The decline of oil and civilization.

[fear_and_greed]

I’m a stock trader and almost everyday I buy, sell or short sell oil company stocks. I see immediately what happens when news or rumours hit the market. To me the news is not what is important, only the market reaction. However, my musings that follow represent what I feel is important about the coming of peak oil and the subsequent decline of the civilized world.

I truly think we're at one of those turning points where the future's looking so ugly, few want to face it.

By now most intelligent people realize that something is profoundly awry in the global oil patch.

Yet to truly grasp the scope of the crisis looming before them, people must consider the awesome position of power that cheap oil has intertwined itself into society. Virtually everything is made from plastic these days. All businesses are somehow connected with oil. Retrace the seemingly ordinary tank full of gasoline back to its sources and you go into the heart of the worlds vast and troubled oil dependency. And what it exposes is a globe-spanning energy network that today is so fragile, so beholden to hostile powers and so clearly unsustainable, that our car and plastic centered lifestyle seems destined to grind to a halt in short order.

Chevron, the nation's second-largest oil company, has bluntly declared that "the era of easy oil is over" and is warning energy-hungry Americans that "the world consumes two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered." http://www.willyoujoinus.com/

Exxon Mobil says “ we’ll need approximately 60 percent more energy in 2030 than in 2000.”

The trouble is that there is forecast to be less and less cheap oil available and an ever increasing population that is demanding it.

“China has displaced Japan as the No. 2 oil importer, after the United States. Chinese oil imports are projected to double to 14 million barrels a day over the next 20 years. Many credible analysts foresee a new "energy cold war" as the U.S. and China square off over the planet's last reserves.America and China are on a collision course over what remains of the world's hydrocarbons.

The 21st Century is going to be defined by this aggressive competition for a resource that's depleting.”

I see a much less subtle scenario – What cannot be accomplished through diplomacy with be accomplished through military force. As supplies get tighter, strategic military moves will be made by the big have nots against the smaller haves. USA into Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, the middle east, Canada. China into Brunei, Malaysia and area. Russia takes back all the 'stan countries.

“Last year, hurricanes Katrina and Rita delivered a one-two punch to the energy-rich Gulf Coast, swamping New Orleans and disabling the offshore wells and pipelines that yield a third of America's domestic energy production. In 1940, the United States was the Saudi Arabia of the world. It produced 63 percent of the planet's oil. Today, after years of frenzied pumping, it generates 8 percent.”

A high-powered study released last year by the Department of Energy, the so-called Hirsch report, warns that even with a concerted national effort it could take decades to transition from oil to fuel alternatives, and that "without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented." http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf

 

How are you preparing for a much different future?

[Dechristo]

solar-powered steam generator

[Dechristo]

Stanley Steamer car

[Dechristo]

no esteem for convention

[chesterboo]

Nice essay F and G. Scary times. It is about time Americans stop playing ostrich. More resources should be spent on conservation. Global warming is something you did not even touch on and is all tied into burning of these "easy fuels"

[catbirdseat]

Once the price gets high enough change will begin, but not before. You can't get people to change just by telling them to do it. They'll respond to price and price alone. It's going to be painful, no doubt about it.

 

As Dru likes to point out, too bad we canned the monorail. That was one of the dumbest decisions the Seattle voters ever made. If that vote were held now, the results would have been different, but gas prices were still cheap at the time.

[Stonehead]

Will the general mass of consumers change their habits based on education? I don’t believe so. It’s as CBS said, consumers won’t voluntarily reduce consumption independent of market forces. The oil shock of 1973 led to the growth in sales of economy cars. It seems a no-brainer for the sales of hybrid cars to increase as petroleum prices rise. The market will respond accordingly but it seems as an afterthought after the primary stimulus and that would be the increase in gasoline prices. Do you think that people will begin to buy hybrid cars when the human and environmental cost is mentally factored into the price of oil?

 

Do I also think that a concerted grassroots effort, i.e., one from the bottom up, will take root and effect change to smooth the transition at least from the consumer end? My guess is no. Will industry be better prepared to meet the challenge? Luckily, there are some politicians (http://www.bartlett.house.gov/EnergyUpdates/) who are shedding light on this issue.

 

Really, in the whole scheme of things, Peak Oil is just one bogeyman to consider. Shit, for all you know, next year could see the outbreak of a bird flu pandemic that could effectively put the brakes on economic expansion and lead to a global contraction a lot quicker than a transition from a hydrocarbon-based economy to whatever comes next.

 

Is it just our damn hubris as ‘enlightened’ human beings that we can handle it? Are we just whistling in the dark?

 

There’s a guy named Kurzweil (http://www.kurzweilai.net/brain/frame.html?startThought=Artificial%20Intelligence%20(AI)) who talks about something called the Singularity. You think that the ol’ folks saw a lot of technological change in the last 80-90 years? Shit, we’re on the cusp of monumental change that’ll make your head spin.

[TREETOAD]

f&g you nailed it down. We are looking at a really shit pit for our chldren to try to survive. I keep thinking a few hundred acres up around Prince Rupert would be looking good in twenty years or so.

[bstach]

How are you preparing for a much different future?

 

Build a bunker. Buy guns, lots of ammo, food, liquor and cigarettes.

[ivan]

the only solution

[kurthicks]

Miller High Life: The Champagne of Beers AND the solution to our energy woes?

 

 

[Dechristo]

There’s a guy named Kurzweil

 

yeah, I've got "The Singularity is Near"; pretty interesting reading.

[Stefan]

The only way to stop oil consumption at its current rate is the spread of diseases.