Middle East
11
18
64%
Russia and Central Asia
20
28
40%
Japan
11
12
9%
India
11
29
164%
China
26
52
100%
Other Asian Countries
22
38
78%
Can we find a replacement for oil?
To answer this question, we must first define a concept fundamental to understanding how energy behaves—entropy. Entropy is an irreversible process: the energy we use is converted principally into heat; this caloric energy, once dissipated, can never become mechanical energy again. This principle applies to all energy resources on earth, which by definition constitute a limited and nonrenewable capital.
Classical liberal economics does not know the law of entropy, i.e., the irreversibility of transformations of material into energy. This system of economics does not distinguish between stock and flow, the environmental equivalents of capital and revenue.
The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only change form.
The second law of thermodynamics states that, in a closed system, the change of state of any quantity of energy goes only in one direction: from concentration to dispersal, from order to disorder. This is why a cup of tea cools off to match the ambient temperature—and not the other way around. No cup of tea warms up spontaneously. No pile of ashes reconstitutes itself into a log. No rusty piece of iron returns spontaneously to its pristine state. No perpetual motion can exist. You can only go from low entropy to high entropy.
Each time energy changes its state, a little energy is lost—sometimes a lot—in the form of heat, which is dispersed. This dispersal of heat can be useful: to heat us in the winter, run a steam engine, make an explosion, or turn a turbine; but energy is always lost in the transformation. In Switzerland, for example, hydroelectric plants generate electricity by using the weight of water that, coming down from the reservoirs, turns turbines. This electricity sells for a lot, since it can respond to the hours of day with highest electrical demand. During the night, while nuclear electricity especially is abundantly available and cheap (electricity must be used as it is produced, or it is lost), the water is pumped back up into the reservoirs. This procedure requires much more energy than is generated by the same quantity of water. A caloric absurdity can be an economic advantage.
Many optimists predict that new technologies can help us do things more efficiently than in the past, increase production, do more with less. Technology can entertain us and help us communicate in an extraordinary way. Technology can also help us transform and use energy with innovative applications, it is true. But technology can never create energy.
In many situations, new technologies are only marginally useful. Take the example of extracting minerals. Imagine a copper mine. When I was doing business in Africa in the 1990s, I was fortunate enough to visit the copper mines of Konkola, Nchanga, and Chingola in northern Zambia. These mines are 400 meters deep. Huge excavators tear enough earth to construct a villa from the mountain with each shovelful. Gigantic trucks as tall as three-story apartment buildings transport thousands of cubic meters of soil, which is then treated to extract the mineral. A considerable quantity of diesel fuel must be used every day to keep those machines running. And the mineral content of the soil extracted is 0.3 percent; i.e., to get three kilos of copper, you have to process a ton of earth.
Once oil gets expensive, it will no longer be economical to work this way, and even materials that are not yet scarce will become very expensive. One can easily imagine extraction stopping altogether. Here, too, we are dealing with a curve rather than a straight line. The more difficult extracting raw materials becomes, the more energy it requires (fuel for trucks, cranes, drills; electricity for the chemical processing; etc.). As the richness of a vein goes down, the costs rise in proportion—both exponentially. Humans, like other animals, first seek out resources that are easier to obtain: those closest to the surface and closest to the markets. The best ores get worked first, the biggest trees cut down first, the high-yield mines exploited first. Over time, encouraged by the rarity of materials, the more difficult sources are worked, less pure and more costly. This is less economical; the energy needed to get the same result becomes ever greater.
Coal follows the same logic, and, despite the disinformation spread concerning its future availability, it, too, is becoming rarer. The best coal, anthracite, has already almost totally disappeared. On the other hand, there remains a lot of lesser quality coal, such as forge coal and gas coal, which will be available for another 40 or 50 years. We should also mention lignite, less attractive but still useful, which will probably be available for 50 years, and perhaps 100, if the economy settles a bit, and oil is not systematically replaced by coal.
The phenomenon we have described for oil, copper, and coal also occurs for any nonrenewable resource: natural gas, zinc, nickel, lithium, etc. In the following graph, we can see the number of years which remains for these minerals based on known reserves and estimated population growth and rates of extraction:
Mineral
Years Remaining
Silver
12
Gold
15
Zinc
15
Lead
20
Tungsten
23
Copper
23
Manganese
29
Nickel
30
Iron
40
This situation is starting to have concrete effects: between foreseeable shortages, growing extraction costs, and financial speculation, prices have fluctuated violently in the past few years, mainly going up.
