roads that lets us speed around aimlessly from place to place. It is not just the source of the fuel in your car, it is the raw material from which most of your car is built.

Life as we know it, as virtual and disconnected from the natural world as it is, exists only because of oil and the other fossil fuels. The obvious corollary is that life as we know it cannot exist without oil and the other fossil fuels. Put another way, and a message that no one wants to hear, the end of oil is the end of the world as we know it! People tend to react violently to the first part of that statement; "the end of the world," and completely miss the last part, "as we know it" and yet the first part is not true without the qualification of the second part. Put another more palatable way, the end of oil means that things are going to change..... big time.

Peak oil is not about the oil! It is about what we do with the oil. And primarily what we have done with the oil is build up a critical dependence on it in more ways than the average person can even see or understand. As you read this look around the room in which you are sitting. Ask yourself how many of the things in that room are not partially made from oil or derivatives of it. How many of those things could be made from other materials and function as they do? How many were made close enough to you that they could get to you without oil-dependent transportation? And most importantly, how seriously would it change your lifestyle if they were not there?

There was a TV commercial running over this past winter pushing the role the chemical industry plays in our everyday lives. During that commercial everything made from or dependent on chemicals in the fabrication were gradually removed from the house. What struck me about that commercial was that everything that disappeared was made from oil and its derivatives. The chemical industry of today is essentially a petrochemical industry. It was a perfect picture of our dependence on oil and the things that will begin to disappear from our lives as we pass peak oil. And the family car and the gasoline in its tank weren't even part of the picture.

That is why I continue to write about peak oil. I continue to hope that I can be a part, however small, of getting average people to understand the depth of their dependence on oil in order that they can begin to understand the depth and breadth of the changes that will occur in their lives when we pass peak oil and head down that downslope. I also hope to convince them that those changes are going to be critical enough that they need to view skeptically those who glibly promise them that there is no problem, that we've got enough oil to last for centuries, that the American way of life is not negotiable. As Richard Heinberg says, if your way of life is not negotiable you need a new negotiator.

Animal poop in a virtual world

God! We are such idiotic animals. It's like that old wrap-around theory that says genius is just one step away from insanity. Maybe it takes an animal with intellect to be as stupid as we. Perhaps we'll never know, unless we have visitors for dinner from Alpha Centauri.

How did we reach the point where everything that's good for the soil and contributes to its ability to support life is considered waste by our species, to be replaced with obviously superior, man-made crap, artificial fertilizers, chemical pesticides and herbicides, genetically modified plants designed by man? We cut the hay from the field, feed it to the cows in a barn, scoop up their shit and drop it on a big festering pile at the end of the barn for the rain to wash bits of it into the streams and rivers or to sink down through the soil into the aquifers.

For millions of years nature recycled all of the excretia from all of the animals and enriched and built up life-supporting top soil. Then we come along and strip it off the land to build a new sub-division of houses on the bare, sterile sub-soil and go out to a garden centre and buy a load of sod (which comes complete with a whole half inch or inch of top soil to replace the half-foot or foot we stripped away) to put over it and then fertilize it (because we've killed all the micro-organisms in it) with NPK because everybody knows that's all plants need.

Sorry about the rant.

The city council in my nearby city (Toronto) are debating a new by-law this week. It epitomizes the extent of stupidity in our modern society.


It is a very popular past-time in Toronto (I don't know about other cities but I assume it is the same) to take the doggy to the park for a run with all his other doggy friends. Toronto has a poop-and-scoop bylaw so owners are expected to pick up their doggy droppings or, as our politicians euphemistically call it, pet "waste".

Those politicians are now upset because 26% (not 25, not 27 but 26.... I wonder who counted) of the "waste" in park waste receptacles is "animal waste". The new bylaw will require pet owners to take their "pet waste" home and put it in their own garbage. This while the city has in the past year implemented a "green bin" recycling program where householders can put their compostable waste out at the curbside in a green bin (right next to their bag of grass clippings).

Does anybody else see a huge disconnect here? Is it any wonder that our soil fertility is shot when animal poop is considered "waste"?

Alternative Energy, Add-ons and Replacements

It seems one cannot deal with the subject of peak oil without getting drawn into the peripheral discussion of alternative energy. That whole discussion, however, is full of misunderstanding, misinformation, disinformation and the source of a significantly dangerous false sense of security. One of the most common counters to the characterization of peak oil as a global crisis is a cornucopean belief that as the oil declines we will bring on-stream alternative energy technologies to replace those pushed to the sideline by the oil decline. People point to hydrogen, nuclear, geothermal, wind energy, wave energy, tidal energy, solar energy, bio-fuels, garbage-fuels and more. One or some combination of them will fill the gap, the optimist declares, and business and life will go on as usual.

