Peak Oil (was "petroleum geologist explains US war policy")

[free spirit]

I hope you're not referring to any of the posters when you mention survivalist/primitivist/Malthusian fantasists. Besides I'm pretty sure the permaculture crowd would take umbrage at being called fantasists.

tbf, some in the permaculture movement have a hell of a lot to offer in terms of the skills and knowledge required for a move to a less oil dependent but still highly productive form of agriculture.

others are complete fantasists, and many are somewhere between the 2, but I'd generally give them a pass on it because at least they're usually actually doing something about the issue even if it's only partially removing themselves from the massively wasteful industrialised food supply chain. At the end of the day they're keeping alive skills, knowledge and often seed varieties that we need to provide an alternative agricultural vision once the oil boom does start hitting the buffers and that model ceases to be a particularly viable one.

It's been a long time since I looked in to this, but IIRC there were projects to spread permaculture type farming practices in Africa that were showing productivity gains, soil loss improvements, and disease and pest resistance that outstripped similar gains made from conversion to industrial agriculture methods, and didn't involve people hocking themselves to big pharma in the process.

It's the knowledge of examples like this, along with the knowledge of the percentage of food grown that's currently wasted in the global food supply chain that give me the confidence to declare this peak oil = inevitable mass population die off to be complete rubbish. It is one scenario at the very extreme end of the scale of probability on what could happen, the more likely alternative IMO would be that one way or another the world would adapt it's food supply systems to reduce it's dependence on oil.

 

[elbows]

I hope you're not referring to any of the posters when you mention survivalist/primitivist/Malthusian fantasists. Besides I'm pretty sure the permaculture crowd would take umbrage at being called fantasists.

I don't see why we should pussyfoot around this subject. I certainly haven't in the past. Im not optimistic in the way that free spirit is, I expect big woe, but that still leaves plenty of room to question the survivalist/primitivist angle on this.

My chief complaint stems from the way they try to leap the gap between the world we have today, and a far more basic lifestyle of the future. They tend to talk about this stuff as if some huge vacuum will appear when the old systems collapse, a vacuum largely free of other actors, leaving them to get on with trying to survive without intervention or direction by powerful entities. I can't imagine it happening that way, because the masses are not simply going to vanish in a way that makes primitive numbers add up, the state is not just going to lie down and give up, coercion and violence will not simply dematerialise in the face of 'the good life'. And then there is the global aspect of this stuff, which is likely to see ugly competition that distracts from the real goal, and may contribute significantly to the way the crisis is framed and the manner in which some people may expire.

Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of sanity from this quarter, plenty of practical skills that could form some part of the future. Its just when they try to paint the full picture, some serious omissions send them off down a somewhat fictitious path. Combine this with the fact that some people are actually looking forward to the collapse (because they hate the status quo so bad), and Im afraid there is a need to question some of this stuff and not simply celebrate the warriors of sustainability or the malthusians. You can't focus on food & shelter security without considering physical security (e.g. security from other humans nicking your beetroot) and all the other forces that will be at work.

 

[TruXta]

Elbows, you're talking about yer Zerzians and such, no one posting on here is taking such nonsense seriously, so please refrain from erecting that particular straw man.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Elbows, you're talking about yer Zerzians and such, no one posting on here is taking such nonsense seriously, so please refrain from erecting that particular straw man.

Really? I see posters here who clearly think that there will need to be a significant reduction in population over the coming decades.

 

[elbows]

I wouldn't go as far as to call it a straw man. Granted when I talk of this stuff I am usually referring to some people elsewhere on the internet, I don't think I've seen anyone here in recent years who subscribes to a pure and simple primitivist agenda. But people do sometimes link to their stuff in a non-derogatory way, and we do have at least one malthusian, and several who are keen to post anything that shows dramatic doom of either the energy or economic sort.

I will continue to wade clumsily into this territory, at least in part because without exploring these other fracture points we tend to get into a very straightforward disagreement between those who think we are in huge trouble with this stuff, and those who are more optimistic about our prospects of transitioning to something else. As someone who fears the worst when it comes to supply, I choose to look at who else is broadly on 'my side' of this and question them more than I do the opposition.

I don't think it really matters too much since when we reach critical moments in the story of oil production, the effects will be so far reaching as to encompass much broader political issues. All the people who don't presently participate in debates labelled peak oil will come into play, and will make any squabbles I can pick at this point seem like a minor sideshow between small minorities.

 

[Crispy]

Really? I see posters here who clearly think that there will need to be a significant reduction in population over the coming decades.

"need to be" or "expect there to be" ?

 

[ymu]

I wasn't aiming the phrase at any posters in particular, just at the general green-lifestylist eco-fantasists and their well-armed fellow travellers.

This article doesn't address this exact issue, but I'm on about the same sort of sloppy thinking and dodgy factoids that Monbiot fesses up to here.