We can already see that massive theft will take place in Western cities similar to what I witnessed in African countries: theft of aluminum seats in Toronto, of cast iron sewer plates in Scotland (resold in China where the local underworld stole 24,000 sewer plates in 2006 in Shanghai alone!), theft of copper telephone cable in Spain and Hungary, theft of 136 aluminum pylons in Baltimore, Maryland. In India, eight unlucky people have died in 2010 by falling into sewer holes whose covers had been stolen. In California, gangs specialize in stealing platinum catalytic converters from automobiles in less than 90 seconds. Such bits of trivia may raise a smile, but they are revealing.
We are facing not merely peak oil, but peak everything.
Some relatively good news is that, thanks to rising costs, recycling is increasing (the U.S. exports 61 billion dollars worth of metals for recycling each year to China), product design is getting more economical with resources, people repair things instead of throwing them away, etc. Unfortunately, even if we succeed in recycling 100 percent of the materials we use—metals, plastics and everything else—since economic growth is accelerating, we will need even more raw materials for making new cars, televisions, telephones, etc., which the economy bids us produce. We are quickly and surely headed toward the exhaustion of all resources.
Next, we must look at the impact of the rarity of irreplaceable metals. There are materials that, once mixed, are impossible to separate again at any reasonable cost in energy. Cobalt, for example, which is mixed with steel to make stainless steel, is lost forever. The phosphates in fertilizer, once spread on a field, end up being dissolved in water and finally running into the sea where they are impossible to recuperate. Finally, there are materials lost by dispersion, such as when iron rusts: the oxidized atoms are lost, too widely dispersed to be reused. We are using more resources than we can renew or discover, and demand continues to grow.
Economists often make the mistake of imagining that the economy exists in a void, without external parameters as vulgar as resource
s or waste. Alas, the actual economy is not a neat theoretical model; it is a subset of the natural environment. The complexity of a modern global economy—able to make, transport, track, use, and dispose of billions upon billions of objects—is enormous. Obviously, this complex system can only exist through a continual injection of energy.
A number of economists consider the argument that the world is about to run out of resources to be both old and discredited. In 1980, a good number of them foresaw a scarcity of raw materials and higher prices. In fact, prices continued to decline during the 1980s and ‘90s. This is because those who foresaw the inevitable in the 1960s and ‘70s had not understood the time factor. But they were correct; they were just a little early.
Conventional economists think growth is a good thing. They argue against the idea that physical resources are limited by maintaining that if a resource becomes rare, its price will rise, thereby providing an incentive for discovering other resources or developing or inventing less expensive substitutes. According to them, market forces (the “invisible hand”) and human ingenuity will always be able to find a solution to the increasing demand for resources. This will happen thanks to the exploration of virgin territories, more efficient manufacturing processes, or replacing oil with another form of energy. For them, there can be no theoretical limit to growth. The facts have supported them for the past 200 years, and since 1989, most see no reason for the lowered acceleration of economic expansion. According to liberal doctrine, all means for encouraging economic activity are good, and more is always better. From this point of view, energy has the same value as any other raw material, when in fact, it is the necessary condition for obtaining other resources.
In fact, peak oil and peak resources will not have the most violent impact: that will be the moment demand becomes permanently greater than supply. Consider a country which produces three million barrels of oil a day, uses one itself, and exports the other two. If in 10 years production goes down to two million barrels per day, while domestic consumption increases 0.5 million barrels per day, the country can then only export 0.5 million barrels a day, 75 percent less than 10 years before. Very soon thereafter it will not be able to export any. In this scenario, the price per barrel will increase sharply, and net importers of oil will quickly be left high and dry whatever the price of oil. Producing countries will quickly put an embargo on exports, considering domestic demand a higher priority, in order to guarantee economic and social stability and create a small strategic reserve.
The same phenomenon occurs with all other resources. One may debate over the exact moment when oil or this or that mineral reaches peak production, but the key moment will occur before that, when an ever growing number of countries becomes unwilling or unable to export. At that point, the economy will slow, the price of goods will rise sharply, and there will be outbreaks of panic.
Unfortunately, Western public opinion no longer takes seriously the view so often put forward that resources are going to be exhausted. When it happens, it will come as a shock—economically and, especially, psychologically. The optimists tell us it is useless to think about it; progress is natural and self-correcting. “Malthus was wrong,” they say; “he didn’t foresee chemical fertilizer and intensive agriculture! With technological progress, we shall end up finding a way to develop new resources to replace those becoming exhausted!” We are in the situation of a drug addict who keeps on looking for his drug at whatever price, since he cannot replace it with anything else. The problem is that in the case of the drug oil, the addicts—ourselves—are in the majority. Those who still have access to their daily dose have no intention of giving it up, and those who don’t, dream of acquiring it as quickly as possible.