The average person, when they hear the term "alternative energy" interprets that to mean "replacement energy". The reality, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution has been quite different. The reality has been that every new energy source "discovered" has been treated as an add-on to the existing energy portfolio, not as a replacement of it.

There is, to begin, a common misperception that the fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) were "discovered" in the past couple hundred years. That displays hubris akin to a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible claiming God created the world during some week in 4004 B.C. There is archaeological evidence that coal was used in the Bronze Age over 5000 years ago. There is a debated theory, based on archaeological evidence, that coal was used as a fire fuel as long ago as the Stone Age. Natural gas was the fuel that fired the eternal flames in the Ancient Greek Temple of Rhodes and the Temple of Vesta in ancient Rome. Oil in the form of tar and asphalt was in use as much as 3000 years ago. In 4th century China there were oil wells as deep as 250 metres, that oil transported over considerable distances in bamboo pipelines and used to evaporate sea water to get salt. In ancient Japan oil was called "burning water". Even many of what we call alternative energies have been in use for centuries. Water power was the primary source of energy for much of "industry" during the middle ages.(1) Wind power in windmills and sails goes back thousands of years. Passive solar has been used extensively in many cultures for a variety of purposes. Geothermal energy was employed in Hawaii and by the Maori in New Zealand as long ago as biblical times. Ethanol and bio-diesel predate our modern day usage of both oil and natural gas. Various forms of oils derived from plants have been used for lighting, cooking and heating for thousands of years.(4)

What changed starting at the outset of the Industrial Revolution was the amount of energy being employed by society because of the growth of industrialization. Coal usage in Britain in 1700 before the Industrial Revolution was about 2.5 million tons per year. By 1900 it had grown by a factor of a hundred to over 250 million tons per year.(2) By 2000 global coal usage had risen to 4-billion metric tonnes a year. During the 20th century overall global energy consumption grew from 0.7 terrawatts to over 15 terrawatts in 2004, an increase in energy use of 2142% and an increase of over 640% energy use per capita.(3)

Coal usage in Britain, for example, did not replace the use of wood for fuel before the forests of Britain and Ireland were wiped out, though it could have been used to save what forests remained. In fact, though coal was already significantly in use when the forests were essentially depleted, British demand for wood as a fuel continued with demand being satisfied by expensive imports from the colonies and from continental Europe.

When oil, in the early twentieth century, began its rise to its position of dominance in the global fuel mix, polluting and less efficient coal was not abandoned. The growth in coal demand slowed for a while but over the course of the 20th century, while the population was quadrupling, global coal usage increased six-fold to about 4-billion metric tonnes per pear. And coal usage between 2000 and 2005 grew by over seven percent per year, a faster growth rate than either oil or natural gas. Coal today, despite oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal and other energy sources, still supplies over 25 percent of global energy demand and over 40 percent of global electricity.

Natural gas did not replace coal or oil as an energy source. It was simply added to the list of available energy sources. Nuclear for generating electricity did not replace electricity generated by coal, oil or natural gas. It was simply added to the list. Solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tidal, hydrogen, bio-fuels are not replacing any of the current energy sources. The growth in all of these "alternatives" combined is not sufficient to cover overall increased energy demand or to offset declines in any of the primary energy sources. And because of the high energy demand in building out an infrastructure for any of these alternatives, that build-out itself adds to the energy demand that those primary energy sources must satisfy. Using solar power to run the plant that makes solar panels is not how this technology is being built out.

There is no attempt or intent to correct this common misperception that "alternatives" can and will replace the energy sources on which we currently rely. No one involved in government or the energy sector or in the financial sector has a vested interest in doing so. The makers of electric cars want to make electric cars. The last thing they want to tell the buyer of one of their cars is that the grid will probably fail before their car. With so much global capital invested in the current energy paradigm the last thing anyone in power wants to do is admit that it may soon collapse like a house of cards and that none of the "alternatives" in any combination can "replace" our current energy sources. They see "alternatives" as choices, not replacements, for as long as they can keep the wheels under the "business as usual" train.

Oil, natural gas, and coal are all headed for peaks sometime between now and 2020. Oil will probably be first, sometime within these next 3-5 years. But both natural gas and coal are very minor as commodities traded on a world market and transported around from country to country. Even with coal, ninety percent of all coal is used within the country of origin.

