For anyone who has been following my writing over the past couple of years, you will know that I have been critical of non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies (aka ‘renewables’) and the ‘marketing’ that surrounds them[1]. My critiques are usually focused upon the resource limits and ecological systems-destruction blindness that appear prevalent in many (most? all?) of the mainstream narratives, and the subsequent cheerleading surrounding such products and their ability to transition us smoothly away from hydrocarbon-based fuels/products[2].
On top of this is the argument that as with much (most? all?) in our modern world, the pursuit of controlling/expanding revenue streams to sustain the power/wealth accumulation (and thus privilege/influence) of an ‘elite’ few of our species plays a key role in the narrative management surrounding these industrial products and their uptake; particularly the ‘Electrify Everything’ and ‘Net Zero’ stories[3]. It’s no secret that this is increasingly being accomplished through legislation under the guise of carbon emissions reduction to address concerns with climate change.
As a consequence of my highlighting the biogeochemical restrictions, negative ecological consequences, and the motivation behind the marketing and uptake of these industrial products, I have been the recipient of accusations regarding my motivation for pointing these aspects out. These have ranged from being labelled, in no particular order: a fossil fuel shill, conspiracy theorist, Big Oil accomplice, technophobia cult member, right wing (Republican) supporter, climate change denier, Malthusian doomer, left wing (Democrat) extremist, etc.[4].
And it’s not that I support the ongoing growth in complexities that hydrocarbons has brought. In fact, I have extensively highlighted that this resource has been one of the most significant catalysts to our ecological overshoot predicament and modern societal complexities[5]. Again and again I have pointed out that the rise in complexity of societies through time contributes to the recurring ‘collapse’ processes that pre/history has shown occur, and that hydrocarbons have contributed to this time the phenomena being important on a global scale.
I’ve also pointed out that I don’t criticise these non-renewable, renewable energy-products because I ‘hate’ them, and that I am not unfamiliar with them having constructed my own solar photovoltaic back-up system for my home[6]. I’ve simply come to the realisation and accepted that there are limits to their usefulness in supporting the extremely complex systems of our modern world, and that the industrial processes required to manufacture and dispose of/recycle them are costly in terms of ecological destruction and resource drawdown.
It seems to me that the failure to accept the limitations (and thus consequences) that these industrial technologies bring with them are for the most part ignored/denied or justified/rationalised away[7]. There is little if any recognition that not only is their pursuit adding to the destruction of our very important ecological systems, but that they are contributing to our resource drawdown rather than offsetting it, and making our ecological overshoot predicament worse.
Humanity is not ‘transitioning’ away from its unsustainable path but exacerbating it by both increasing the overshoot and decreasing the natural carrying capacity for our species through the pursuit of these complex, industrial products. And rather than acknowledge our mistaken choices, we are creating stories to double-down on them and attacking the messengers who point out our errant ways.
The vast majority of people are accepting of the dominant narratives because it helps to avoid the anxiety and stress of cognitive dissonance that arises otherwise[8]. What do you mean we can’t have our cake and eat it too? Hang on a minute, that’s not what we were promised…
In our mistaken beliefs that we stand above and beyond Nature, and that our tool (i.e., technology) innovativeness and use can address any issue/dilemma that arises, we continue our journey towards the inevitable consequences that any species experiencing significant overshoot must endure. In our uniquely human way, however, we are sharing stories to avoid this reality — because we can, and by doing so makes us feel better (or, at least, not as bad). We are avoiding pain to pursue pleasure. The most head-scratching to me are the ones that insist physical limits do not exist, and that infinite growth is indeed possible on a finite planet (with zero repercussions, of course).
In the end, we humans tend to believe what we want to believe regardless of evidence that challenges these beliefs. Rather than confront our misguided beliefs, we tend to justify/rationalise them. Our reactions to evidence that contradicts our views tend to be emotional in nature, lashing out at the naysayers and clinging more firmly to our beliefs because having our beliefs challenged is threatening to our personal identity and the social circle/echo chamber we live within[9].
And because we abhor uncertainty, we cling to the certainty espoused by our ‘leaders/authority figures’ even if it is wrong and leading to greater harm. It’s simply our way of avoiding anxiety-provoking thoughts and evidence for as long as we are able — forever if we can.
So, sure, call me a fossil fuel shill or engage in some other ad hominem attack if it makes you feel better when you don’t like what I’m saying about why non-renewable, renewable energy-products are no ‘solution’ to overshoot and that your promotion of them is actually making our predicament worse.
But make no mistake, the future ain’t what it used to be when we imagined it based upon a notion of limitless energy and other resources — not even close. We are, at our peril, ignoring the signals being sent by our planet and its other species in our ongoing narcissistic beliefs that Homo sapiens are in some way ‘special’ and above and beyond the reproach of Nature, the biogeophysical limits of existence upon a finite planet, and laws of the universe.
Payback for our behaviours is sure to be cruel and unforgiving. But then again, I’m just a Malthusian doomer and right-wing conspiracy theorist…or is that left-wing?
[1] See:
– A ‘Solution’ to Our Predicaments: More Mass-Produced, Industrial Technologies. BlogMedium
-To EV Or Not To EV? One Of Many Questions Regarding Our ‘Clean/Green’ Utopian Future, Part 1. BlogMedium – Electrify Everything: Neither ‘Green’ Nor ‘Sustainable’. BlogMediumSubstack – Electrify Everything: The Wrong ‘Solution’. BlogMediumSubstack
[2] See:
– The Pursuit of ‘Renewables’: Putting Us Further Into Ecological Overshoot. Medium – Roadblocks to Our ‘Renewable’ Energy Transition: Debt, Resource Constraints, and Diminishing Returns. Medium – Ignoring Ecological Systems Destruction. Medium – ‘Renewables’: Virtuous Circles, Resource Limits, and Ecological Systems. Medium
[3] See:
– Finite Energy, ‘Renewables’, and the Ruling Elite. BlogMediumSubstack – ‘Renewables’, Electrify Everything and Marketing Propaganda. BlogMediumSubstack – ‘Net Zero’ Policies: Propaganda To Support Continued Economic Growth. BlogMediumSubstack – The Ruling Class: Chasing Growth Regardless Of the Consequences. BlogMedium
[4] See:
– Thou Shall Not Disturb the ‘Renewables’ Force. Medium
– Criticising ‘Renewables’ is Not a Sin. BlogMediumSubstack – Sometimes People Don’t Want to Hear the Truth. BlogMediumSubstack – Differing Opinions On ‘Renewables’. Medium
[5] See:
– Finite Energy, Overconsumption, and Magical Thinking Through Denial. MediumSubstack – Fossil Fuels: Contributing to Complexity and Overshoot. BlogMediumSubstack – Ecological Overshoot, Hydrocarbon Energy, and Biophysical Reality. BlogMediumSubstack – Surplus Energy From Hydrocarbons: Another Predicament Catalyst. Medium
[6] See:
– Personal Experience With ‘Renewables’. Medium
[7] See:
– Infinite Growth, Finite Planet; What Could Possibly Go Wrong?BlogMediumSubstack – Growth Greenwashing: A Comforting Narrative. BlogMediumSubstack – ‘Renewables’ and the Overton Window That Ignores Biophysical Realities. BlogMediumSubstack – Climate Emergency Action Plan: Electrification and Magical Thinking. BlogMediumSubstack
[8] See:
– Grieving: There Are No ‘Solutions’ to Overshoot. BlogMediumSubstack – ‘Clean’ Energy and the Stages of Grieving. BlogMediumSubstack – Magical Thinking to Help Avoid Anxiety-Provoking Thoughts. BlogMedium – Magical Thinking About the Energy Transition. Medium
We’re not doomed because of climate change, resource depletion, or biodiversity loss. We’re doomed because human nature made those things inevitable.
