Cassandra is alive and well, still looking at impending doom
by Richard Heinberg
"We need an energy bill that encourages consumption "
"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist"
Cassandra is alive and well: Richard Heinberg is as convinced as any of the impending collapse of civilised society. Whether he is accurate is his assessment of 2006-2012 being the critical moment or not, evades the central logic of his book – for he suggests that it is only in retrospect that we will know when the big ‘roll-over’ did in fact hit.
The big roll-over to which he refers is long before the oil runs out. It is when the barman shouts, “time at the bar please” and the free flowing booze dries up. At this point in the evening, we may still have reserves left in our glasses, but we become acutely aware of its finite and dwindling nature. In the real world beyond analogy, this is after we reach the peak of global oil production and demand begins to reaches total available supply.
At this juncture, there may still be many years of useful oil, gas and coal resources still remaining in the ground, but it will become increasingly difficult to extract. At the same time, a global economy institutionally tied to continued economic, population and material expansion and so intimately dependent on petroleum for transport, food production, government and social and commercial services will continue to drive up demand. Catastrophe awaits and society as we know it will be irredeemably transformed. Heinberg forecasts wars, famine and destitution, all in the best Cassandrist fashion.
Heinberg’s apocalyptic scenario is premised on our dependency on oil, our vulnerability to waning resources, the inevitability of exhaustion and most importantly, the immediacy of depletion.
We are dependent, as our entire capitalist system has been nurtured on cheap and easy access to petroleum which has created a vast infrastructure dedicated to growing energy consumption. We are vulnerable, as we have not diversified at the critical time and our rate of energy consumption is rising so quickly that bringing new energy sources (renewable and non-polluting) online could take an impossibly large investment in new kinds of infrastructure. And fossil fuels will inevitably run out. Oil, coal and gas are indisputably finite.
None of the above is particularly controversial. But it is the immediacy of the impending disaster that is a fundamental source of contention. “Act now,” is Heinberg’s call. “Pass the Energy Bill,” is George W Bush’s answer before opening up the Alaskan wilderness for exploitation.
But some signs of the looming calamity can already be seen. Domestic US petroleum production peaked in the 1980s, non-OPEC exports have probably already peaked, Royal Dutch-Shell’s board of directors is still taking casualties from their 20% over-booking of marketable resources and the global markets are only now breathing freely again after oil prices hit US$40 per barrel.
The UK experienced perhaps a taster of the social consequences during the fuel blockades of 2001 where half-mile queues formed at gas stations and people were left stranded, irate and vulnerable. The two giants, China and India, are only now beginning gorge themselves on oil – potentially adding another 2½ billion consumers to our petroleum economy. If China was to consume oil at the same rate as the Americans do now, by 2031 China would need 99 million barrels of oil per day, 20 million barrels more than is currently produced worldwide.
But perhaps the most startling truth revealed by Heinberg is that each year more oil is extracted than new deposits are found. It is on this basis that his ‘roll-over’ date of 2006-2012 is guesstimated.
However, there are some great uncertainties here: increased efficiencies and new technologies may enable more oil to become marketable and deregulated energy markets may quickly increase more diverse sources of renewable energy, reducing demand for oil at the margins. But Heinberg counters this by arguing that there are as many uncertainties restricting our breathing space as there are extending it. For example, how much more oil per capita will China’s industrialisation consume? Will alternative energy paths be taken by India and China to combat climate change? How protected will the (proven and unproven) oil reserves in the Earth’s great wilderness areas, Alaska and Antarctica, remain? How will war and politics affect the flow of oil?
These are important questions for policy makers to answer. But Heinberg goes further and for him, ecology and thermodynamics take precedence over demand and supply, as factors influencing our energy future. Debunking economists as illogical and dangerous and taking an ecologist’s perspective, Heinberg advances the argument that the amount of oil that is finally pumped from the ground is not a question of money, but one of energy and the laws
of physics.
For a capitalist economist (aren’t they all?), increasing demand for oil pushes up its price. This in turn brings new entrants to the market, attracted by the supernormal profits of existing drillers. This brings supply levels up to meet the demand at a new price. It simply all a matter of price, demand and supply and the general theory of equilibrium. This is the charade the Wall Street Journal and OPEC would have us believe, anyway. In reality, Heinberg argues that how much oil is pumped out the ground is matter of net energy gain. As accessible deposits are exploited, oil becomes increasingly energy intensive to extract.