Words often disguise as much or more than they clarify. The term "alternative energy" is totally unsuited for giving the public a true picture of the global energy predicament. It is probably far too late to consider a change but clearly the use of "optional" or "additional" would be more appropriate to describe the way we have treated new energy sources. There really are no new energy sources that can be described as "replacement".
________________________________________________________________
1. History of Energy - James C. Williams, Ph.D.
2. Coal Mines
3. World energy resources and consumption
4. Population and Energy - Graham Zabel

Mackenzie Valley Pipeline

The not so well understood realities behind the proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline.



In the 1970s there was considerable activity in energy business and government circles aimed at the "need" to develop a pipeline to facilitate delivery to market of the massive reserves of natural gas in the Mackenzie River delta on the edge of the Beaufort Sea. Despite the size of those reserves, without a pipeline to get it to market it may as well be left in the ground. And the nearest pipelines into which the natural gas could be delivered were over a thousand kilometers away.(1)

The two prime candidates were the Alaska pipeline and a new pipeline south through the Northwest Territories to link up with pipelines in northern Alberta. At that time the estimated cost to link up to the Alberta pipeline was of the magnitude of $4-billion while the estimate for going west and linking up to the Alaska pipeline was about $16.12-billion. It was obvious, based on these estimates, and despite strong opposition of the native groups over whose land the southbound pipeline would have to cross, that the winning proposal could only be the southbound pipeline. At that stage two possible routes for that pipeline were proposed. Eventually the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline was approved, despite still growing opposition from native groups and environmentalists.(5)

This pipeline was, of course, conditional on the Canadian government coughing up a sizable chunk of federal tax money to help defray development costs. At that stage the Canadian government committed to putting in $500-million, one eighth of the overall estimated cost.(4) This money was being put in, however, not in the form of an investment with the potential of payback from the eventual profits of the enterprise. It was, rather, in the form of a development grant, a gift to the large, extremely profitable energy giants partnered in the project. They included Imperial Oil, wholly owned by Exxon-Mobil, the largest and most profitable corporation in the world, Shell and Conoco-Phillips.

In his final report on the proposed pipeline project titled Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland, issued on May 9, 1977, Justice Thomas Berger presciently warned that "....any gas pipeline would be followed by an oil pipeline, that the infrastructure supporting this "energy corridor" would be enormous - roads, airports, maintenance bases, new towns - with an impact on the people, animals and land equivalent to building a railway across Canada."(1) The route for the pipeline would, after all, traverse one of the most delicate and unique landscapes in the world. The type of development Berger was concerned about and warned about in his report is typified by this. "Vancouver-based West Hawk Development (TSXV:WHD) has unveiled plans to strip-mine extensive coal reserves along the Mackenzie River [my emphasis] and begin building $2 billion worth of coal gasification plants to tie into the pipeline within four years."(3)


There is a very important energy sovereignty issue in all of this for the Canadian people. The natural gas extracted from Canadian soil that flows through the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline (both pipeline and the natural gas "owned" by U.S. and other multinational energy corporations) will be destined (flow will not start now until, at the earliest, 2014) for one of two purposes. It will feed directly into the pipeline feeding that natural gas into the U.S. market or it will be used in Fort MacMurray to process tar sands to produce synthetic oil to be fed directly into a pipeline to feed the U.S. market. Neither the natural gas in the pipeline or the tar sands oil it will be used to process will have any energy benefit to Canadians. Under the requirements of the proportionality clause in the NAFTA agreement, from which Mexico was exempted and applies only to Canada, Canada has an obligation to continue to supply to the U.S. market each year a proportion of its total oil and natural gas production equivalent to that supplied in the previous three years. That commitment still holds, as long as remain participants in NAFTA, whether or not we would have left after satisfying U.S. demand enough oil and/or natural gas to satisfy our own needs. As Colin Campbell of ASPO put it, "Canadians will be freezing in the dark while their natural gas runs hair dryers in Houston."

