Below, I've omitted the first page about just how extensive US oil and
gas production has become.
*Natalia*
Full story at:
http://www.alternet.org/3-terrifying-things-about-earth-were-denial-about?page=0%2C0
3 Terrifying Things About the Earth We're in Denial About
This year's edition of the World Energy Outlook was greeted with
jubilation when it revealed that the US might become top oil producer.
But this comes at a catastrophic cost.
/November 27, 2012/ |
By: Michael T. Klare
(snip)
*1) Shrinking World Oil Supply *
Given the hullabaloo about rising energy production in the U.S., you
would think that the IEA report was loaded with good news about the
world's future oil supply. No such luck. In fact, on a close reading
anyone who has the slightest familiarity with world oil dynamics should
shudder, as its overall emphasis is on decline and uncertainty.
Take U.S. oil production surpassing Saudi Arabia's and Russia's. Sounds
great, doesn't it? Here's the catch: previous editions of the IEA
report and the International Energy Outlook, its equivalent from the
U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), rested their claims about a growing
future global oil supply on the assumption that those two countries
would far surpass U.S. output. Yet the U.S. will pull ahead of them in
the 2020s only because, the IEA now asserts, their output is going
to fall, not rise as previously assumed.
This is one hidden surprise in the report that's gone unnoticed.
According to the DoE's 2011 projections
<http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo>, Saudi production was expected to
rise to 13.9 million barrels per day in 2025, and Russian output to 12.2
million barrels, jointly providing much of the world's added petroleum
supply; the United States, in this calculation, would reach the 11.7
million barrel mark.
The IEA's latest revision
<http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/name,33339,en.html> of
those figures suggests that U.S. production will indeed rise, as
expected, to about 11 million barrels per day in 2025, but that Saudi
output will unexpectedly fall to about 10.6 million barrels and Russian
to 9.7 million barrels. The U.S., that is, will essentially become
number one by default. At best, then, the global oil supply is not
going to grow appreciably -- despite the IEA's projection of a
significant upswing in international demand.
But wait, suggests the IEA, there's still one wild card hope out there:
Iraq. Yes, Iraq. In the belief that the Iraqis will somehow overcome
their sectarian differences, attain a high level of internal stability,
establish a legal framework for oil production, and secure the necessary
investment and technical support, the IEA predicts
<https://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2012/october/name,32060,en.html> that
its output will jump from 3.4 million barrels per day this year to 8
million barrels in 2035, adding an extra 4.6 million barrels to the
global supply. In fact, claims the IEA, this gain would represent half
the total increase in world oil production over the next 25 years.
Certainly, stranger things have happened, but for the obvious reasons,
it remains an implausible scenario.
Add all this together -- declining output from Russia and Saudi Arabia,
continuing strife in Iraq, uncertain results elsewhere -- and you get
insufficient oil in the 2020s and 2030s to meet anticipated world
demand. From a global warming perspective that may be good news, but
economically, without a massive increase in investment in alternate
energy sources, the outlook is grim. You don't know what bad times are
until you don't have enough energy to run the machinery of civilization.
As suggested
<http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/name,33339,en.html> by
the IEA, "Much is riding on Iraq's success... Without this supply growth
from Iraq, oil markets would be set for difficult times."
*2. Continuing Reliance on Fossil Fuels *
For all the talk of the need to increase reliance on renewable sources
of energy, fossil fuels -- coal, oil, and natural gas -- will continue
to provide most of the additional energy supplies needed to satisfy
soaring world demand. "Taking all new developments and policies into
account," the IEA reported, "the world is still failing to put the
global energy system onto a more sustainable path." In fact, recent
developments seem to favor greater fossil-fuel reliance.
n the United States, for instance, the increased extraction of oil and
gas from shale formations has largely silenced calls for government
investment in renewable technology. In its editorial on the IEA report,
for example, theWall Street Journal ridiculed such investment. It had,
the Journal's writers suggested
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323894704578114591174453074.html>,
now become unnecessary due to the Saudi Arabian-style oil and gas boom
to come. "Historians will one day marvel that so much political and
financial capital was invested in a [failed] green-energy revolution at
the very moment a fossil fuel revolution was aborning," they declared.
One aspect of this energy "revolution" deserves special attention. The
growing availability of cheap natural gas, thanks to hydro-fracking, has
already reduced the use of coal as a fuel for electrical power plants in
the United States. This would seem to be an obvious environmental plus,
since gas produces less climate-altering carbon dioxide than does coal.
Unfortunately, coal output and its use haven't diminished: American
producers have simply increased their coal exports to Asia and Europe.