There may be still huge reserves underground, but if it takes the energy equivalent of a barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil – it ain’t gonna happen, no matter what economists might dream.
In criticism, despite Heinberg’s clear and plausible marshalling of the facts, he does not adequately address the capitalist’s challenge of why the market is not reacting adversely to his foreseen, impending disaster. A rational firm, seeking long term profitability, would have long exited the oil market if its raw material was due to disappear with 2-6 years.
All oil firms are faced with mortality if they do not adapt, so why are so few doing it right now? ‘Rational’ futures markets should have long pushed up the price of crude oil if we were on the brink of disaster. And yet none of this is happening. The adjusted price of oil remains well down on the peaks of the 1970s and 80s. Maybe we have longer than Heinberg thinks. CEOs worldwide are surely not suffering cognitive dissonance?
Is that it then? Is the party over? In Heinberg’s view, the party where the booze ran freely and no one had care in the world is very nearly over. We must now wake up to the cold light of dawn and clear up after our petroleum-fuelled debauchery. Fortunately, this does not involve revolution for Heinberg – just a combination of already recognised strategies and well understood technologies, such as pursuing energy efficiencies, a measure of abstention and shifting to alternative sources of energy for electricity generation.
But it is not all prosaic. A post-petroleum world will evolve into something quite different from an economy built on never-ending growth, fuelled by oil. Those currently alive may nostalgically be referred to by future generations as the most well-travelled and world savvy generation, as alternative fuels are unlikely to be as versatile and cheap as oil. Passenger airline travel could once again become the domain of a wealthy elite. Our fixation with electronic gadgets must be brought into questioned too. All those digital set top boxes left on standby are wastful.
Cassandra is waiting just around the corner, if we don’t.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Humble Woodward says 'Well done New Zealand'
England Rugby coach, Clive Woodward has praised the New Zealand All-Blacks for their recent impressive performances which saw the World Champions concede more than 36 points in both games.
Just eight months ago the England Rugby Union side returned triumphantly from Australia clutching the William Webb-Ellis trophy on the back of 23 straight wins.
Now, after crashing out of the Six Nations and two drubbings at the hands of the mighty All-Blacks, the previous world’s best have crashed to 4 defeats in 6 games. With the World Cup runners-up, coming next.“All I can say is well done New Zealand, we were soundly beaten twice by a far superior rugby playing side.” said Woodward at a press conference on arrival in Brisbane, where England play Australia on Saturday.
“They out played us in every department, beat us to the ball on every 50-50 occasion and the individual flare of some of their backs put us to shame. That is why they scored eight tries in two games to our none.”“Although we have had a number of retirements (two) and a few injuries (three), we are a side that has always relied on strength in depth from a bigger pool of talent on which we can draw than any other side in the world. Loosing a couple of players is no excuse.” he said.
"The England soccer supporters in Portugal were our inspiration."- England coach, Sir Clive Woodward
“Besides,” he added, “New Zealand have had a few injuries themselves, and they managed the changes far more efficiently.”
“During the [first] Test in Dunedin, we were just swept away by a more focussed and aggressive side. So for the second Test we knew we had to raise the physical side of our game.”
"Therefore we went out on to the pitch at Eden Park with the attitude of ‘If we can’t beat them at rugby, we’ll just beat them up’.”“And we found that we couldn’t beat them at rugby, so we did just try to beat them up.”
“The England soccer supporters in Portugal [for the Euro 2004 finals] were our inspiration.” He concluded.
Asked whether he thought Simon Shaw was lucky to get away without a ban, Woodward replied “Although it didn’t look too bad in slow-motion, the act was a wilfully committed professional foul that would have been dangerous had he connected with the head, as seemed to be his intention. So yes, I think he was lucky.”
“I saw at least 3 blatant penalty offences for offside at the ruck committed by England players in second half that denied further points to the opposition. Although we were pretty disciplined, we were definitely helped by the Welsh ref who must have felt a little sorry for us being so out-classed.” He said.
England now look forward to trying to salvage something positive from of their so far bleak Southern Hemisphere tour when they take on the Wallabies in a re-run of last year’s World Cup Final at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane this Saturday.They are sure to get a warmer welcome in Brisbane, with a large English contingent already massing in the City.