There are many reasons I became a doomer.
Climate change is accelerating and governments aren’t taking it seriously. The sixth mass extinction event is well underway and most people don’t care. Fossil fuels and other crucial resources are running out and most people don’t even know. Pollution in the form of microplastics and forever chemicals are rapidly accumulating in our bodies, lowering sperm counts and causing all sorts of health problems.
And all that is because of overshoot. We’ve already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet, so it’s only a matter of time before the global population comes crashing down. But overshoot isn’t the main reason I became a doomer. In fact, I became a doomer about a year before I knew what overshoot means.
The main reason I became a doomer is because I realized that the challenge we’re facing is so monumentally large and complicated that humans are incapable of overcoming it.
This idea upsets some people. They say things like, “What about World War II? Look at how the U.S. mobilized the entire nation to help defeat the Axis powers.”
Yea, after they were attacked and only because they had a clear enemy. This time, we can’t simply declare fossil fuels the enemy and stop using them overnight. Doing that would cause civilization to collapse, anyway.
Besides, fossil fuels aren’t the only problem. As I’ve explained before, we would still be headed for collapse even if there were no climate change or pollution because we’re completely dependent on finite resources (forests, aquifers, fossil fuels, rare-earth minerals, etc.) that will mostly be gone in a matter of decades.
Infinite growth. Finite planet. What could possibly go wrong? Part One
Today’s contemplation (a two-parter) was begun a few months ago but I’m just now getting around to completing and posting it. As often happens with me and my ADHD, I get thinking about/reflecting upon a topic or idea, record some thoughts while having my morning coffee and the ideas are flowing, and then move on to something else before finishing the task completely (this habit, unfortunately, also impacts my various house ‘projects’ and drives my wife crazy…but after 36 years together she’s aware I just need the ‘occasional’ reminder about the unfinished work — I had forgotten about this writing until coming across it as I was cleaning up some computer files due to ‘extra’ time on my hands given the loss of Internet with the several-day shut-down of one of Canada’s largest providers recently; a blessing, really, as it reduced my screen-time).
A question posed to me recently was: “What does the path forward look like when we say we have to live within our means on a finite planet?”
The answer to such a question is as varied as the people answering it[1]. I am hesitant to provide a definitive answer about what the transition to ‘sustainable’ circumstances might look like given the uncertainty that abounds. I am inclined to believe that any ‘guess’ about the future[2], regardless of the amount of data/evidence one has or the sophistication of the model or the computing power used, is probably about as accurate as reading tea leaves or a bird’s entrails. Not one of us has a clear picture as to what will unfold in the future, for as a few people have been credited with stating (including physicist Niels Bohr, writer Mark Twain, and baseballer Yogi Berra): “Prediction is hard, especially if it’s about the future.”
I’ve long held that complex systems can neither be controlled nor predicted with their non-linear feedback loops and emergent phenomena[3], so predicting complex systems with any degree of ‘certainty’ is a fools’ errand — especially once human actions/behaviours are involved. On top of this, no matter how sincere our attempts at objectivity in such prognostications, personal biases always impact our processing of information as does the paradigm[4] through which we interpret events and project into the future (and we tend to do so linearly since non-linear systems befuddle our primate brains); and, then, of course there are the Black Swans[5] that are persistently circling overhead — those unknown, unknowns that we can’t even contemplate because they’re outside of our personally-confining and -blinding worldview.
When we read about the future we are confronted with a potpourri of thoughts about how it might unfold — most of them, of course, presented with ‘certitude’. We tend to cling to some over others even if the one we tend to gravitate towards holds little in common with observed reality or experience. For as Dan Gardner argues in Future Babble[6], humans do not like uncertainty and despite so-called ‘experts’ being horrible at predicting the future, human psychology compels us to listen and take them seriously — even if we know the prognosticator to have been wrong on countless occasions (I still look at the long-range weather forecasts even though I know quite well that any outside of about 12–24 hours are bound to be incorrect, some drastically so — something that drives me ‘mad’ when my food gardens are in desperate need of rain and the weather forecasters are calling for rain right up until that actual day/hour it is supposed to rain and then change the prediction to no rain, and I am forced to spend a few hours watering my beds — a tendency that seems to be increasing in frequency the past couple of growing seasons; this year, April and May were great for precipitation in my area north of Toronto but as has been happening, it seems, June and so far in July has been way too dry and the 4000 litres of rainwater I have collected in my 20 rain barrels was getting precariously low up until a very recent overnight rain).
I like what Gardner states near the end of his book about discussing the future:
It is informed by the past, it is revealing about the present, and it surveys a wide array of futures. It is infused with metacognition…It offers hopeful visions of what could be; it warns against dangers that also could be. It explores our values by asking us what we want to happen and what we don’t. And it goes no further. It raises issues, questions, and choices, and it suggests possibilities and probabilities. But it does not peddle certainties, and it does not predict.[7]
Where are we on our path into the future given such uncertainty? Well, we have our choice of competing narratives to believe in.
There are some who argue that it matters little or not at all what we do with respect to the existential predicaments we face, for the future is one where we are all FUBAR. For example, 5–10 degrees of average global temperature increase is quite certainly baked into the cake and will in all likelihood lead to the extinction of most species on the planet, perhaps all with the end result being a ‘hothouse’ Earth with an environment similar to Venus. Responses to this eventuality then also range, mostly dependent on whether one holds that the impact will be sudden or drag itself out over millennia. Dystopia, even widespread extinction, is on the horizon and there is no avoiding it.
Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there are those who believe strongly that we can transition somewhat seamlessly to ‘alternative’ forms of energy (or just continue extracting fossil fuels whose ‘scarcity’ is a concerted psy-ops by the ‘powers-that-be’) to keep-on-keeping-on with our status quo complexities and energy-intensive living standards. For most ‘clean/green’ energy aficionados, nuclear fusion or some other as-yet-to-be-discovered technology will provide us with cheap, safe energy; and/or we can mine passing asteroids for any needed finite resources we’ve exhausted, including water. In fact, one day we are bound to leave this over-used rock and colonise other worlds. Perhaps a little bit of tweaking here or there might be needed but given human ingenuity and technological prowess we will solve any and everything thrown our way so there is no need to worry about any ecological system breakdown or resource scarcity ‘problems’ for very long at all. The future is one of unlimited possibilities and utopian dreams, especially if we also redistribute all the wealth tied up in the off-shore bank accounts of the world’s billionaires and slay that evil monster capitalism; then, without a doubt, all eight billion (or much more) of us can live happily-ever-after, holding hands, and singing Kumbayah around the ‘carbon-free’ campfire.
These are perhaps the two extremes of the gamut of possibilities for our future. Where each of us ends up on this continuum of beliefs depends on the worldview we hold and how we process information through that narrow keyhole we necessarily each peer through. And I would argue that what we believe also very much relies upon our personal biases and what we wish to happen, not necessarily upon any ‘factual’ evidence. We are constantly seeking out confirmatory evidence for our beliefs and ignoring or denying counterfactual data or rationalising it to fit into our preconceived notions. There exist very strong psychological mechanisms to ensure ‘facts’ seldom, if ever, alter firmly held beliefs.
So, before I lay out my personal thoughts on what our future may or may not look like (and I am in no way ‘certain’ about any of this, although I do lean towards the more ‘dystopian’ possibilities), let me provide some cognitive context for why I believe what I believe. The paradigm through which I view the world, as it were, and necessarily impacts my perception of this crazy and totally unpredictable world.
I find that pre/history demonstrates pretty clearly that every complex sociopolitical organisation (i.e., complex society) before us has eventually ‘declined’ to a point that it can no longer be considered a ‘society’[8]. The social fabric that held the population together became frayed and people opted out, leading to its eventual ‘collapse’.
In his book The Collapse of Complex Societies[9] archaeologist Joseph Tainter argues that a human society is a problem-solving organisation. This organisation requires energy inputs for its maintenance with increasing complexity necessitating increased energy inputs. These inputs eventually encounter the law of marginal utility or diminishing returns because the solutions we adopt in dealing with problems that arise tend to be the easiest-to-implement and cheapest-to-maintain, but eventually more difficult and costly approaches must be pursued as the ‘easy’ ones have been exhausted. People are attracted to participating in a sociopolitical organisation (i.e., society) so long as the benefits accrued are at least — but preferably better — than the costs incurred. Once the costs exceed the perceived benefits, people choose to withdraw their participation. When a tipping point of participants have opted out, the organisational structures that have held complexities in place ‘collapses’.
It’s obviously much more difficult to abandon the sociopolitical sphere and organisational structures one is born into today than it was in the past. There is not only limited to no space left to flee to as every portion of the planet has been claimed by some nation state or another, but the vast majority of people lack the skills/knowledge to survive without their society’s supports. Self-sufficiency has been ‘bred’ out of us in just a few generations as we have embraced a future based upon different imperatives but especially complex centralised-systems and technology.
This shift has been afforded us by our leveraging of a one-time, finite cache of fossil fuel energy; a cache that has encountered significant and world-altering diminishing returns.
On top of this leveraging of fossil fuel energy and the paradigm shift it has led to in how we perceive the world — and create organisational structures and knowledge within in — we have the very real prospect that we are in the midst of ecological overshoot because we have significantly surpassed the planet’s human carrying capacity[10].
In the past we could overcome carrying capacity limits by migrating to a region as yet unexploited or underexploited by others (wars and colonisation are pretty well always about resources/economics; see U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler’s essay War is a Racket[11] for more on this perspective). When we pushed up against or exceeded the biophysical limits imposed by our environment in the past, this ‘takeover method’ (taking over from other species and eventually other humans) allowed us to expand for many millennia. We spread into virtually every niche across the globe.
More recently, however, we have depended upon a different means of procuring our needed resources termed the ‘drawdown method’, where we have extracted finite resources to supplement our existence. We have pushed human carrying capacity well past its natural limit by relying upon various resources drawn from our environment. The past couple of centuries has seen this approach focused primarily upon limited resources that have been extracted far, far faster than their renewal rate. Such use could only be limited in scope and temporary in time.
As William Catton argues in Overshoot[12], any species that overshoots its carrying capacity experiences a ‘rebalancing’ of its population eventually. Where the takeover method is precluded, a loss of necessary resources (usually food) results in a massive die-off to bring population numbers down to a level where the environment can recover. Sometimes a species experiences physiological changes that reduces fertility. Either way, population is reduced dramatically from its peak and often to a level far below the natural upper limit of ‘sustainability’ because of the damage to the environment that overshoot has caused.
Given our reliance upon fossil fuels, their finite nature, and the diminishing returns we have encountered because of this — and the way in which their use and the industrial processes they have ‘powered’ have overwhelmed the various planetary sinks that normally help to filter and purify the waste products we produce — it is increasingly clear that we have overshot our carrying capacity and have but the negative consequence of that to experience (or as many argue, are already experiencing).
In Part Two of this ‘essay’ I will paint a somewhat blurry picture of our possible future…
[1] Here I am reminded of a statement by a visiting psychology professor at a lecture on human ‘intelligence’ I attended at Western University when I was an undergrad. During his introductory remarks, with a goal of defining what we would be discussing, he stated (and I am paraphrasing given it’s been about 40 years): “Ask a hundred psychologists the definition of intelligence and you are bound to get a hundred different answers, perhaps more.”
[3] I highly recommend some reading on complexity and complex systems. A good beginning text is Donella Meadows’s Thinking In Systems: A Primer. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008. (ISBN 978–1–60358–055–7).
[4] For an introduction to the concept of paradigms see Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1962. (ISBN 978–0–22645–811–3)
[5] See Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan: The Impact of the Improbable. Random House, 2010/2007. (ISBN 978–0–8129–7381–5)
[6] Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail–And Why We Believe Them Anyway. McClelland & Stewart, 2010. (ISBN 978–0–7710–3513–5)
[8] My graduate degree was concentrated in archaeology (Master of Arts, 1988, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario).
[9] The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University Press, 1988. (ISBN 978–0–521–38673–9)
[10] Note that my first university degree was primarily concentrated in biology/physiology (Bachelor of Arts, 1984, Western University, London, Ontario).
Can humanity eventually overcome its reliance on fossil fuel? The answer to that is certainly yes in the very long run, but an emphatic no in the next 25 years.
If the delusional but dead serious demands coming out of the international climate crisis community are to be believed, and as documented in the earlier two segments of this report, achieving universal energy security in the world will require wind energy capacity to increase by a factor of 60, while solar capacity increases by a factor of 100. The mix between wind and solar can vary, of course, but the required overall increase is indisputable. As noted in Part One of this report, that would be a very best-case scenario, where extraordinary improvements in energy efficiency meant that total energy production worldwide would only have to increase to 1,000 exajoules per year, from an estimated 600 exajoules in 2022.