The story, of course, does not end there. Exxon-Mobil have this month released new financial data indicating that the cost of the pipeline project has now mushroomed to $16.2-billion. Among other things it is interesting that the real cost now on the table is higher than the original $16.12-billion cost of the competing Alaska pipeline solution which this pipeline beat out because of it's originally estimated $4-billion cost.(6) With this new financial report in hand Exxon-Mobil are crying poor and have gone back to the Canadian government "....looking for a fiscal framework that makes sense for all parties...." this is another way of saying they are looking for another federal government handout (some suggest as much as $2-billion) because Exxon-Mobil "....expect double-digit (percentage) returns on this kind of investment, and we're nowhere near that."(7)(8)

One must ask in all of this what the Canadian people get out of all this currently committed $500-million, let alone any additional money Exxon-Mobil and the consortium they represent manage to extort from the Canadian government. Not only will the natural gas flowing through the pipeline allow for a faster pace in destroying the land around Fort MacMurray but the project, directly and indirectly, will facilitate the wholesale destruction of the Mackenzie Valley watershed, the largest fresh water system in Canada. Any profits from the sale of the natural gas, whether to tar sands projects or in the U.S. market, will flow out of the country to foreign-owned multinationals. And whether that natural gas is used in Fort MacMurray or flows on down into the U.S. it will continue to add to or maintain our commitment to supply more natural gas to the U.S. under the NAFTA proportionality clause. It must be noted that both conventional crude oil and natural gas are already in decline. Forty percent of our domestically-used crude oil already comes from imports. Two LNG terminals are already being built in the Maritimes to make up for the future shortfall in domestic supply.
___________________________________________________________________________________
1. The Mackenzie Valley pipeline
2. Oil companies stop work on Mackenzie Valley pipeline
3. Proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline spurs Arctic mega-plan
4. Mackenzie Valley Pipeline a Go, But …
5. Mackenzie Valley Pipeline and Alberta Tar Sands
6. The Mackenzie Valley The Mackenzie Valley Pipeline
7. Mackenzie gas line still 'leading case' despite bloating $16.2B cost outlook
8. Mackenzie gas project to cost $16.2B: Imperial Oil

Why the blog is "quiet" recently

My apologies to those who expect the blog to have new articles once or twice a week. Right at the moment something else is commanding my attention. I am at a critical point in developing my next book where that effort needs my undivided attention. Between that and a recent surge in presentations and talks I simply have not had the time in my schedule to add anything to the blog. It's not for lack of ideas or subject matter. It's just for lack of time to develop and post them.

I will be past this stage of book development in another week. Then the outline and sample chapters will go off to my agent and I can bring things back to some semblance of normalcy. Bear with me. And thanks to all of you for your interest and support. It has been most gratifying.

Who Ever Said Life is Supposed to be Easy?

I actively monitor and participate in several Yahoo Peak Oil e-mail groups. On those groups there is a constant stream of teeth-gnashing over the impact that peak-oil, global warming, and whatever else are going to have on our easy, comfortable lifestyle. There is incessant discussion of what parts of our lifestyle we want to hold on to as we slide down the energy downslope on our way to a post fossil-fuel age. Even on these groups of people who are supposedly fully aware of the implications of peak oil there is constant discussion of ways to hold on, and a corresponding lack of an ability to visualize a lifestyle devoid of the energy inputs we now have.

Okay. I understand that change is traumatic. I understand how difficult it is to figure out how to incorporate such massive change as we have ahead of us into your personal life program. But whoever said life is supposed to be easy? Life is a struggle, very often downright brutal. Get used to it. There is no such thing as a free lunch. We in the industrialized world have rapaciously frittered away the energy resources of this planet in building a truly decadent lifestyle that we, over the course of these past few decades, have come to believe is our birthright. It's not. Get used to it. No other species on this planet that lives within the limits imposed on it by nature (and man!) assumes that life is easy. A female wildebeest drops a calf on the African savanna and within minutes it is up and ready to run, ready to keep up with the herd. If not it is liable to end up as some predator's lunch. That's life. No matter how massive our intellect in comparison to other species it in no way guarantees that we can continue to abuse the natural world that our man-made, virtual world still ultimately relies on.

I don't know when peak oil will occur, or peak natural gas or peak coal or peak uranium or whatever other peaks our species is bringing about this century. I don't know how rapid the decline will be on the other side of the peak. I don't know how governments and business and industry and individual people will adjust to that new reality. I am, however, very certain that our lifestyle fifty years from now will be far different than it is today. And not, by most people's definition, for the better. For all I know, you may be driving the last car you will ever own, living in the last home you will ever buy. Or we may find ways to extend the peak into a long plateau and not have to pay the full price for our profligate energy use for another several decades. The longer we extend that plateau, however, the steeper and more dramatic will be the decline when we can no longer hold it off.



