[A-List] Fw: [R-G] The oil-consumption party is over!

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nicholas Morcinek" <nick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [R-G] The oil-consumption party is over!



<http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=ourWorldNews&storyID=2724910>

NEW YORK - Famine, disease, economic collapse, despotism, and resource wars.
Sounds horrific, but that's what's in store unless the world cuts back fast
on its energy consumption, according to a new book.

In "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies," author
Richard Heinberg argues global oil output will peak in three to 12 years,
and if an aggressive shift to include new energy sources, like wind, solar
or fuel cells in the mix doesn't happen by then, grim consequences will
result. It's no surprise the United States, which consumes a quarter of the
world's oil and imports more than half of the 20 million barrels of oil it
now uses every day, is at the top of Heinberg's list of offending countries.
But the author stresses high growth rates in oil-thirsty countries like
China or India heighten the chances of calamity by increasing competition
among nations for oil and therefore requiring the shift to alternatives to
be even more decisive.

"The party, which is the past 200 years of fossil fuels use, is coming to an
end, and we have the choice as to how to bring that party to an end,"
Heinberg told Reuters. "Either we do it voluntarily or it will be thrust
upon us." While Heinberg has his share of detractors, even among those who
agree that the world may well face some sort of crisis when oil production
begins to tail off for good, his worst-case scenario is certainly
attention-grabbing.

He predicts a less global world where cities shrink into towns as people
move closer to food and water supplies, where currencies will be local,
electrical power delivered by cooperatives and bicycles and walking
widespread once again.

"We are going to have to run the movie of globalization in reverse," said
Heinberg, an ecology professor at the New College of California, in Santa
Rosa north of San Francisco. He also reckons many U.S. citizens would be
willing to trade in their energy-intensive lifestyles in exchange for
assurances militants halfway around the world would drop America off their
target list.

Heinberg's views stand in stark contrast to those who believe that the
transition from petroleum to alternative fuels will be smooth, even if new
energy sources cost more. "(An alternative to oil) is presumably going to
cost more, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it will be catastrophic and
it doesn't mean that the change is going to be abrupt, it could be a smooth
transition," said Ron Minsk, economist and special assistant for economic
policy to former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

A SIMPLE CHOICE

To avoid catastrophe, Heinberg stresses that the United States must
immediately reduce its dependency on petroleum and work on downsizing its
resource-intensive way of life with a view toward conservation and
developing renewable energy. In his book, Heinberg quotes Colin Campbell - a
geologist and author known for his forecasts that world oil production is
likely to peak within a decade - to help make the case that time is of the
essence to avoid disaster.

But Campbell's claim that: "We now find one barrel of oil for every four we
consume," is dismissed by people like Minsk as scaremongering. Heinberg's
detractors acknowledge that oil will obviously run out one day, but
generally say that if oil prices rise as supplies begin to tighten, market
forces will kick in to avert a global disaster. "Since the 1950's people
have been predicting that oil production will peak 10 years later, and we
are now in the 2000's and people are still predicting that production will
peak in a decade," Minsk said. Minsk said higher oil prices might hurt the
economy in the near term, but would also increase the economic incentive to
explore and develop oil and alternative energy sources that may have
previously been too expensive to develop before.

Oil prices reached $40 a barrel this year in the weeks before U.S.-led
forces attacked oil-rich Iraq on fears that widespread destruction of oil
fields there could shock the world economy. Prices have since settled back
to around $26. Heinberg considers the latest conflict in Iraq not as an
attempt to get rid of weapons of mass destruction but as a way for the
United States to secure oil supplies. The invasion was, in his view, an
early sign of the resource wars of the future he predicts if alternatives to
oil are not quickly pursued.

He also says that in the absence of massive investments in alternative
energy - that is in the billions of dollars rather than the millions
proposed by U.S. President George W. Bush in his latest budget - relying on
price spikes as an early indicator of supply problems is pretty much
useless. That's because the next big supply crisis is likely to signal the
beginning of the end of the petroleum era and thus the beginning of chaos -
first in the developing world but also, eventually, in the industrialized
world as well.

"We really need to wake up. It is the greatest challenge that we have faced
in the last 200 years," Heinberg said.

Story by Manuela Badawy

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE




_______________________________________________
Rad-Green mailing list
Rad-Green@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green