By Eli Sanders
02-05-04 Some time this century -- and possibly as soon as this decade -- the
Earth is going to start running out of oil. That's the frightening conclusion of
two recent books that walk through profoundly important but little-discussed
facts to build a case that this planet will soon face an insurmountable
oil-supply crisis.
The crisis will come in two stages: First, there won't be enough oil to go
around, and shortly thereafter, there will be no more oil. The visions these
authors paint of a post-oil Earth range from bleak to apocalyptic.
In "Out of Gas," a short, fascinating work meant as a primer on
"the relevant laws of nature" concerning the planet's oil supply,
David Goodstein, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology,
reaches this stark conclusion: "Civilization as we know it will come to an
end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil
fuels."
Leavenworth resident Paul Roberts, who writes frequently on environmental
issues, is no more reassuring in "The End of Oil," a much more
detailed and lengthy book that is nevertheless equally absorbing. "Oil
depletion is arguably the most serious crisis ever to face industrial
society," writes Roberts, a frequent contributor to Harper's Magazine.
"Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil"
by David Goodstein
W.W. Norton, 128 pp.
"The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World"
by Paul Roberts
Houghton Mifflin, 400 pp.
Sidestepping the phoney debates over exactly when and whether oil will
actually run out, Roberts says that oil is undoubtedly running out quickly and
our only choice is to begin shifting now to a new fuel supply: "The real
question for anyone truly concerned about our future, is not whether change is
going to come, but whether the shift will be peaceful and orderly or chaotic and
violent because we waited too long in planning for it."
How do these men know the world is running out of oil? It's quite simple.
Oil is a finite resource -- meaning there's only so much of it and then it's
gone -- and it turns out that experts have long since figured out that the
planet only had about 2 tn barrels of oil in it when humans began sucking that
up and using it to power modern civilization.
"The point can be seen without any fancy mathematics at all," writes
Goodstein. "Of the 2 t barrels of oil we started with, nearly half has
already been consumed."
That's perhaps the worst-case estimate, but even the best-case estimates
admit the halfway point is likely to be reached within a generation. When it
comes -- when humans have used up half the oil that was there initially -- we
will have reached a point known to oil experts as Hubbert's Peak. As Goodstein
explains, the peak is named after the geophysicist and Shell Oil employee Marion
King Hubbert, who in 1956 correctly predicted that US oil production would top
out in 1970.
Hubbert's Peak has since become an important predictive tool because it marks
the moment when supply of a finite quantity such as oil begins to diminish with
ever-increasing rapidity. Significantly, when US oil production reached its
Hubbert's Peak in 1970, the country's demand for oil didn't peak. Instead, it
kept right on rising.
In order to meet that rising demand, America was forced to quickly transform
from the world's largest oil exporter into one of the world's largest oil
importers. As both authors note, abundant cheap oil for American consumers has
since become intrinsically linked to this country's global economic dominance.
Today we have 5 % of the world's population, yet we consume 25 % of the world's
oil.
The economic imperative to keep that oil flowing has made the US economy totally
dependent upon, as Roberts puts it, "a small number of countries whose
governments are unstable and corrupt and whose dependability as suppliers is
increasingly in doubt."
What happened in the US foreshadows what is to come worldwide, with one key
difference: When world oil production peaks, there will be nowhere else to look,
no other country to import oil from. If world demand for oil doesn't slow
drastically, or if alternative energy sources aren't found and put into place,
then a desperate and chaotic race will be on among world powers to grab control
of the remaining oil supplies (a race both authors believe has already begun).
Goodstein paints a worst-case scenario in which the declining oil supply,
inevitably, is unable to keep up with demand: "Runaway inflation and
worldwide depression leave many millions of people with no alternative but to
burn coal in vast quantities for warmth, cooking and primitive industry. The
change in the greenhouse effect that results eventually tips Earth's climate
into a state hostile to life. End of story."
As both authors point out, the story doesn't have to end this way. They
discuss in detail the potentials of alternative energy sources -- hydrogen fuel
cells, solar energy, natural gas and more -- but find we're nowhere near ready
to use any one of them as an oil replacement. They also discuss the possibility
of making our current oil-burning machines (mainly cars) more efficient but note
the depressing lack of political will to do so.
"We, or our children, or our grandchildren face some very difficult
times," Goodstein writes. Even more alarming than this, both authors note,
is the very real possibility that if we wait until those difficult times arrive
before we do something, it may already be too late.
Source: The Seattle Times