Finally, and as explained in Part Two, this is preposterous. Wind and solar energy cannot possibly increase in global capacity by a multiple of 50-100 times. It is utterly infeasible. As noted, “The uptick in mining, the land consumed, the expansion of transmission lines, the necessity for a staggering quantity of electricity storage assets to balance these intermittent sources, the vulnerability of wind and solar farms to weather events including deep freezes, tornadoes, and hail, and the stupefying task of doing it all over again every 20-30 years as the wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and storage batteries reach the end of their useful lives—all of this suggests procuring 90+ percent of global energy from wind and solar energy is a fool’s errand.”
One may nonetheless argue that other forms of energy can supplement wind and solar in order to still fulfill the climate community’s goal to completely displace oil, natural gas, and coal. But what then, and in what proportions? Here are the alternatives:
We Are Not Prepared For Shutting Down the Fossil Fuel Industry
To be or not to be, that is the question…
Prince Hamlet’s well-known soliloquy in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is apropos to a question I have been pondering: should we shut down immediately the world’s fossil fuel industries, as a seemingly increasing number of individuals and groups are advocating, or not?
Why have I been thinking about this? Mostly because I would argue it is suicide for our global, industrialised society and its vast array of complexities that the overwhelming majority of humans have come to depend upon, especially if it is without well-considered alternatives to support the loss of such an immense energy source.
In fact, without the energy provided by fossil fuels there would be no ‘transition’ to a ‘cleaner’ world that these same cheerleaders of fossil fuel’s immediate death suggest is ‘just around the corner’ — certainly, not a smooth and non-chaotic one. Without fossil fuels our various complexities that sustain us would collapse in short order and a massive die-off would occur[1]. Of this I have little doubt[2].
As far as a post-carbon transition based upon well-considered alternatives, I’m not speaking of so-called ‘green/clean’ energy substitutes for our fossil fuel-powered world in order to continue keeping on keeping on with our high energy-reliant complexities in some idealistic seamless shift. There is far too much evidence that that narrative is a lie and is being pushed by those that stand to profit from it and by well-intentioned but misguided others who believe the propaganda that such a shift is feasible and must be pursued with all haste[3]. Alternative energy-harvesting and -producing technologies are so dependent upon the fossil fuel platform that they cannot be constructed or sustained without significant fossil fuel inputs — to say little of the continued and significant environmental/ecological destruction necessary in both the upstream and downstream processes needed in their construction, maintenance, and after-life disposal/reclamation, and the lack of actual physical resources to build out a replacement for fossil fuels.
I’m speaking of a concerted ‘degrowth’ agenda that may need to be extremely radical in its undertaking if we are to minimise the most negative impacts of our ecological overshoot and perhaps ensure more of us are to make it out the other side of the ecological bottleneck we have created for our species (and many others)[4]. I have my own ideas about what this should and should not look like.
The very first order of business needs to be a discontinuation of the pursuit of the infinite growth chalice. This includes population growth but especially refers to economic growth, particularly for the so-called ‘advanced’ economies that are responsible for the lion’s share of resource use and abuse[5]. Without this our fundamental predicament of ecological overshoot simply grows in severity, leading to a more monumental collapse.
Given that the ruling class in particular but certainly a sizable portion of the citizens of advanced economies benefit immensely from the status quo systems and their continuation, I’m doubtful in the extreme that they would willingly admit and contemplate such a shift. As I expounded upon in my last contemplation, our ‘leaders’ are not in this for the masses as they pretend to be; they are in this for power and/or wealth[6]. As such, we will continue to be exposed to narratives that growth is not only beneficial for everyone but necessary to counteract the obvious dilemmas we are experiencing (but are, in fact, directly caused by our growth). Don’t, whatever you do, believe your lying eyes as the reality of resource shortages bite; continue to believe in human ingenuity and our technological prowess. Ignore the machinations going on behind that curtain over there.
Frankly, there are some difficult if not impossible decisions to be made that will and do challenge virtually everything the vast majority of us hold as near and dear to our hearts and our perception of what it means to be human; especially for those that live in ‘advanced’ economies where the transition necessarily puts everything on the table for discussion as to whether it can or should be maintained. Everything.
Many if not most of the cherished ideals that have been developed during a period of monumental surplus energy due to fossil fuel’s energy density, transportability, relative ease of extraction, and quantities are likely to be lost as our energy contraction speeds up. It may be exceedingly difficult if not impossible to maintain our ‘humanity’ in the face of this. Black Swan events, which is what this is going to be for the vast majority of people, have by far the largest impact on societies when they occur[7].
One of my ‘hopes’ as it were as we stumble into an unknown and unknowable future is that the dangerous complexities we have created (e.g., nuclear power plants, biosafety labs, chemical production and storage facilities) are dismantled and their dangers safely ‘contained/neutralised’ before we lose the energy capacity and related resources necessary to do this. I see zero progress currently on this front; in fact, there are increased demands to do the exact opposite.
And then there’s the whole economic-energy nexus where our monetary/financial systems are predicated upon credit/debt growth that is for all intents and purposes a potential claim on future energy and related resource use and its exponential growth[8]. If that energy is not there (and it’s not in a finite world), the entire Ponzi-like structure of these human-contrived systems collapses completely; and some argue this has actually already started and has been ‘papered’ over by manipulations that include accounting shenanigans and narrative control.
It is the glaring impediments (and the growing denial of these[9]) to the dreams of a ‘sustainable’ and ‘green/clean’ transition that increasingly lead me to conclude that we are totally and completely fubar. There is no saving our complexities that support our current ways. Does this necessitate losing ‘hope’? Well, hope as I’ve come to realise is a wish for something to happen over which we really have zero agency.
So, what do you have agency over? I would argue primarily one’s own actions, particularly at the local, community level[10].
Relocalising as much as possible now is paramount but especially in terms of potable water procurement, food production, and regional shelter needs. To do this an awful lot of learning and work needs to be accomplished, quickly. There is no time to waste when exponential factors are at play and a Seneca cliff of energy contraction just ahead[11].
Starting your journey to self-sufficiency yesterday would have been prudent but starting today is better than tomorrow. Do what you can, even if it seems minimal. Plants a few pots of beans or tomatoes. Read a book on composting or seed saving. Find some like-minded neighbours and begin a community garden.
I’ve been busy prepping our raised beds for the seedlings we started indoors a few weeks ago. One of our greenhouses is almost cleaned up and ready to host a few dozen grow bags for our potatoes (discovered they do better in a greenhouse than the mostly shaded backyard areas I’ve tried in previous years). Some seeds of cool-weather plants are already in — lettuce, kale, sugar peas. Half of our compliment of twenty, 200 litre rain barrels are hooked up[12]. The two-compartment, concrete-block compost bin I built last summer has been extended higher and better pest screening added[13]. Almost all the fruit trees have been pruned. Mature compost has begun to be added to the various rows of raspberry and blackberry canes. Been sidelined today because of a mid-April snowstorm but another few dozen chores await, especially the replacement of rotting garden ties, that were used a decade ago to create foundations for our three greenhouses and form terraces on our side hill, with concrete blocks.