I don't expect everyone to voluntarily give up the lifestyle they were born into or have built through their own efforts. That would be nice but it's not going to happen. Most people will hold on to as much as possible for as long as possible. I won't say that is human nature. That is such an over-used rationalization and cavalier excuse for the unconscionable ills we inflict on the life-supporting environment of this planet. I will concede only that it is an all too common way that people deal with adversity. They get so locked into dealing with the now that they can't or won't see that it is wiser, in the long run, to deal with the future before it is inflicted on them.

We are, so far as we know, the only intellectually gifted species on this planet. That intellect also imbues us with the unique gift of foresight. So far as we know, no other species on this planet can understand that it's actions may destroy the very environment on which they depend for life. We can! If we do not it is because we choose not to. The ability is there in that brain we were given. It's time to start using that gift of foresight instead of continuing to sleepwalk toward the species disaster of our own making.

Man is the only species on this planet intelligent enough to foresee his own extinction, creative enough to bring it about, stupid enough to allow it to happen. A fitting epitaph for what is arguably the most promising species to ever walk this planet.

Energy as the Catalyst in the Punctuated Equilibrium of Human Population Growth

The history of human cultural evolution is generally regarded as being closely linked to the development and evolution of agriculture. As man (initially in isolated local pockets) learned to plant seeds and grow his food rather than having to find it or chase it, human cultural evolution gradually moved toward the production of surpluses capable of supporting community building and urbanization.

It is generally argued that the "unnatural" growth in human population began with that simple act of planting a seed and the associated act of fixing a harness to an animal and having it pull a plow.

This whole argument, however, is one of observing results in isolation and to miss the underlying cause. The underlying catalyst to the growth of the human population is the exploitation of energy in its broadest context. The advance in human numbers, from the beginning of the history of man on earth, has been punctuated - in the context of Stephen J. Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium in speciation and evolution - by the discovery, recognition, understanding and exploitation of new forms of energy. Even that first planting of favored seeds around the hunter-gatherer's camp site was a process of exploiting the energy contained within those seeds by which those seeds could reproduce the plant from which they came.

The nature of punctuated equilibrium in the growth of human population is completely different than punctuated equilibrium in the genesis and evolution of species. The spurts of human population growth are caused by our own activity. It is not dependent on genetic evolution but, rather, memetic evolution. We are responsible for our own pattern of punctuated equilibrium. Each spurt in human population growth, most notably that since the beginning of the industrial revolution, are closely linked to the discovery, recognition, understanding and exploitation of a new "energy source" in the broadest context.

What has pushed us into extreme exponential population growth since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is a series of new and tightly overlapping energy exploitations closely following on a previous series of lower impact energy exploitations. All three fossil fuels had, before the industrial revolution, small scale local use. But other energy exploitations like the use of wind energy for windmills and sails, solar energy use in ovens, water energy in water wheels and the aqueduct systems like those built by the Romans, had all preceded the industrial revolution. But the overlapping cumulative exploitation of coal, oil, natural gas, electricity and nuclear had a truly revolutionary impact on human society and human population. Our numbers grew exponentially from about 850 million in 1700 to 6.5 billion at the beginning of this millennium just three centuries later. It is that cumulative contribution of so many very major new energy resources that has thrown the human population into the most extreme period of punctuated equilibrium and exponential growth in human history.

There is, however, another very worrying aspect of the punctuated equilibrium pattern brought on by the exploitation of new energy sources. Their application follows a standard Gaussian Curve or bell curve, application climbing relatively rapidly to a peak and falling rapidly with the discovery and exploitation of "the next" energy source. The worrying part is that growth in human population - usually local but sometimes, as now, global - follows the same Gaussian Curve. There is a short spurt of human population followed by a short term drop back to a level of stasis as the exploitation of that energy source goes into decline.

The current short (by historical standards) period of exponential growth in human numbers has been the result of a three century series of overlapping and cumulative exploitations of a half dozen unprecedented new energy sources. But the exploitation of all of these energy sources is moving rapidly toward a peak that will occur this century. As each of them peak there will be a corresponding negative impact on human population. This impact will gain negative momentum as the exploitation of each of these energy sources peaks and begins to decline. What is the level of population stasis to which we will decline as all of these energy sources falter? The population when we started up the steep slope of the Gaussian Curve was about 850 million. Most analysts of peak oil and other looming global crises believe the population will stabilize somewhere between one and two billion.

Based on historical trends it is more likely to be the lower figure of one billion.