The risk of social problems and revolts following an economic downturn will increasingly motivate politicians to take a gamble on war, so as to, at least, guarantee the provision of resources. On many fronts, the war has already begun. It is hard to predict future conflicts, especially when so many “false flag” or “special” operations prevent our knowing who is responsible for what and who is fighting whom. The wars will be dressed up in the language of “human rights”: “We must bomb them to bring them democracy, kill them for their own good, occupy their countries to liberate them from their dictators.” (The hypocrisy is revealed when one notices that military interventions never occur where there are no resources.) Who knows? Maybe some day, the mask of newspeak will fall, and we will march off to war with the courage to declare our true purpose—theft.
These wars will become ever more futile, for not only do they themselves consume resources, but they also risk destroying the means of production. Just as a drug addict smashes a pharmacy window and grabs everything he can get his hands on, these wars will increasingly resemble acts of desperation. The risk of conflagration and of such conflicts spreading is great, especially when countries which pursue neo-imperialist policies, like the U.S., collide with the strategic interests of new powers like China and Russia. Such conflicts may become not the Third World War, but the Last World War.
In fact, wars over resources are a form of denial: “If our efforts produce no result, if we don’t want to change our way of life, at least we can still wage war! Oh, if only we can win this war, the oil will start gushing out of the ground again, and we can go on driving our cars! If only we could have a few more resources for just a little longer, we could continue our way of life for a time and hope for the technological miracle which will save us!”
In the past, there was always a new continent, new territories to explore in which new resources could be found or looted. There was always a new oil or gas well to be dug, or existing deposits to be tapped more efficiently. All that is over. We are living beyond our means. It is as if we were spending all our revenue and all our capital as well. At the end—bankruptcy. And at the global scale, there is no providential State to save us.
The notion of an ecological footprint refers to the area of productive ground necessary for producing the energy, resources, food, etc., consumed by one inhabitant. If we measure this footprint in available hectares per inhabitant of the planet, this figure amounts to 1.8 hectares in 2003. As population and consumption per person rise, the footprint increases. The average footprint is over 1.9 in developing countries, such as China, and 6.4 hectares in wealthy ones. The United States, a country at once rich and wasteful, has an ecological footprint of 9.6 hectares per inhabitant. If the entire world wanted to live as the United States now does, it would require the equivalent of five times the existing surface of the Earth, or five additional planets of comparable size.
This is not going to be possible.
*
Michael runs a small firm with 40 employees.
He makes high-quality machinery. Although the competition is fierce (especially from those cheap Chinese machines) and he must pay employer contributions and increasingly scandalous taxes, he is hanging in there. But this week, there is a problem: almost all of his suppliers are out of stock. No more electronic components or parts for some things, no more lubrication or metal for others. What is going on? He is trying to find replacement sources, but the cost is prohibitive—five times the normal prices! His customers call up, panicky. If he doesn’t find a solution soon, he will have to take radical measures and let some of his employees go. At this point, he is not paying himself a salary every month. He can’t risk losing his company because of a passing crisis. It is just a passing crisis . . . isn’t it?
Ecological Collapse
<
chief seattle
[attributed]
//1754-1866//
<
alain de benoist
/2007/
<
david strat
han
writer
/2007/
There was a time when every peasant was an expert in sustainable ecology. Public authorities were as well: Louis XIV’s minister of finances, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, regulated the lumber industry to ensure forests would grow back; he ordered the planting of oaks that would furnish masts for ships 300 years in the future. Ancient and traditional societies understood that no social life was possible without taking into account the natural milieu in which it takes place. For my grandmother’s generation, and those which came before, waste was the sin par excellence, since it meant gambling with our stock of the means of survival. Even among the old bourgeoisie, frugality was still among the cardinal virtues, since it was supposed to allow the accumulation of capital.
A profound change in the meaning of waste occurred in the era of fossil fuels. For two centuries, roughly, our civilization has not ceased to act as though natural reserves could be multiplied to infinity, including the capacity of nature and the ecosystem to absorb all sorts of rubbish.
We must consume! It has become a kind of duty. We consume and throw away. Products quickly become obsolescent, out of fashion, broken, intended to be replaced rather then repaired. Into the trash with them! Packaging everywhere and for everything: into the trash! In Europe, the amount of trash produced by each person on average in 2009 amounted to 1150 pounds. In the U.S., the amount is double. Municipalities dealing with waste management expect to have to double their capacity between now and 2020. In Naples, Italy, in 2008, we got a spectacular lesson in what happens when trash is not collected: the city was literally submerged within a few weeks! This ought to be compared to the USSR, where there was no need to organize trash collection: the lack of consumer goods saw to that. Practically nothing got thrown out, because the least bit of trash was useful and got reused.
Survive- The Economic Collapse Page 5