I close by repeating what I argued in my last post: “don’t depend upon your government/ruling class for salvation from the coming collapse of current complexities. Such ‘faith’ is significantly misplaced and will be deeply disappointing if not disastrous for those that maintain it. It is personal, familial, and community resilience and preparedness that will ease the decline; pursue this rather than believing you have significant agency via the ballot box and who might hold the reins of sociopolitical power.”
Please consider visiting my website and supporting my continuation of it via a purchase of my ‘fictional’ novel trilogy.
[1] There are some that argue this is exactly what we should do to ensure the survival of other species and not worry too much about humans. That is not me; at least not yet.
[2] Do not mistake this perspective of mine as one of supporting the expansion of fossil fuel extraction or our myriad of systemic complexities (especially technological) that have ‘evolved’ as a result of the growth brought about by this extraction. It is what it is and we need to consider it in its historical context and the dependencies it has led to. Given I believe that our fundamental predicament is ecological overshoot brought about by our increasing use of technologies, especially those that allowed us to extract ever-increasing amounts of fossil energy, I am all for curtailing such use; but it needs to be done thoughtfully and with targeted precision as our energy use contracts significantly.
[4] An ecological/population bottleneck is where a significant majority of a species dies off due to a significant shift in environmental conditions. See William Catton Jr.’s Bottleneck: Humanity Impending Impasse.
[5] My current region has been on the forefront of both these growth frontiers within Ontario, Canada and as a result I have witnessed seemingly unending expansion of suburban residential housing at the expense of very limited arable land. The local politicians parrot the narrative that such growth is only beneficial and any seemingly negative consequences (most of which are dismissed/ignored) can be fully and completely mitigated. Apparently the supply chains that supply most of our food needs are guaranteed…forever and always, Amen.
[6] This may not be so for very small, local governments (and I mean very small, where ‘leaders’ socialise regularly with their constituents as neighbour, friend, or acquaintance) but it is increasingly so as governments get larger and the ‘leadership’ is removed from ‘normal’ societal participation and interactions, tending to fraternise within very closed peer groups that have little in common with the ‘average’ citizen.
[8] And we’re not talking small numbers here. We are looking at hundreds of trillions of U.S. dollars in global debt. See: https://blogs.imf.org/2021/12/15/global-debt-reaches-a-record-226-trillion/. This doesn’t even account for unfunded liabilities (e.g., pension plans) that would put the ‘true’ level multiple times higher.
[10] To be honest, I am finding this difficult as well due to the widespread belief that growth only has beneficial aspects and a local town council that pushes this narrative at every opportunity.
[12] We live on a hill with a basement walkout so I’ve utilised the grade to connect 15 of our rain barrels with each higher one feeding into the next lower one, and because of our very cold winters I unhook them all and flip them over every fall to prevent damage to the hoses and taps
[13] Damned chipmunks chewed through the metal insect screening I had wrapped around the outside and began pulling un-composted matter into the yard — concrete blocks are on their sides so the openings allow air into the pile to help with the decomposition of organic matter.
The following ‘contemplation’ follows on the heels of a discussion I began with another within a Facebook group I am a member of. The post and dialogue can be found here. Suffice it to say, I was, as has happened numerous times, criticised for a comment that challenged an argument for accelerating our shift from fossil fuels to ‘renewable’ technologies.
What follows is my response to their response to my comment that suggested we need to simplify our existence and not accelerate our pursuit of environmentally-/ecologically-destructive and complex technologies.
Let me respond to each of your paragraphs:
First, indeed humans have harnessed wind and water power for millennia but using far, far less complex and resource-intensive technologies and for far, far fewer humans so their impact on the environment has been multiple times less, and during times when numerous biophysical limits had yet to be broached or nearing such overshoot. You then create a straw man implying I am arguing to return to the ‘Stone Age’, which I did not[1]. I left open the nature of any type of ‘simplicity’ that we should be aiming for but there’s a good argument to be made that ‘simple’ windmills/waterwheels for far fewer humans than currently exist may be the only ‘sustainable’ option[2]. What I did argue is that we need to NOT seek complex technologies that continue the destruction of the planet as our ‘modern’ harnessing of wind/solar/water do; facts you have completely glossed over[3].
Second, to point out the significant issues with non-renewable renewables (NRRs), does not necessarily feed into the ‘climate change denial, fossil fuel fundamentalism’ you accuse me of[4]. This is another straw man based upon a complete lack of contextual interpretation of my comment, and continued ignorance of the environmental destructiveness issue I raise; to say little of the reality that a massive push to accelerate the processes needed to produce NRRs would require massive fossil fuel inputs (and lots of other finite resources; thus the reason they are non-renewable). I am as concerned about continued fossil fuel extraction and its impacts as I am about all the other resource extractions we continue to rely upon (and expand as diminishing returns increase in severity).
Third, I would argue we are not where we are primarily because of fossil fuels (although they have likely sped up our predicament) but because of our propensity to expand and create complex societies based upon a number of finite resources. Humanity has shown its complex societies have been ‘unsustainable’ from the very first ones, long before fossil fuels ever came into the picture — every complex society that has ever existed has eventually ‘collapsed’ due to diminishing returns on investments in complexity[5], and accelerating an adoption of NRRs fits into this perfectly; they require significantly increased inputs compared to outputs (while continuing to destroy our biosphere[6]).
Keep in mind that resource ‘wars’ far, far predate our past few decades of fighting over oil and gas (resources that, unfortunately, underpin our current massive global complexities and footprint). Fossil fuels have simply expedited our propensity to overshoot our local carrying capacity and taken it global in nature. It is this, ecological overshoot, that is our predicament; the consequences of which we increasingly appear to be unable to avoid because we’re misdiagnosing/misinterpreting it (and have been for some decades). I would argue that there is nothing that is ‘sustainable’ for close to 8 billion humans. Nothing, probably not even ‘Stone Age’ hunting-and-gathering.
By all means, let’s transition away from fossil fuels but let’s not exacerbate our predicament by chasing the wrong path that is increasingly being shown to be just as detrimental to our species and all the other ones we depend upon. If we are not talking significant degrowth and simplification, then we are just creating comforting narratives to reduce our cognitive dissonance[7].