This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong. More to the point, it has opened my eyes to some fascinating complexities in what seemed to be a black and white case.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

"need to be" or "expect there to be" ?

"only see positive possibilities after"

And elbows is quite right that such a calamity would leave no room at all for positive possibilities after it. A post-population collapse world would be one in which the strong dominate the weak (the weakest having died) - not a place to build a new society, just a place to try to grimly hold on for most people. It's as wrong-headed an idea as it can be - as a general rule of thumb, 'things need to get worse before they get better' is never right: the further you get from where you want to be, the harder it becomes to get there.

 

[Crispy]

"only see positive possibilities after"

And elbows is quite right that such a calamity would leave no room at all for positive possibilities after it. A post-population collapse world would be one in which the strong dominate the weak (the weakest having died) - not a place to build a new society, just a place to try to grimly hold on for most people. It's as wrong-headed an idea as it can be - as a general rule of thumb, 'things need to get worse before they get better' is never right: the further you get from where you want to be, the harder it becomes to get there.

Agree with that. Living in the world of Mad Max is not cool, it's brutal and hard and short.

 

[free spirit]

I wasn't aiming the phrase at any posters in particular, just at the general green-lifestylist eco-fantasists and their well-armed fellow travellers.

This article doesn't address this exact issue, but I'm on about the same sort of sloppy thinking and dodgy factoids that Monbiot fesses up to here.

fuck me, a monbiot article where he's not talking utter crap. I thought he'd forgotten how to write them.

The article pretty much sums up my long held opinion on the subject, it's just a shame he didn't have enough understanding of the issue to see the truth of the matter for himself 8 years earlier instead of contributing significantly to spreading the rubbish written in his first article.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Free Spirit - I think you tend to be somewhat optimistic in your beief in the capability of alternative to fill the energy gap. However I think we mainly diverge in your belief that because a a soicety based on sustainable lower energy use and lower consumption is possible that it will happen - becasue it is self evidently the sensible thing to do.
I think that the energy crunch will inevtiably casue economic contraction (indeed I fairly sure this is what is happening now) and this will lead to 30s style slump and a marked increase in levels of poverty accross the globe - also leading to more social conflict, war and famine. Basically the transition to a post crude oil world is going to be uncomfortable and pretty fucking nasty in places.
I dont think there is any point musing on the more catostrophic end of peak oil predictions - as pointed out - arguing that we are all doomed only helps the malthusian misanthropes.
However the reality of peak oil and its effect should be a spur to fight and organsie for the only viable response - a world where resources and power are shared for the common good and where we learn to live well and sustainably. Because the people who now control the resources and have the power will fight for a world where they carry on as before and the rest of us get fucked.

 

[Dr Jon]

clarified for you...

*snip*

Jevons might not be exactly applicable, in consideration of green taxes, energy policy, etc., but savings made will likely be dwarfed by increased demand.

I'm less worried by the threat of predation than that even back in 2007, each person on Earth required a third more land to supply their needs than the planet was capable of providing. With world population predicted to hit 9.1 billion by 2050, it is unlikely that sufficient water will be available, let alone food and energy.

 

[Crispy]

As a general rule of thumb, 'things need to get worse before they get better' is never right: the further you get from where you want to be, the harder it becomes to get there.

However, crises are times when change comes easier. In times of plenty, nobody wants to rock the boat.

 

[TruXta]

However, crises are times when change comes easier. In times of plenty, nobody wants to rock the boat.

Just a shame it's so often for the worse.

 

[ayatollah]

Jevons might not be exactly applicable, in consideration of green taxes, energy policy, etc., but savings made will likely be dwarfed by increased demand.

I'm less worried by the threat of predation than that even back in 2007, each person on Earth required a third more land to supply their needs than the planet was capable of providing. With world population predicted to hit 9.1 billion by 2050, it is unlikely that sufficient water will be available, let alone food and energy.

Ermm, I don't really get this one . If "IN 2007, each person required a third more land to supply their needs than the planet was capable of supporting" , I would have thought BILLIONS should have been dead of starvation by now ? Rather than the hundreds of thousands who Do die from hunger each year, and millions who do die of poor quality water supply and disease. But in these cases , it is actually unequal land ownership, generally grossly unequal wealth distribution, war-caused famines, land taken from peasant farmers to grow biofuel , basic food prices massively inflated by speculation, which explain the current starvation - in a world where the WEST at least is still stuffing its collective face on food and every other resource. I simply don't understand how such a simplistic statement about this supposed typical "each person" could either be calculated, or be thought to be credible , when ALL consumption worldwide is so incredibly unequally spread. Increasingly citizens of the West are dying of obesity, carrying around the weight of two starving people in their body fat, so just spreading resources around a tad and do a bit to legislate gas guzzling cars out of existence, is going to make a lot of difference, never mind MUCH more radical political measures. Malthusian pessimism is certainly alive and well , like a putrid rash, right across this Message Board.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

However, crises are times when change comes easier. In times of plenty, nobody wants to rock the boat.