Nov 03: Aus 17-20 Eng
Jun 03: Aus 14-25 Eng
Nov 02: Eng 32-31 Aus
Nov 01: Eng 21-15 Aus
Nov 00: Eng 22-19 Aus“We have beaten Australia 5 times on the trot, so I am sure they are looking forward to getting one back” Woodward said. “Although we were lucky with three of those wins – they could have gone either way - winning a kicking game in two of them, scoring a last minute dubious try in another and winning from an extra-time drop goal in the final last year, we feel that Australia will be favourites this weekend.
Asked whether he was putting forward excuses in case England lose, Woodward replied “Yes. Despite my modest words about the Wallabies, I think they are a really great side. Far better than England, and not so rough.”
“We will revert to playing 10 man rugby once more. We have tried to spin it wide in the last two games against the All Blacks and realised we were rubbish at it. Therefore we are going to play the touchlines and not pass it beyond our number-10. Dan Luger will have to make do with chasing back to get the ball.”
“If the Australian back division get any possession, we’re finished.” he concluded.Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Stemming the suburban flow and the SEQ Regional Plan
A tourniquet is being applied to stem the flow of suburbia into South East Queensland’s remaining native bushland. The ‘200km City1’ beckons; koalas, bushland and public access are threatened.
The average Queenslander's house is increasing in size at a phenomenal rate. Average new build is expanding even faster. Now the average new build size is a whopping 815m2 (up from just over 520m2 in 1990) – that is 28 X 28 metres of living space.
This could be excused if families were as fertile as Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, hopes ("three, a girl, a boy and one for Australia", he said). But that is not teh case. At the same time house footprints are expanding, the number of people per dwelling is falling. So whilst the population of SEQ increased by 68,900 in 2003, the population densities of urban and peri-urban areas to fell.
New-build in the peri-urban communities typically have twice the number of bedrooms as there are occupants, a lounge, a dining room, a formal lounge, a formal dining room and en suites as standard.
But it is not the physical asset that holds the key. The bricks and mortar are intimately linked to the over exposed, Queensland ‘lifestyle’.
Who's lifestyle is it anyway?
These ‘lifesyles’ are heavily promoted through the media. Choosing a new house should be as simple as picking a can of beans off the shelf in the supermarket. There are even seasonal ‘sales’ and 'special offers'. And just as the ad-men from Coke and Nike say, you are not just buying a can of sugary water or a comfy pair of training shoes, you are buying into a whole new lifestyle of soft focus evening dinner parties, joyous weather and bicycle rides by the lakes with Costello’s next generation.
And it is not just TV and print advertisements. Your new life is lived through sponsored TV magazine programs and lifetsyle fairs, all convincing you that the latest in deck-design is not simply a desire, but one of your lifestyle’s necessities. It all bundles up into a pretty enticing package. Why think about how to live your life, when you can choose it from the pages of 'Better Homes' ?
But just as Coca Cola do not promote the tooth decay and Nike do not feature child-labour sweatshops, lifestyle packages do not promote the lengthening commute times or 8-lane highways crawling at below speed. Representation and reality take different routes home. In real life the money rich-time poor have no time to enjoy the lakes in ‘North Lakes’ – they are spending their time in their SUV, listening to traffic report tell them about the jam they are sat in2.
All because no one had the foresight to build the new community near a railway line.
Similarly, the ads do not allude to the lost bushland and high quality agricultural land, the loss of natural habitat corridors and biodiversity destruction. Nor to suburb ghost towns that lack basic amenities accessible on foot because the 'big-box' retailers have decided that people without cars do not deserve to shop. Whole communities have been split in two by dual carriageways, punctuated by traffic lights with inadequate crossings. And the bikes? Only on the weekends around the lakes. No one commutes by bike .
But to challenge this lifestyle is seen as a challenge to human aspirations. Aspirations on which the generation fleeing to the dormitory badlands have grown up with – the property owning and share dealing fantasy of the New Right Baby-boomers and their grown-up children. My wealth, my future – the ad-man said so. The only responsibility we have is our responsibility to consume, expand and be just as aspirational.
This expansion has political backing: it is stated Federal and State Government policy to continue to support measures to increase Australia’s population. No breaks should be put on the City of the Gold Coast’s natural growth and ‘pull-factor’ growth – despite there being not enough water to drink beyond 20073.
