http://www.theecologist.co.uk/archive_article.html?article=263&category=47 The Ecologist - ARCHIVE The Reality Principle: The consequences of oil shortages
Date Published: 22/10/2001 Author: David Fleming In the heat of the coming oil shock Green ideals will be forged into hard economic truths, as energy crisis devastates the global market. It's a pity no one in authority listened. The case was made, not least in these pages, for reshaping the market economy intelligently, before the ecosystem took its brutal revenge. Arguments were made for the speedy development of renewable energy, organic agriculture, competent local economies, closed systems and effective means of restraining predatory multinational business. Solutions were invented and refined. But the opportunity has now passed. The turning-point at which the initiative shifts from the market economy to the ecosystem will be the moment when the world experiences a peak, followed by a downturn, in the supply of oil. This will occur when the five large OPEC producers in the Middle East - Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE - are no longer able and willing to pump their oil fast enough to meet the growth in world demand. All the other oil suppliers throughout the world (including the UK's North Sea) are in decline, or too small for any remaining growth in their output to make a difference; global growth in oil supply now depends entirely on the 'Middle East Five', and when they can no longer meet demand, there will be an oil shock. The speed at which it arrives could be startling. This will mark the beginning of the end of the oil-based market economy, and it is for this moment that we should by now have prepared an infrastructure of renewables, backed by conservation systems to reduce energy demand to less than one third of what we use at present. However, this infrastructure takes a minimum of 25 years to build, and since it has been barely started, the oil famine which can be expected to develop in the next ten years will be catastrophic. The consequences in the short term cannot be predicted in detail because, when systems break down, they do so chaotically. But some leading symptoms can be foreseen. There will be incremental economic damage, affecting Third World countries first of all, before becoming more general. This is because the multinational institutions have taken pains to make 'developing' economies dependent on oil, and so when the price of oil rises beyond their means, their economies will start to disintegrate. Agriculture will be disabled by disruptions in the supply of oil for fertiliser, machinery, irrigation pumps and transport. Tourism will be paralysed by high fuel costs and by a collapse in consumers' income. Political unrest will develop as economic institutions and distribution systems for food and fuel show the strain and begin to break down. It is now too late to prevent this from happening. Moreover, it is likely that governments, international organisations and transnational corporations will refuse to recognise that there is a problem until they are actually buried in it. Even then, they will insist that more oil exploration or more faith in free market forces will solve it. They will claim that a few wicked hooligans or 'extremists' are stirring up public unrest. Then they will panic. But what about the critics who have been warning about this for so long? What should they do? Endgames demand new tactics. During this period of transition, it will be necessary to shift the grounds of the ecology-argument decisively forward from ethics to practice. Let me explain. Ethical arguments are relevant in cases where a course of action is possible but undesirable and avoidable. It is possible to produce large quantities of cash crops by means of heavy applications of fertiliser and pesticide, by expropriating subsistence farmers and depleting the soil and drawing on irreplaceable reserves of groundwater - but, of course, there are environmental-humanitarian-ethical arguments against it. In the future, by contrast, such a policy will no longer be possible: there will not be the energy to produce the fertiliser, to drive the machines, the irrigation and the transport, nor the rich-country incomes to buy the product. There is no doubt that such industrial agriculture is bad, but we will be wasting our time pointing that out. If it is impossible, the ethical argument becomes scarcely relevant. With oil famine, ethical options become the only way forward. Industrial agriculture? Fantasy. The only option for the future is low-energy organic cultivation, bringing redundant farmers and abandoned fields back into production. Globalisation? This is no more than a short-lived side effect of cheap oil. In the future, local development is the only practical solution. Nuclear energy? Moonshine. To fill the energy gap left by oil and - shortly - by gas, would require some 12,000 nuclear powerstations worldwide which would mean two new nuclear power stations being opened every day indefinitely - well beyond the limits set by logistics, training, safety, waste-disposal and the availability of uranium. A gentle reduction in carbon emissions as a gesture towards slowing the advance of global warming? No chance. The forecasts for the use of oil and gas on which the Kyoto Protocol has been based are far in excess of the quantity that will actually be there to burn. A single currency and bureaucratic regulation by the European Union? Forget it. The euro will break up and the future evolution of currency, along with that of human society, political economy and culture as a whole, will - at last - be firmly located and adapted to specific places. This does not mean that ethical judgement will become obsolete, but that ethics and practice will converge. The task of building an energy-efficient localised economy at least 25 years too late may well be futile - but there is one good outcome. This time, having explored all alternatives, human society will be forced to do the right thing. David Fleming is an independent policy analyst. His book The Lean Economy will be published in 2002. Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