Having said all this, however, I am convinced we will attempt the push into NRRs that you advocate as we slide down the Seneca cliff of resource/energy availability. For, after all, the ruling class[8] that controls/influences the mainstream narratives (and what most people think/believe) stand to profit handsomely from the effort for they also control/influence all the industries and financial institutions that are required to pursue such a path. The result will surely be a trajectory further into ecological overshoot and thus a more massive ‘collapse’ (which always accompanies a species overshooting its environment). Nature always bats last and we continue to deny this and end up putting ourselves in greater danger. And, unfortunately, it would seem even a lot of the most well-intentioned individuals and groups are cheerleading us along the wrong path.
[1] While I did not suggest we would return to the ‘Stone Age’ that may indeed be the endgame of our unknowable future. In fact, some of humanity may be ‘lucky’ to make it through the bottleneck we have created and actually live in a ‘Stone Age’ type way. Time will tell.
[2] What might be ‘sustainable’ depends upon a host of factors, most importantly the number of humans and the nature of their living standards. More resource-dependent living standards necessarily means far fewer humans can be supported.
[3] The industrial processes necessary to create and produce the current technologies to harness wind, water, and solar energy are highly finite resource-dependent (including fossil fuels) and require significant mining, transportation, refining, and construction processes that result in concomitant waste production; both toxic and non-toxic in nature.
[4] It seems any criticism of ‘renewables’ is immediately construed by many as being in favour of continued fossil fuel extraction and use. This seems to me to be more of an instantaneous emotional reaction than a considered interpretation of the context in which such criticism is made. Such dichotomous thinking, while a common defense mechanism, prevents one from seeing the complexities and nuances of situations and distorts perceptions.
[5] See archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies.
[7] My discussion here doesn’t even begin to elaborate on all the additional ‘headwinds’ we are bumping up against besides resource limits and overloading of planetary sinks, a significant one being the massive ‘debt’ that currently exists. With debt being, more or less, a claim on future energy we are in substantially more dire straits than it appears on the surface due to significant debt obligations and the Ponzi-like nature of our financial/monetary/economic systems. Most, if not all, economic activity could find itself collapsing completely with the implosion of the debt bubbles that exist far before resource limits bring it all crashing down; to say little about the impact of geopolitical stressors.
[8] I use the term ‘ruling class’ as a catch-all for those individuals/families/groups that sit atop a complex society’s power and wealth structures; and whose prime motivation is the expansion/control of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems which they tend to control/own/influence.
In this age of climate crisis, the world is consuming more crude than ever. Peak oil demand? Not yet. Maybe one day, perhaps even soon, around 2030. For now, however, the global economy still runs on oil.
It will take a while before governments certify it, but every piece of data points in the very same direction: In the past few weeks, global oil demand has surpassed the monthly peak set in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic.Expressed in barrels a day, the fresh record high in global oil consumption totals about 102.5 million, likely hit in the last few weeks in July and above the 102.3 million of August 2019. Picture this: We use enough crude to fill about 6,500 Olympic-size swimming pools every day. More than a third of those swimming pools would be needed to quench the thirst of two countries: the US and China.
It’s not unexpected. The International Energy Agency, which compiles benchmark supply and demand statistics, has anticipated it for months. It was just a question of timing, since oil demand surges during the northern hemisphere summer, when millions of European and American families guzzle gasoline and jet fuel during their holidays. The wholesale cost of refined products, such as gasoline, is surging too.
Granted, the new demand milestone is just one flimsy data point. Global oil consumption statistics are routinely revised, and a final figure probably won’t be set in stone until next year, or even 2025. The margin of error is relatively wide, too, probably at least 1 million barrels a day. But experience indicates that demand is typically revised higher, rather than lower.
Two days ago, JPMorgan’s head of energy strategy Christyan Malek warned that amid the recent plunge in oil prices, driven as much by shorting CTAs (who today are in full-blown short squeeze panic mode) as the BIden admin, the oil market was underestimating the chances of deeper supply cuts during this month’s Nov 26 OPEC+ meeting.
“The market’s probably assuming very little chance of that happening, I’d say it’s much higher than that – not as a base case but as a scenario” Malek told Bloomberg in an interview, adding that deeper curbs would be “in order to get ahead of potential weakness in the first half of next year.”
“We may need to see” a cut “given where the balances are, particularly given the demand trending.” And while “there’s a view that Saudi is tapped out”, Malek said that he doesn’t believe that: “I think there’s more flex if they wish to cut. We could see them do sizable cuts from here; having said that, I think it’s more likely they’ll want to socialize them among their OPEC peers – a collective cut rather than one on their own.”
And so, from JPM’s strategist to OPEC+’s ears because moments ago the FT reported that what until recently was unthinkable, is suddenly all too possible and largely thanks to the (mostly) Arabic resentment at what Israel is doing in Palestine: according to the FT, not only is Saudi Arabia prepared to prolong oil production cuts well into next year but Opec+ is weighing further reductions in response to falling prices and rising anger over the Israel-Hamas war.
Ecological Overshoot, Hydrocarbon Energy, and Biophysical Reality
Discussing ‘renewable’ energy and its shortcomings with those who hold on to the belief that they offer us a ‘solution’ to the predicaments humanity faces is always ‘challenging’. Today’s contemplation is based on a recent dialogue I have had with a few people who seek to hold on to the belief that we can completely abandon fossil fuels and simply shift support for society’s complexities over to ‘renewables, and my response to someone who complimented my viewpoint (an unusual occurrence on the pages of the online media site (The Tyee) I frequent, whose writers/editors/commenters mostly support ‘renewables’ and the promises the proponents of them make). The story is not so straightforward and most don’t want to hear that. You can check out the conversation here.
Thank you. The root cause of our problem appears to be ecological overshoot brought on, primarily, by our exploitation of a one-time energy cache (fossil fuels) that has helped to ‘power’ amazing technological tools and processes that, in turn, have allowed us to exploit the planet and its resources substantially. This has led to a number of positive feedback loops, particularly exponential increases in population, waste (including greenhouse gases), and the speed at which we use these finite resources.
The crowd that insists ‘renewable’ energy (and it’s not truly ‘renewable’ given its dependency on finite resources, and certainly not ‘green/clean’ based on the processes necessary to produce them) can ‘sustain’ our energy-intensive complexities tend to be willfully ignorant of their negative consequences and deficiencies. In fact, my guess is that many have little experience with or knowledge of them (see Alice Friedemann’s work at Energy Skeptic and especially her most recent Springer Energy Series publication, Life After Fossil Fuels) and are grasping for solutions to our predicaments.
The cost, components, capacity, and energy-return-on-energy-invested for ‘renewables’ is nowhere near what most imagine; and I’m thinking most hold on to the belief that governments will ‘pay’ for the massive systems that would be needed to support our complex societies (and there simply aren’t enough finite resources on this planet to do this; to say little about the massive debts already existing within our Ponzi-like financial/economic/monetary systems that themselves are on the verge of collapse and the struggles many people have in just affording day-to-day living expenses). I personally have installed a photovoltaic system as an emergency backup system for our home. I have spent well in excess of $10,000 putting up about 2.2 KwH of panels, connecting charge controllers, deep cycle batteries, and inverters. I am under no delusion that such a system can sustain our household, particularly in our Canadian winters. The power is intermittent. The batteries drain relatively quickly. And charging can take days/weeks when its cloudy and cold, and/or snow builds up on them.