However, despite what it seems, it isn’t all about consumer agency. These city-deserters are heading where the ad-men and their corporate clients want them to go. Business interests have used their political and financial leverage to promote sprawl, built on access to cheap energy and land and little guilt for squandering it. For a long while greenfield and previously undeveloped land has come all too cheaply, with various levels of government failing to gauge to the true costs of releasing this land for development (suin terms of utility supply without passing it on to the profiting developers. Local councils have even fought each other to get the development, the growth, the revenue and the prestige. Those that have proposed a more objective rethink to development have been electorally hijacked by pro-development industry selected representatives4.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Effective urban management and political leadership are the key drivers in providing the right incentives for more sustainable and equitable living. Currently, secondary and infill development is expensive and troublesome, despite there being many hectares of eminently useable land in the inner suburbs. If developers were encouraged to focus their energies on revitalising the inner suburbs, urban land sales would become more buoyant, driving down prices through greater competition, forcing fewer people out to the margins, escaping higher house prices.
Fortunately, it is not all one-way traffic of town. Despite outliers in the commuter belt growing more rapidly than Brisbane proper, some of the fastest growing areas, in terms of population growth, in Brisbane are the inner city suburbs of Spring Hill and Toowong. Thanks to better quality urban design outcomes, a new generation of home owners and new attitudes towards city living is drawing the (generally childless, at least until later in life) next generation of home owners into the city into higher density. But this must be part of a wider scheme of urban management, to protect (or redesignate) green space for recreation and wildlife, better sub-nodal areas of employment and services and more versatile transport links. The attraction to these places is also driven by the cultural vitality that the Brisbane Renaisance (post-Joh) is going through and the political vision for the city. But this vision needs to widen its scope to include the outer suburbs in the revitalisation process, to benefit the residents over the visitor or investor.
The new build presents an excellent opportunity to pursue building design with a reduced ecological footprint: new building codes5 will soon ensure that new housing makes more effort to reduce CO2 emissions from cooling rooms and heating water and include water saving and recycling systems. However, any gross reductions in emissions are likely to be negated if average dwelling sizes continue to increase and they become even more packed with energy sapping electrical devices6.
The Queensland State Government gave an election commitment to establish an inter-departmental office (“The Office of Urban Management”) to draw up and implement a regional plan and to co-ordinate infrastructure programs in South East Queensland.
The plan will have statutory backing and is answerable to the Deputy Premier. Decision making on regional planning issues will effectively become the responsibility of the State Government with local Councils taking an advisory role.
As a project of State Importance, the Minister will have wide ranging powers of direction and call-in.
The fabled Regional Plan
Late in the day, a tourniquet is being applied to stem the flow of the suburbs into what is left of natural SEQ. The much talked of Regional Plan for South East Queensland will define an urban growth boundary to outline the planned extent of the urban and peri-urban form until 2050. It will also identify growth areas, sub-regional frameworks (through alternative patterns of development), co-ordinate infrastructure planning in SEQ and secure the fate of protected bushland. Most importantly, it will be a statutory document that will bind all parties into the final agreement.
This regional plan will challenge the way land has been viewed in the Australian psyche. For the first time, the cult of the ‘pioneer7’ that has been built on the exploitation of Australia’s abundant natural resources and the pushing back of the frontier , will have to recognise limits to this expansion.
When the draft plan goes out for consultation in October 2004, there will be battles to be fought on the margins and a rush of speculative planning applications for major developments, but if enough space can be found to house the influx until 2050, what’s left maybe protected as green space (both agricultural, recreational and wilderness) for the time being. Ecological questions on carrying capacity may then be asked.
In non-wilderness growth regions, like SEQ, the protection of green space, habitat corridors, biodiversity, and environmental sustainabilty are all built on intelligent urban management, spatial planning and ‘green-lines’. It cannot be left to consumer demand and the market which has singularly failed to value any of these concepts correctly and encourages perverse outcomes in land-use, population densities and ecological footprints.
NOTES:
- The ‘200km City’ is the title of a Museum of Brisbane exhibit, sponsored and promoted by the Brisbane Institute. It will be a series of images, photographs and exhibits, depicting the 200km coastline between Coolangatta in the south and Noosa in the north – nearly all of which has been developed.