However, there are approximately two billion people on the planet who arguably survive with no benefit from fossil fuels or any of the other energy sources that have driven our exponential rise in population. I would argue that they do, in fact, benefit indirectly from those energy sources through the importation of food, the mechanical exploitation of water sources, the availability of medicines produced by that exploitation of energy, and through the "manufactured" tools and other materials and goods they use and consume. I still, therefore, believe that the one billion number is more likely.

Historically, as well, the impact of the punctuated equilibrium on population has been localized to the relatively small geographic areas in which exploitation of the energy source is taking place. As a result these local population spurts had only minimal impact on global human population growth. With the growth of global trade in both goods and ideas that was such a key part of the industrial revolution, exploitation of these half dozen new energy sources , for the first time in human history, became global. The population of virtually every nation and region on earth grew - not at the same time or the same rate (Britain was experiencing a population increase of about 3% per year in the early stage of the industrial revolution while the overall world population was roughly static) - as the exploitation of these energy sources grew.

For the first time the Gaussian Curve of energy-mitigated population growth is global, an accumulation of all of the local growth patterns. Since growth in all of these areas, however, depends on the same globally traded energy resources, the slide down the back side of the curve will not be as spread out and gradual as it was on the up slope. This strongly suggests there will be a global population crash when these energy sources and resources go into irreversible decline and all nations experience the loss of benefit from these energy sources at the same time.


--------------------------
Population and Energy - Graham Zabel - http://dieoff.org/page199.htm
The Energy Crisis is Here by Stan Goff - http://www.williambowles.info/guests/energy_crisis.html
World Energy Production, Population Growth, And the Road to the Olduvai Gorge - Richard C. Duncan - http://www.hubbertpeak.com/duncan/road2olduvai.pdf
Tight Squeeze - By Mark Ridley - http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503EEDA1239F93AA25752C1A963958260
The Scientific Revolution - Introduction - E.L. Skip Knox, Boise State University -
http://history.boisestate.edu/WESTCIV/science/01.shtml
Population Growth, Energy Use, and Pollution: Understanding the Driving Forces of Global Change - http://www.aag.org/hdgc/Population_Growth.html

Deculturation: Mass Deprogramming of Global Society

This article is a continuation of a series that includes Mud pies and Dunce Caps - Part 2, Give me a Child Until......, and Waking up, Into the Nightmare!

Can the deprogramming techniques used on those rescued from cults or the mass deprogramming suggested in the "Social Reason" program be looked to as a means of achieving mass global deprogramming for the purpose of achieving a mass disassociation from the modern capitalist paradigm and a shift in worldview to stewardship and sustainability?

What is the source of a nation's culture? Who defines it? How is it transmitted through the nation's population such that it becomes so integrated into the individual worldview and mind set that it becomes "common knowledge", becomes the core of the national identity? There was a reason that large "nations" like China, India, the US, Russia and others did not exist earlier in our history, why nations that did exist were still loose collections of tribal enclaves much like we are finding Afghanistan still is today. The means to create and, most importantly, constantly reinforce a national identity did not exist. People do not inherently identify with "nation" but rather some smaller, more intimate grouping. The key to sustaining a national worldview is media; TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, music and movies. The extension of that reality is the growth of globalization and the establishment of key elements of a global mind set through the agency of global communications; through global television and radio aided through satellites, through globalization in the entertainment industry in music, magazines and movies, and, more recently and far more importantly, the rapid growth of global digital communications that brings into a common technology base not only broadcast media but telephone, the internet, facsimile transmission and image transmission.

One of the first and most important targets of the rebel forces in any revolution since the early part of the twentieth century, and earlier though in more limited fashion, is almost always the communications and media; the radio, TV, newspapers and printing presses. Control of the media, until then in the hands of the government being overthrown, is recognized as a critical part of gaining control of the hearts and minds of the people. Media is always, at least in modern society, at the heart of national culture. It is the means by which government and business mobilize the public support of their goals. As Robert W. McChesney outlines in The Political Economy Of Radio, "As a rule of thumb, if certain forces thoroughly dominate a society's political economy they will thoroughly dominate its communication system, and the fundamental questions of how the communication system should be organized and for what purposes are not even subject to debate. So it is and so it has been with the Communist Party in various "people's republics," and, for the most part, with big business interests in the United States."[(1)] And, in fact, it is the same with business control of the media in every free country on the planet.