The religious-like adherence to the belief that ‘renewables’ are part-and-parcel of a ‘solution’ to the negative consequences of fossil fuels leads many to ‘attack’ anyone who questions their ‘faith’ (see Mike Stasse’s Damn the Matrix). I have been accused numerous times of being a shill for the fossil fuel industry and even threatened because of this allegation; one person recently wished me the worst possible end I can imagine and then multiply it by 1000 because I questioned the entire ‘renewable’ mantra and didn’t by into his ‘solution’ for addressing the climate crisis.
I usually attribute this to the first few stages — denial, anger, bargaining — of Kubler-Ross’s model of grief, which people who come to realise our predicaments tend to travel through. It is also a result of believing that what we face is a problem that can be solved when in actuality it appears to be a predicament that we are going to have to face and attempt to ‘weather’ (see Erik Michaels’ Problems, Predicaments, and Technology). In fact, I would argue attempts to replace fossil fuel inputs with alternatives is a very misguided and potentially catastrophic path to take. The fossil fuel platform is significantly required for almost all the processes necessary to shift to alternatives. From steel and concrete manufacturing to the heavy machinery necessary in mining and transportation, large fossil fuel inputs are required.
Then there’s the fossil fuel inputs into modern industrial agriculture: the pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, heavy machinery, irrigation, and transportation that sustain food production in sufficient quantities and keep the just-in-time, long distance, supply chains functioning — to say little about the finiteness of the chemicals required for fertilizers or the drawing down of water aquifers. Food shortages would be guaranteed to be massive should fossil fuel inputs suddenly disappear without local, regenerative permaculture being ready to replace it; something we are woefully blind to. ‘Electrifying’ everything does little to address many of the negative consequences of our overshoot.
There are so many negative consequences to our overshoot that we are ignoring — in our zeal to sustain our complexities via ‘renewables’ — that would continue or expand by chasing such ‘solutions’ as widespread adoption of electric vehicles and solar/wind energy. In our rush to justify all the modern ‘conveniences’/‘energy slaves’ we have (especially in so-called ‘advanced’ economies) we are taking the world even further into overshoot which will lead to an even more catastrophic ‘collapse’ when it finally occurs.
We can accept that ‘collapse’ is imminent (and pre/history shows this occurs for every complex society that we have experimented with for the past 10,000+ years — see archaeologist Joseph Tainters’ text The Collapse of Complex Societies) and attempt to prepare for it, or continue the wishful thinking path that ‘this time is different’ and chase actions that will make the situation even more dire. I would prefer the former but my guess is we will attempt the latter for two main reasons.
First, we have been propagandised by what should be called ‘snake oil salesmen’ and their marketers who have taken advantage of our energy crisis. They have created a massive marketing campaign to sell their products and done so on our emotions, particularly fear and the need to have some ‘certainty’ about the future (refer to Dan Gardner’s Future Babble). The marketers have set fossil fuels up as the ‘problem’ and offered a ‘solution’ that just happens to enrich them. As with all such marketing, the negative consequences of their products have been left out of the narrative.
Second, having bought into the sales pitch, most people have created a set of beliefs that serve to help justify their living arrangements and avoid the difficulties that very likely lay ahead. Core beliefs are difficult to challenge. Questioning them creates cognitive dissonance in the adherent which can only be dissipated by clinging more strongly to the belief (usually by ignoring or attacking those challenging them) or reflecting on the beliefs and shifting them towards a more neutral or different stance. Most people tend to protect their core belief systems, regardless of the evidence/facts/data that would suggest they are misguided/misinformed; thus the ire/anger by some when the idea of ‘renewables’ being able to replace fossil fuels is confronted.
For the most part, the future is unwritten. We can accept the challenges of a world without all the energy slaves we have created with our ingenuity and tool-making acumen, and prepare for life with less, far less. Or, we can continue down the ‘business-as-usual’ path and attempt to sustain the unsustainable (see Meadows et al.’s Limits to Growth and its various updates), and that will likely result in far more chaos and difficulty as the bottleneck we have created closes around us (see William Catton Jr.’s book, Overshoot).
I’m increasingly chagrined to see us continue to chase the infinite growth chalice with a belief that this will all work out just fine, thank you, as long as we abandon fossil fuels and shift to ‘renewables’ with a religious-like fervour that completely ignores some harsh, biophysical realities. I am reminded of author Robert Heinlein’s observation that we are rationalising creatures, not rational ones, and we are leading ourselves into a very, very precarious and dangerous place.
De-dollarization continues accelerating with news of the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange (SHPGX), a Chinese-backed exchange for trading energy-related products, settling its first cross-border transaction in digital yuan.
Chinese-based financial news outlet “Yicai” first reported PetroChina International bought one million barrels of crude oil using digital yuan on Thursday. It was the exchange’s first overseas oil settlement in digital yuan. However, the name of the seller was not disclosed.
SHPGX has made several transactions in yuan earlier this year: In March, PetroChina and TotalEnergies completed a yuan-denominated liquefied natural gas transaction on the exchange. According to the exchange, four such LNG transactions have occurred this year.
China’s central bank began the digital yuan project in 2014 and has piloted the electronic currency in numerous regions across China. The world’s second-largest economy has been preparing to use the yuan and its digital version in international trade and finance as an alternative to the dollar.
In August, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for BRICS nations to create a common currency as the world furiously searches for ways to circumvent the dollar-based financial system.
Brazil’s president said a BRICS currency “increases our payment options and reduces our vulnerabilities.”
The US shutting Russia out of the SWIFT messaging system that underpins most global payments in response to its invasion of Ukraine has supercharged the de-dollarization trend.
It remains to be seen who exactly PetroChina paid digital yuan for the crude oil, but it might not be out of the question that it was Russia, considering it’s been shut out of the SWIFT system, plus oil exports to China have hit a record high.
Dave Hughes’s guide to the end of the fossil fuel age
DAVE HUGHES IS DRIVING north on Highway 2. Headed out of Calgary, where he worked for thirty-two years at the Geological Survey of Canada, mapping the nation’s coal reserves. Bound for Edmonton, where he grew up and earned two degrees in geology. It’s not yet dawn, the sky deep black and the windows of his pickup truck like mirrors, the southbound lanes a line of smeared headlights as long-haul commuters make the trek the other way into the capital of the oil patch. Hughes sips coffee from a reusable mug, fighting back sleepiness. Just another commuter trailing a cloud of burnt dinosaur bones on his way to work.