- An overwhelming number of Brisbanites commute to work by car. 91% of Brisbane residents commute by car, compared to 69% in Sydney, 27% in Tokyo and just 9% in Hong Kong. (Newman and Kenworthy, Institute for Sustainabilty and technology, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia and UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Urbanisation Prospects: The 1996 Revision, UN, NY, 1998.
- Assuming business as usual and no pipeline from Wivenhoe Dam to the Gold Coast, the supply of drinking water to the Gold Coast City will have reached capacity within 3 years.
- Gold Coast City Council, Maroochy Shire Council and Redland Shire Council have all returned ‘pro-development’ Councillors on the one hand and a more pragmatic independent Mayors on the other. Typically, election advertising spending for these candidates was higher than is the norm.
- Adoption of this building code, State wide, has been delayed by the Smart State Government.
- It is suggested that the shift towards set-top boxes for rendering digital television will boost CO2 emissions due to their poor ‘standby’ performance through use of cheap materials. ‘Internet fridges’ are expected to negate huge improvements in efficiencies in cooling technology.
- Despite having a national culture based on the great outback, jackeroos and farmers, Australia is one of the most urbanised countries in the world.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
White House Press Release
White House staff yesterday admitted that they had mislaid their copy of the Geneva Convention, the document signed in 1949 that protects prisoners of war and civilians caught up in combat zones.
In a shocking – if not totally surprising – announcement at a White House press conference, a spokesman for the President came clean about the reasons why the US Administration had blatantly ignored the relevant Articles in the Geneva Convention relating to the detention and treatment of Prisoners of War and the conduct of occupying forces.
“We’ve lost our copy. Plain and simple.” the spokesman said yesterday. “The White House staff did have an old photocopy, but somewhere between the previous [Clinton] administration moving out, and the new President moving in, it has been misplaced.”
“We believe it may have been shredded, along with most of the other old files on International Law, world free trade, the Kyoto Protocol, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Internation Criminal Court, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the UN Security Council and all other things deemed to be of secondary importance or just voluntary.”
Asked whether this was why the Bush Administration had bluntly ignored the provisions in the Convention regarding the harming and detention of prisoners captured in the field of battle, the spokesman replied “Yes”.
"and no."
“When we began rounding up Arabs in Afghanistan and Iraq we knew we ought to take a look at the Convention with our lawyers. But when we got back to the office to look up the provisions of the Convention, we found it was missing. No one could find it, not even on the web.”
- Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
- Taking of hostages;
- Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
- The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.'
“Then we remembered that a junior member of staff had majored in history at college a few years ago. She thought she could remember some of the important bits in the Convention.”
“Now it seems that although she could remember some of it, the exact wording escaped her. And she had got one or two words in Article 3 a little wrong, such as the inclusion of the word ‘not’ when it perhaps shouldn't have been in there.”
“On this basis, we felt that our treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was entirely justified and that ‘softening up’ of detainees for interrogation was allowed by the Convention.”
Later in the statement the spokesperson admitted that the Bush Administration had really “just been making it up as we went along” and that the he thought that it [the Geneva Convention] did not apply to the United States anyway as “what are you going to do about it? Write a firm letter to the President? Complain to the UN Secretary General? Gee, we’re scared now. Na-na-na-na-nar”
This disclosure is highly embarrassing for the Bush Administration which has been roundly criticised for its detention and treatment of prisoners in Guantanomo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, Jordan and Diego Garcia, mostly without habeas corpus or recourse to legal recognition.
A spokesperson from Human Rights Watch responded to the announcement by saying "The US had long argued that the Taliban prisoners were beyond the Convention and International Law, being in a sort of 'legal statis'. We also assumed that someone high up the chain of command had given specific orders to abuse prisoners in Iraq, ignoring basic human dignity.”
“Now we know the truth – they were just stupid.” He added.
Later, Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, was asked whether he thought it was appropriate that the existence of some prisoners in Iraq had not even been reported by the Bush Administration for up to eight months. He replied, “I don’t know, I’m just the Secretary of Defence, I am not paid to make decisions.”
Quizzed further on whether he thought that the US should give a hoot about international standards in the incarceration and detention of prisoners, he just shrugged, squinted and pushed his glasses back up his nose in that rather annoying, dismissive way of his.
| I am employed by Brisbane City Council. All views expressed in this blog are my own and in no way reflect the views of my employer. |
From WeaselWords.com.au