In fact, U.S. coal exports are expected to reach
<http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=8490> as high as 133
million tons in 2012, overtaking an export record set in 1981.
Despite its deleterious effects on the environment, coal remains popular
<http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=8070> in countries
seeking to increase their electricity output and promote economic
development. Shockingly, according to the IEA, it supplied nearly half
of the increase in global energy consumption over the last decade,
growing faster than renewables. And the agency predicts that coal will
continue its rise in the decades ahead. The world's top coal consumer,
China, will burn ever more of it until 2020, when demand is finally
expected to level off. India's usage will rise without cessation, with
that country overtaking the U.S. as the number two consumer around 2025.
In many regions, notes the IEA report, the continued dominance of fossil
fuels is sustained by government policies. In the developing world,
countries commonly subsidize energy consumption, selling transportation,
cooking, and heating fuels at below-market rates. In this way, they
hope to buffer
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-775-billion-in-fossil-fuel-subsidies-are-hardto-scrap/2012/06/18/gJQABaQUlV_blog.html> their
populations from rising commodity costs, and so protect their regimes
from popular unrest. Cutting back on such subsidies can prove
dangerous, as in Jordan where a recent government decision to raise fuel
prices led to widespread riots
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/world/middleeast/jordan-faces-protests-after-gas-price-proposal.html> and
calls for the monarchy's abolition. In 2011, such subsidies amounted to
$523 billion globally, says the IEA, up almost 30% from 2010 and six
times greater than subsidies for renewable energy.
*3. No Hope for Averting Catastrophic Climate Change *
Of all the findings in the 2012 edition of the World Energy Outlook, the
one that merits the greatest international attention is the one that
received the least. Even if governments take vigorous steps to curb
greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded, the continuing increase
in fossil fuel consumption will result in "a long-term average global
temperature increase of 3.6 degrees C."
This should stop everyone in their tracks. Most scientists believe that
an increase of 2 degrees Celsius
<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719> is
about all the planet can accommodate without unimaginably catastrophic
consequences: sea-level increases that will wipe out many coastal
cities, persistent droughts that will destroy farmland on which hundreds
of millions of people depend for their survival, the collapse of vital
ecosystems, and far more. An increase of 3.6 degrees C essentially
suggests the end of human civilization as we know it.
To put this in context, human activity has already warmed the planet by
about 0.8 degrees C -- enough to produce severe droughts around the
world, trigger or intensify intense storms like Hurricane Sandy, and
drastically reduce the Arctic ice cap. "Given those impacts," writes
<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719> noted
environmental author and activist
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175435/tomgram%3A_bill_mckibben,_jailed_over_big_oil%27s_attempt_to_wreck_the_planet/> Bill
McKibben, "many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far
too lenient a target." Among those cited by McKibben is Kerry Emanuel
<http://eaps4.mit.edu/faculty/Emanuel> of MIT, a leading authority on
hurricanes. "Any number much above one degree involves a gamble,"
Emanuel writes, "and the odds become less and less favorable as the
temperature goes up." Thomas Lovejoy
<http://esp.gmu.edu/people/facultybios/lovejoy.html>, once the World
Bank's chief biodiversity adviser, puts it this way: "If we're seeing
what we're seeing today at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply
too much."
t this point, it's hard even to imagine what a planet that's 3.6 degrees
C hotter would be like, though some climate-change scholars and prophets
-- like former Vice President Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594865671/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20> --
have tried. In all likelihood, the Greenland
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/greenland-glacier-loses-large-mass-of-ice/2012/07/17/gJQAf5CQsW_story.html> and
Antarctica ice sheets would melt entirely, raising sea levels by several
dozen feet and completely inundating coastal cities like New York and
Shanghai. Large parts of Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the
American Southwest would be rendered uninhabitable thanks to lack of
water
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/science/earth/global-warming-makes-heat-waves-more-likely-study-finds.html> and
desertification, while wildfires
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175573/william_debuys_the_west_in_flames> of
a sort that we can't imagine today would consume the parched forests of
the temperate latitudes.
In a report that leads with the "good news" of impending U.S. oil
supremacy, to calmly suggest that the world is headed for that 3.6
degree C mark is like placing a thermonuclear bomb in a gaudily-wrapped
Christmas present. In fact, the "good news" is really the bad news: the
energy industry's ability to boost production of oil, coal, and natural
gas in North America is feeding a global surge in demand for these
commodities, ensuring ever higher levels of carbon emissions. As long
as these trends persist -- and the IEA report provides no evidence that
they will be reversed in the coming years -- we are all in a race to see
who gets to the Apocalypse first.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at
Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and the author of Blood and Oil:
The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency
<http://alternet.bookswelike.net/isbn/0805073132>.
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