[A-List] Overpopulation and peak oil: The perfect storm

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Jim Lydecker

Napa Valley Register (January 18 2008)


Americans have recently become aware of converging crises that can end
life as we know it, though experts have been warning us for many years.

For example, many economists have been warning for decades of the severe
consequences resulting from runaway national debt and an imbalance of
trade. And the current mortgage/liquidity crisis was first discussed in
the early 1990s by a number of financial experts.

Global warming, a phenomenon universally accepted as fact within the
past five years, was first discussed by the Swedes in the 19th century.
Several papers published at Stockholm University warned of global
warning with the advent of the industrial age.

For a variety of reasons, humans usually don't react to problems until
they become crises. All these crises are semi-connected, where one will
trigger one or more of the others. However, there are two crises
marching toward us now, shoulder-to-shoulder, that will trigger every
other, both large and small. At best, they will end our industrial
civilization. At worst, they may depopulate most of our species. These
two comrades-in-arms, overpopulation and peak oil, are of such complex
magnitude, no amount of financial or scientific commitment may stop
them. They are creating the perfect storm of which there may be no survival.

The ever-quickening rise in oil prices partly attributed to the
ever-weakening dollar. However, oil prices would still be increasing as
demand outstrips supply. The slide down peak oil is unstoppable.

Most want to believe oil is limitless. The fact of the matter is it's a
finite resource, a geological gift of nature, half of which we've run
through in less than 150 years. You only have to look as far as the
mature, collapsing fields as the North Sea, Mexico's Cantarell, Alaska's
North Slope, Russia's Caspian and various Middle Eastern countries to
know we are in deep trouble. In December's OPEC meetings, it was made
public that they were supplying fifteen percent less than two years ago
despite pumping as fast as they can. The massive Saudi field, Ghawar -
by far the world's largest - has only been able to maintain its
five-million-barrel-a-day output by injecting nine million barrels of
sea water daily. It's said as goes Ghawar, so goes Saudi Arabia.

No substance is more interwoven into life as oil. Most of us see it as
gasoline and believe more fuel-efficient autos will save the day. This
is a fallacy as cars take much oil to manufacture, so if we replace all
gas guzzlers with fuel-efficient vehicles, it will make matters worse.
And using grain-produced ethanol is proving to be a mistake. Agriculture
is one of the most oil-intensive industries and the more we grow, the
quicker we use oil up.

Oil is necessary for drugs and pharmaceuticals, energy, fertilizers and
pesticides, chemical production and everything plastic. With the advent
of oil came a revolution in medicine, agriculture (where two percent of
the population now feeds the rest of us, while it was the opposite in
1850), transportation, information, machinery and industrial production.
Never before has life changed so much and oil was directly responsible
for this modernization.

If peak oil is the sharpshooter with modern industrial civilization in
its crosshairs, overpopulation is the hangman with the noose around our
necks.

In 1850, the world population lingered at one billion; in America it was
23 million. The world population is now closing in on seven billion
while here it nears 310 million. It was oil, and its cousin natural gas,
that allowed the population to grow to unprecedented proportions as
quickly as it did. As oil is depleted, it's correct to assume the
population will decrease proportionately.

In 1974, the government released a study (NSSM 200) that concluded the
world population needed to be decreased drastically for humans to
survive after peak oil without dire consequences. This was followed by
the Carter administration's Global 2000 document that said an immediate
goal of less than two billion worldwide is necessary. Others suggest a
world of no more than 500 million is more realistic.

Knowing so much about a near future of mass migration, epidemics,
famines, society collapse and die-offs of biblical proportions, one
should ask: Why are we not making population and oil conservation the
primary issues? I always wonder why towns are proud welcoming in the
first born of the year when, in the overall scope of things, having a
baby is the most selfish thing a person can do. Why encourage our
species to breed ourselves toward extinction?

Energy and population are the two subjects you never hear politicians
discuss. Columnists, on the left and right, have recently written how it
is only OK to talk about conserving oil and decreasing population until
it's too late.

____

Lydecker lives in Napa.)

Napa Valley Register Copyright (c) 2007

http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/01/18/opinion/commentary/doc479033ed52bb4948686565.txt

http://peakoil.blogspot.com/2008/01/overpopulation-and-peak-oil-perfect.html

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