Yep, true. But crisis for whom? For instance, the credit crunch was an opportunity for change - an opportunity that we've missed so far . But it was a crisis of capital - not, initially at least, of people. That the financial systems of capitalism should start seizing up is a good thing from my point of view, something that could potentially take us in the direction I would like to go in. When the crisis isn't seized upon and instead it is used simply to accelerate the process of transferring wealth from poor to rich, which is what is happening right now, then it becomes a bad thing, something that makes getting in the right direction harder.

 

[Dr Jon]

... Malthusian pessimism is certainly alive and well , like a putrid rash, right across this Message Board.

Poor Thomas.

Far from the flintheart of caricature, he loathed slavery, opposed class favoritism in law and justice, condemned unequal property ownership, and advocated universal education..
.. In fact, Malthus wanted social improvement, and intended his theory to correct the utopianism of William Godwin, the Marquis de Condorcet, and others, who, carried away by the French Revolution, thought that human perfection was imminent.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think this quote might explain why his name is bandied around:

The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world

The key word here is 'inevitable'. Now his idea that population can run away ahead of resources isn't quite right - in modern times at least, the two increase together: more mouths to feed, but more hands to work, too. Also, his notions of 'extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague' apply to populations of whatever size. Indeed, smaller populations are more prone to extermination by epidemics than larger ones.

I read this as an examination of the past, taking the lesson of history to be that disaster is inevitable. I actually read this and other passages from Malthus's essay as having been written in the shadow of the great plagues of centuries past - terrifying indeed: in many parts of Europe a third or even half of the population was wiped out in a matter of years in some waves of plague. It is sobering to imagine being a survivor of the plague - half the people you ever knew lying dead.

But Malthus was proved wrong. Hard for him to imagine how wrong. Advances in medicine, sanitation, nutrition plus, of course, oil! (but that is but one part of the equation) make his assumptions all wrong. And today, it seems to me, we have far more and better ideas about how to tackle the challenge. (I refuse to call the large population a problem - that strikes me as fundamentally self-hating or irredeemably selfish - you're the problem whose existence is preventing me from existing as I would like. I know this might sound trite, but nobody has the right to be alive any more than anybody else - the only appropriate reaction to hearing of the birth of a child is 'welcome to the world, little one', surely.)

As a matter of logical fallacy, the past doesn't teach us at all that future catastrophe is inevitable. That we have arrived where we are is as a result of our past - including its catastrophes. We cannot conclude anything from that, except that 'this is how we got here'. History does not tell us what catastrophes lie ahead.

 

[TruXta]

Are you saying population control is totally off the cards policy-wise? And probability theory would like to disagree with your last paragraph. Most disasters are eminently foreseeable.

 

[Dr Jon]

... I refuse to call the large population a problem - that strikes me as fundamentally self-hating or irredeemably selfish - you're the problem whose existence is preventing me from existing as I would like. I know this might sound trite, but nobody has the right to be alive any more than anybody else..

This is exactly why our large (and growing) population is a fucking massive problem. Nobody wants to talk about it for fear of being politically incorrect, or labelled as some kind of [insert name of social group] supremacist.

Malthus was only "proved" wrong because, as you say, he had no idea how carrying capacity would be increased by advances in public health, agriculture and particularly the use of fossil fuels. Malthus' principles are still valid, and More Relevant Than Ever.

Also see: Reinventing Malthus for the 21st Century.

 

[TruXta]

This is exactly why the large (and growing) population is a fucking massive problem. Nobody wants to talk about it for fear of being politically incorrect, or labelled as some kind of [insert name of social group] supremacist.

Malthus was only "proved" wrong because, as you say, he had no idea how carrying capacity would be increased by advances in public health, agriculture and particularly the use of fossil fuels. Malthus' principles are still valid, and More Relevant Than Ever.

Also see: Reinventing Malthus for the 21st Century.

Of all the sources you could pick... the latter is a far right anti-immigration group, the former is a misanthropic neo-positivist weirdo of an environmental sociologist.

 

[Dr Jon]

Of all the sources you could pick... the latter is a far right anti-immigration group, the former is a misanthropic neo-positivist weirdo of an environmental sociologist.

Thanks for your opinion.

This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.

A real "fun way" to combat unwelcome conclusions is to invoke an argumentum ad hominem. Marx referred to Malthus as "superficial," "a professional plagiarist," "the agent of the landed aristocracy," "a paid advocate", and "the principal enemy of the people." I think that a single overarching view accounts for these and many other invectives put forward by Marxists and liberals during the past century and a half: this is the tightly held denial of limits in the supply of terrestrial resources

link

 

[TruXta]

I suppose you disagree that FAIR has ties with plenty far-right morons like the Pioneer Fund of racist fame? Or that Catton, while fairly highly cited in his field, had a major and irrational bias against one of the fundamental human ecological tendencies - that of forming big groups that stay physically relatively close. Usually referred to as being social.