Dave had to start out fifteen minutes earlier than the requisite ungodly hour so he could pick you up at your house. So you wouldn’t drive yourself. Save a few hydrocarbons, he’d joked. He’s a coal man, a geologist, and he always refers to the holy trinity of fossil fuels whose flames have stoked the past 200 years of industrial growth—coal, natural gas, and especially oil—in that same semi-technical way: hydrocarbons. Dave Hughes has a lot to say about hydrocarbons, mainly how there’s no possible way to keep running the engine of a modern global economy for much longer at the pace we’re burning them. Which is why you felt compelled to join him in the black chill of this late-autumn morning. Because that seems like a pretty big deal.
Dave came right to the curb out in front of your house, your personal chauffeur, because you said you were interested in hearing his talk a second time, and he’ll do his level best to bring his talk to just about anyone who asks…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The specter of a rumored U.S. military buildup in Cyprus that would draw a major Russian response now adds to the ongoing Greek Cypriot-Turkish conflict over the island and the oil and gas riches it promises.
Ever since the massive hydrocarbon discovery in Cyprus’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in 2011 by American company Noble Energy the island has been the center of a geopolitical game that doesn’t stop with rife tensions between Turkey and the Greek Cypriots.
And now this game is drawing nearer to its climax, with much at stake.
Cyprus–an island in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea—is divided into the Greek-dominated Republic of Cyprus in the south and the Turkish-controlled north. Since 2004, the Republic of Cyprus has been a member of the European Union, and the northern ‘entity’ remains recognized solely by Turkey.
But it is the EEZ—the exclusive economic zone—where this geopolitical game of chess is being played out.
(Click to enlarge)
Generally, Turkey doesn’t accept the jurisdiction of Cyprus over the EEZ, and particularly the process of bidding on and awarding concession for offshore oil and gas drilling. Every attempt by Nicosia to invite international companies to explore offshore has been met with a strong reaction from Turkey, which is constantly looking for geopolitical leverage in this battle.
From the Turkish perspective, the Greek Cypriots persist “in ignoring the equal and inalienable rights and interests of the Turkish Cypriot side on natural resources of the island”.
Indeed, everything in correlation with oil and gas on Cyprus has a specific political weight and is highly sensitive.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Urban air pollution in the U.S. has been decreasing near continuously since the 1970s.
Federal regulations, notably the Clean Air Act passed by President Nixon, to reduce toxic air pollutants such as benzene, a hydrocarbon, and ozone, a strong oxidant, effectively lowered their abundance in ambient air with steady progress.
But about 10 years ago, the picture on air pollutants in the U.S. started to change. The “fracking boom” in several different parts of the nation led to a new source of hydrocarbons to the atmosphere, affecting abundances of both toxic benzene and ozone, including in areas that were not previously affected much by such air pollution.
As a result, in recent years there has been a spike of research to determine what the extent of emissions are from fracked oil and gas wells — called “unconventional” sources in the industry. While much discussion has surrounded methane emissions, a greenhouse gas, less attention has been paid to air toxics.
Upstream Emissions
Fracking is a term that can stir strong emotions among its opponents and proponents. It is actually a combination of techniques, including hydraulic fracturing, that has allowed drillers to draw hydrocarbons from rock formations which were once not profitable to tap.
Drillers shatter layers of shale rock with high-pressure water, sand and chemicals to start the flow of hydrocarbons from a well. The hydraulic fracturing process itself, aside from its large demand for water, is possibly the least environmentally impactful step along the complete operational chain of drilling for hydrocarbons. Arguably, the more relevant environmental effects are wastewater handling and disposal, as well as the release of vapors from oil and gas storage and distribution.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Part of a map from Pluspetrol, an exploration and production company, showing its interest in areas of Manú National Park in Peru’s Amazon. (Pluspetrol)
A leaked map shows that a private energy corporation based in Argentina is eyeing Manú National Park in Peru’s Amazon, one of the most biodiverse places on earth.
In a detailed article in The Guardian, environment writer David Hill, who researches forest governance in Peru from his location in the Amazon, traces the back-and-forth of Pluspetrol’s apparent quest for the hydrocarbons beneath the protected land:
The map vaguely and ignorantly – or hopefully? Disdainfully? – calls Manu a “reserve”, where gas operations are permitted. Not so in national parks. Peru’s 1997 Law of Protected Natural Areas states “the extraction of natural resources is not permitted” in parks, while the 2001 regulations for “protected natural areas” states the “settlement of new human groups and the exploitation of natural resources is prohibited.” In addition, the 1993 Constitution “obliges” the government “to promote the conservation of biological diversity and protected natural areas.”
Manu isn’t just any national park. It is home to members of several indigenous peoples – the Matsigenka, “Matsigenka-Nanti”, “Mashco-Piro”, Nahua, Quechua and Yine – while UNESCO, which has designated it a biosphere reserve and World Heritage Site, says that the biodiversity “exceeds that of any other place on earth.” In early 2014 scientists described Manu as “top of the [world’s] list of natural protected areas in terms of amphibian and reptile diversity”, and back in 2006 other scientists found that the number of bird and mammal species is the “largest for any similarly sized area in the world.”
“For 10 years [Manu] has held the title as the world’s richest protected area for birds and mammals,” Bruce Patterson, from The Field Museum in the US, told the Guardian.
Hill writes that the map was featured in April 2013 in a report by the Peruvian nongovernmental organization Ecodess. So why draw attention to it now?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The energy visionary Vaclav Smil — Bill Gates’s favorite author — says that when our leaders promise quick energy transformations, they’re getting it very wrong.
Americain 2015finds itselfalmost in a newenergyreality. It recently became theworld’ssecond–largest extractor of crude oil, and since 2010 has been the leading producer of natural gas,whoseabundant and inexpensive supply has been accelerating the retreat from coalas a national source of electric power.
Some seethis as the beginning of an even bigger transition, one in whichAmerica’sdominantstatus as aproducer of hydrocarbonsendsits allies’dependence on Russian gas andmakesOPEC terminally irrelevant,whileits entrepreneurial drive helps itquickly advanceto harnessrenewablesand reducegreenhouse gas emissions.
All of this sounds too good to be true — and it is. Indefensible claims of imminent transformative breakthroughs are an unfortunately chronic ingredient of Americanenergy debates.
WhenAmerican leaders talk about energy transitions, they tend to sell them as something thatcan be accomplished in a matter of years. Al Gore, perhaps the country’s most prominentclimateactivist,proposed to “re-power” America, making its electricity carbon-free, within 10 years, calling the goal “achievable, affordable and transformative.”That was in 2008,when fossil fuels produced 71percentof American electricity; last year67 percent still came fromburning fossil fuels.
President Barack Obama, who has a strong rhetorical dislike of oil — although kerosene distilled from it fuels the 747 that carries him to play golf in Hawaii — promised in his 2011 State of the Union message that the country would have 1 million electric cars by 2015. That goal was abandoned by the Department of Energy just two years later.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