We are bombarded by the reinforcing symbols and messages of our culturation and social indoctrination from cradle to grave. But beginning with the various means of mass communication, starting with radio, that culturation and indoctrination has been increasingly and insidiously commercial. Beginning in the 1920s capitalists and business leaders began to recognize the power in radio that they could use to improve their businesses and, more importantly, to "manufacture" and maintain public loyalty to their product and, increasingly, their political agenda. With that recognition, they set out to control these mass communication media. McChesney writes, "It was only in the late 1920s that capitalists began to sense that through network operation and commercial advertising, radio broadcasting could generate substantial profits. Through their immense power in Washington, these commercial broadcasters were able to dominate the Federal Radio Commission. As a result, the scarce number of air channels were effectively turned over to them with no public and little congressional deliberation on the matter."

The dangers inherent in commercial control of broadcast media were the rallying call of a reform movement through the 1920s. They argued that ".....if private interests controlled the medium and their goal was profit, no amount of regulation or self-regulation could overcome the bias built into the system." This reform movement essentially lost their battle with the passage of the Communications Act of 1934, which established the FCC. They did not lose in a fair fight, however. As McChesney explains, "The radio lobby dominated because it was able to keep most Americans ignorant or confused about the communication policy matters then under discussion in Congress through their control of key elements of the news media and their sophisticated public relations aimed at the remainder of the press and the public."

Commercial domination of broadcast media did not end with radio, of course. "When television came along in the 1940s," McChesney says, "the FCC effectively turned it over to the same networks that dominated radio. Almost from the beginning commercial broadcasting has generated criticism that it ignored or downplayed controversial political programming, or entertainment and cultural programming that would not attract huge audiences. In addition, advertisers served as powerful censors of broadcast content, and it was not in their interest to sponsor programming that might undermine their sales messages."[(1)]

After four generations of commercial control and manipulation of the broadcast media that is the central source of our cultural identity, plus two decades of escalating commercial intrusion into our public school systems, we have become so indoctrinated into a carefully orchestrated worldview that we have largely surrendered and lost both our ability and our desire for critical independent thought. In one of the many online sites called Deprogramming, put out by The Center for Human Deprogramming, it is put this way, "Everything we feel and know inside is gradually replaced with values originating from media and education until we have completely lost our ability for independent, creative, or critical thought. After years of this process, we lose our identities and internal equilibrium and become dependent on the external."[(6)] We have as a population largely fallen into a pattern of follow-the-leader, looking to government and business to solve our problems, satisfy our perceived needs, and to tell and show us where we are supposed to go. To quote myself, from my book Oilephant Down: Canada at the End of the Age of Cheap Oil, "the more you ask your government to do for you the more it will do to you without your asking." Just consider the wholesale erosion of civil liberties in legislation like The Patriot Act passed since 9/11. But we keep asking. As Carolyn Baker says in American Born, Addicted to Happiness, "Americans, even so-called Progressives it seems, appear to be fixated in an eternal adolescence that wants to repair adversity as quickly as possible without living it, or God forbid, learning from it. One facet of maturity is the awareness that the challenges of human existence are rarely simplistic, usually fraught with complexity, and typically last much longer than we ever dreamed we could endure them. ..... Like puerile MTV viewers, we demand that the right politician, the right book, the right motivational speaker, the right spiritual teacher, the right journalist tell us what to do and make it “all better” so that we can avoid suffering."[(2)]

That is not a national mind set and worldview that should give anyone comfort as we rapidly and aggressively push toward the global crises ahead of us, most importantly but not exclusively peak oil and climate change. A problem cannot be its own solution. We cannot expect to avoid, remedy or mitigate these crises with the same government and business leadership that has led us through a global sleepwalk to this cliff and seems to be intent on pushing us off into the abyss with their mindless pursuit of business-as-usual. They are aware of the crises before us. If the average citizen did not realize that with President Bush's "America is addicted to oil" statement in his 2006 State of the Union address, then they simply are not listening. They may, however, simply be incapable of hearing. As Laura Knight-Jadczyk says in Official Culture in America: A Natural State of Psychopathy?, "...how effective the "official culture" actually is in the US. It isn't just a question of ignorance, but a question of the long-term thoroughness of the propagandizing that began in the early days of the last century. It was proposed that this propaganda is so complete that not only are most people in the US ignorant of what is taking place on the US political scene, and in the world as a direct result of US policy, they are ignorant of the fact that they are ignorant."[(4)] But the solutions consistently put forward by President Bush, his administration, the US government and business leaders is to develop more new technology to solve the problems. It is technology that has brought us to this dangerous point. As Joseph Wilkerson put it in Energy and Psyche: Resource Addiction in the Technological Age, "....if the industrial relationship to petroleum and other energy sources is indeed an addiction, then it will take more than “technology … reliable alternative energy sources and … clean-energy research” (united) to facilitate our recovery." Knight-Jadczyk goes on to say, "...all of us who were raised in the US have been duped via this Official Culture mind control imposed through the educational system and the mass media." [(3)]