Or is this some poor sort of sarcastic joke?

ETA I didn't see that it was Lester Brown that gave these remarks but the point remains that the population growth field has an unfortunate right-wing influence. Brown should've known better than to associate himself with dickheads.

 

[TruXta]

Also all Brown's remarks amount to is "we're gonna run out of food if keep breeding like this". After that there was nothing. These are the problems - Malthus blah blah - yield increased then plateaued while population doubles in x years - world is becoming more affluent and want better food - big problem.

 

[Dr Jon]

I don't have time to dick about picking out stuff hosted on politically correct servers.


Try reading the articles...

I don't want to spoil this thread with pointless bitching about Malthus, or Jevons, so I suggest that we keep to Peak Oil from now on.

 

[TruXta]

I don't have time to dick about picking out stuff hosted on politically correct servers.


Try reading the articles...

I just read the Brown one. I read the Catton one years ago and can't be bothered again.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Thanks for your opinion.

This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about.
link

Thing is though, to represent the marxist critique of mathusian ideas as mere invective is highly misleading.

I'm rushing now, but will summarise what I think.

There is a limiting case in which what one might want to call "malthisian" constraints apply. Basically where you run out of resources: land, nutrients, water and energy to the point where can't feed the majority of the world's population even if you totally solve problems of social inequality and use the best available agriculture techniques.

We're getting close enough for some people to notice it, but we're still far from actually being there. Take almost every famine you care to name and you'll find people eating well within a mile or two of the people who are starving, because they have money to buy food at famine prices and the starving folks don't.

Meanwhile the marxist account of overpopulation as a politically loaded term, the reserve army of labour and all that stuff, plus more recent accounts (e.g. Bookchin's) which take on board ideas like carrying capacity but do so in the context of how capitalism works, are actually a much more useful and relevant understanding of everything that happens before you reach the limiting case where you just can't grow enough food to give the global population even a minimal diet however clever you get about resources and however fairly you share them.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Talking about over-population lands the problem squarely with those parts of the world with the fastest growing population - which are also tend to be the poorest.

However overpopulation would be a fuck load less of a problem is access to and control of resources was fairly shared.

Becasue the problem is over consumption. If we talk about the need to reduce per-capita consumption of resources then the onus is not on the large familiy scratching a living in shanty town slum to go off and starve themselves - but on the wealthy westener who has only two kids but has three cars, two large homes, numerous gizmos and who goes on umpteen forieign trips every year (possibly to play golf on a golf course irrigated with water that is being diverted from the slums city 20 milies up the road).

Talking about population not consumption is purely political - and a very nasty genocidal form of politics at that.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Are you saying population control is totally off the cards policy-wise? And probability theory would like to disagree with your last paragraph. Most disasters are eminently foreseeable.

First sentence, no, but I am saying that the population that is already here is not a 'problem' and viewing it as a problem is off the cards. Plus, as kakatim says, it is the places whose populations have already grown quickly that are the problem when it comes to consumption.

Your second sentence isn't correct in this instance. Unless you can identify a pattern, you cannot predict a catastrophe. So - earthquakes, volcanic eruptions - the probabilities of these can be predicted. But human-caused fuck-up, no. There is no useful pattern at all that can be isolated from the past. Every great civilisation from the past has come to an end. Sure. Given that we now have what is essentially one world civilisation, that necessarily has to be the case. And there really is no discernible pattern. Plus, the pace of change through technology now makes past case studies rather irrelevant. This is not like predicting earthquakes, whose causes can be assumed to remain relatively constant, even if they remain unknown - this is human behaviour, and the failure of so many confidently held economic theories in this regard should show us that we should be extremely cautious about claiming any predictive confidence about that.

That's the whole point about Malthus - he thought disaster was foreseeable, and now here we are nearly 250 years later and there have been plenty of disasters and famines, but not in the way Malthus imagined. In fact, I think it is reasonable to pronounce judgement on Malthus's words now and say that he was wrong.

 

[TruXta]

My point wasn't that earthquakes and floods are predictable, they are of course to an extent, but that the coping capacity of societies are equally foreseeable. Risk equals hazard times vulnerability. Both hazard and vulnerability can be estimated, and are. Of course for longer term risks it becomes more difficult to estimate societal vulnerability, but given certain reasonable assumptions of rates of change in tech and mitigative efforts we can still make educated guesses.

Just for clarity - hazard here refers to a trigger event, whether seismic, atmospheric or technological whereas vulnerability refers to our capacity to cope with trigger events of different sorts.