As long as those powerful government, institutional and business interests vested in the maintenance of the status quo remain in control of the legislation that creates the laws that govern our lives, in control of the education system that molds the mind and character of our children to their objectives, in control of that national media that creates, manipulates, controls and constantly reinforces the national cultural mind set supportive of their elitist interests, any broad-based, grass roots social movement for change will be very limited in its ability to affect that change. Even the most fervent social movements have been but small blips on the radar of those in control of our culture. Lip service is paid while passions are high and then it's back to business as usual, maybe with a new coat of disguising paint. With the media in the control of such powerful vested interests the opportunity simply will not be "granted" for any popular social change to get off the ground. In a paper titled Seizing the Media put out by a group called Immediast International, the frustration engendered by this reality is clear. "The time has come to veto, overwhelm, and subvert the messages of all airborne commercial broadcast media until they are returned to complete public direction, access, and control. How long should we wait to liberate public spaces from the blister of billboards and advertisements? The air is public domain, and the airwaves are ours to hear our own voices, see our own colors, enjoy our own conversations, and celebrate in the vast community of cultures. Remember: dialogue offsets the hegemony, and intimacy empowers. ..... The time has come to restore the democratic power and public space that have been co opted and colonized by commercial media."[(5)]

If our leaders remain focused on perpetuating business as usual and have no solution to the problems ahead other than ramping up the technology that has been such a key part of our destruction of the planet's biosphere, and if machinery of culturation and information remains firmly in their grasp, how are we to overcome our increasing sense of doom and have any hope of avoiding the crises ahead (Let's call them what they will be, disasters!)? How are we to prepare as a society for the most dramatic and traumatic transition in human history as the impact of peak oil, climate change and other looming global disasters befall us in quick succession? Somehow we have to find a way. This is how it was put in Knight-Jadczyk's article. "A picture is forming of a deliberately contrived society of televised conformity, literate and creative inadequacy, and social unrest and decadence. It is apparent that the media is in charge of propagating these conditions, and the media is controlled by what? ..... Capitalistic, competitive Economics."

Deprogramming is a technique developed and fine-tuned over this past half century originally intended as a program to undo the indoctrination and brainwashing of individuals rescued from cults of various descriptions. It is a very intense, one-on-one process that seeks to supplant inculcated beliefs, "truths", triggers and signals and replace them with a renewed affinity for the mainstream culture. The process uses, out of declared necessity, some of the same techniques of indoctrination and brainwashing that was used to draw the subject into the cult in the first place. Both the strength and the weakness of the technique is that it is one-on-one. If the masses are to be deprogrammed out of the mainstream culture in order to effect a change toward a post-energy sustainable world it is not likely to happen if it relies on intense, one-on-one reculturation of every individual. There is a technique called Social Reason developed by Milton W. Raymond and presented to the Ethical Society of Boston, School for Ethics. This paper purports to be a technique for broad social deprogramming during traumatic social changes such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the re-absorption of Hong Kong into Communist China and introduction of western Democracy into conservative Islamic states.[(6)] To my knowledge the theory presented in the paper has never been put into practice. Most practitioners and experts on deprogramming are quite insistent that it can only work on an intense one-on-one basis. I remain intrigued, however, whether Raymond's technique has any merit and whether it could be the key to effecting the social transition from our current high-energy, high-tech world into the sustainable world that must follow the collapse of the global energy bubble.
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1) The Political Economy Of Radio by Robert W. McChesney
http://www.infoshop.org/texts/seizing/mches.html
2) American Born, Addicted to Happiness by Carolyn Baker / Research on Globalization (CRG)
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/American-Addicted-Happiness30nov04.htm
3) Energy and Psyche: Resource Addiction in the Technological Age By Joseph Wilkerson
http://www.ecopsychology.org/journal/ezine/archive3/addiction.pdf
4) Official Culture in America: A Natural State of Psychopathy? by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/official_culture.htm
5) Seizing The Media: The Immediast Underground Pamphlet Series
Immediast International - New York City / Amsterdam / Seattle (Looks quite good)
http://deoxy.org/seize_it.htm
6) Resolving "Irreconcilable" Differences by Milton W. Raymond
http://www.bostonethical.org/SocialReason.html