Peak Oil and the President: An Energy Plan I Can Vote For
By Chris Heuer on Mon 11 Aug 2008 |
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Here’s a joke about America’s Energy Plan for you: A guy walks into a bar filled with average Americans and randomly asks them if they’ve ever heard of global warming (and the potentially serious impact it could have on future generations of human beings all over the world).
“Of course,” almost everyone replies. “I saw An Inconvenient Truth! I know all about…”
“Have you ever heard of peak oil?” the guy asks, interrupting them all.
Practically nobody has, and that’s the joke.
If you don’t get it, don’t feel bad. As recently as last April I wouldn’t have gotten it either. Oil has been around my whole life. I have never had any reason to question its presence or potential absence. Yes, there were dim and then more urgent warnings in the background, but these were always related to pollution, to environmental devastation. And after all, I’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth too.
I never thought that worldwide oil production might peak in my lifetime. I never thought about what would happen if it did peak and then remained flat while worldwide demand for it continued to rise. And I certainly never thought about what might happen if worldwide production entered terminal decline in the midst of that overwhelming demand.
Then a friend of mine told me what peak oil was all about, and I haven’t been able to look at anything in the same way since. I can’t look at the furniture in my living room without trying to calculate how much oil went into its manufacture and transport. My bookcase, for example, is made out of the wood of an old barn (I recycled and did my part to save the environment, yay me!) but how much gas did the carpenter burn driving out to the site of that old barn to load the two by fours into the back of his pickup truck? How much electricity did he burn cutting the wood with his table saw? My television, this laptop, how many barrels of oil? My easy chair, my front door, its lock, my son’s plastic swing, the light bulb glowing in my lamp? The entire townhouse I live in, the city I live in?
How much oil?
I’m from Wisconsin, land of row upon row of corn green and wheat yellow in the summer. How much diesel (derived from oil) to power the tractors to plow and harvest the fields? How much more to transport the kernels and grain to the trucks and boats and planes that take it all over the world?
How much mass starvation if oil hits three hundred, four hundred, or five hundred dollars a barrel? You can maybe put a solar panel on the roof of a tractor’s cab to run some of the air conditioning, or the radio, but can that solar panel drag a plow? How much oil goes into the production of a solar panel, anyway? Or a wind turbine? How much oil to mine the metal that makes a propeller blade?
I’m not an energy expert, so I need to know the answers to these questions. Because there are things that I just don’t get. John McCain wants to build nuclear power plants. Barack Obama wants to temporarily tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down gas prices. How much oil does it take to mine and transport an ounce, a pound, a ton of uranium? If you release a million barrels of oil from the Reserve, how many barrels of oil does it take to fill it back up again, especially if (and probably when) gas prices go back up a few months or a year from now?
I don’t know if this is going to amount to much, but I’m not going to vote for the guy who can’t or won’t answer this stuff. And for what it’s worth, I’m going to tell my wife and everyone else I know not to vote for him, either. I want both candidates to discuss their views on peak oil on public television. I want them both to tell me what they plan to do if the peak is five years off, twenty, or if it occurred five years ago. “America is addicted to oil” doesn’t cut it anymore… that’s like saying human beings breathe oxygen and water is wet. “I’ll get America off foreign oil in ten years” isn’t good enough for me either. I don’t care if oil isn’t going to entirely vanish tomorrow. I want a president who plans—and acts—as if it will.
Did you know, for example, that algae holds great promise as a third generation biofuel? What do our candidates think about that, and how will they scale up production beyond a few demonstration plants? Does either candidate have a plan for creating hydrogen production facilities that run on renewable power? How about installing an infrastructure to transport and store hydrogen so our cars and trucks and tractors can run on it… without relying on petroleum? How do we rebuild our electric grid so that plugging in our hybrids five years from now doesn’t black out an area the size of Los Angeles?
I don’t know the answers to these questions. But my President has to. If the era of cheap and easy oil is over, the political era of cheap and easy promises is over, as well.
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A good analogy here, Chris. I liked how you put the description into simple concepts that can make an instant connection for people.
There’s one thing you forgot to add that I think everyone should be aware of: the food we eat. It is manufactured or processed using oil. It is transported by trucks. It is lifted on forklifts. It is shelved on racks by people who drive to work in their cars.
That’s one big change my wife and I have made over the last several months, we have stopped buying products that are shipped from long distance and focused on buying local. It’s nice that our neighborhood Whole Foods, Trader Joe, and MOMs has information on local produce and food products.
So, while the rest of you readers ponder what Chris has to say, keep this tidbit in mind as well.
Sorry, but I disagree with this rationale, as it only tells a fraction of the whole story. For example, if we buy vegetables from farms outside this country.. we are supporting ‘pure manual’ labor. The local farms in this very state use tractors (and other machines) and fertilizers. And what about the miles you drive in your car… to your nearest store that sells “local food”? Flying a ton of food overseas is not necessarily as harmful as driving ten miles in your car. I could go on and on, but the Internet pretty much has everything you’ll need to know. The success of globalization depends on smart customers who take the time to research both sides before blindly picking up on - and spreading - myths such as the “food miles” one.
There’s something to be said for both of these arguments, in my humble opinion. I wonder how much of the problem could be offset if we got our farm and transport fleet (trucks, anwyay) running off of pure biodiesel? But that would require a fast transition off of first generation biofuels (corn and soybean-based ethanol, which takes up too much landmass to grow for fuel purposes alone) and into second generation switchgrass. But while you’re doing that scale up algae. I’ve read several articles now stating that the photobioreactors and/or open ponds needed to grow it can be placed on marginal croplands or even on land that won’t grow anything at all, use saltwater or brackish water, and wouldn’t need much more land than the size of Maryland to provide fuel for the whole U.S. All you need is a good CO2 source, and apparently we’ve got more of that than we know what to do with. I’m not not sure but the last I’ve heard of McCain talking about ethanol, he was telling farmers he wasn’t going to subsidize it. Good move or not, I’m not sure. And I don’t know where Obama stands on this. But third generation biofuel has to come along FAST. Any administration that can’t make significant inroads into scaling it up within the next five years isn’t worthy of running this country.
Good topic, but I’d like to go on a bit of a tangent and mention the following:
We won’t get anywhere (oil reduction wise) ’til we break up these oil conglomerates. Scientists and researchers have uncovered solutions to our reliance on oil/fossil fuels/natural gas. However, these answers will not come to fruition if the oil giants continue to buy up the research in attempt to prolong our dependence on them. With governments/oil companies *** for tatting each other, where does this leave the people?
Hi REM:
“Scientists and researchers have uncovered solutions to our reliance on oil/fossil fuels/natural gas…”
Will you indulge me and list a few you’ve heard of/read about? I like to read up on new science and tech in this area and see what people are talking about these days… the only thing I’ve ever heard of that can solve the liquid fuels problem is 3rd/4th generation biofuel (algae and beyond). What have you heard about? And website links too, please, if you have any… Thanks much!
didn’t realize t-i-t was considered a bad word here, heh.
few things come to mind - and I’m battling a nasty common cold so listing them might be the best way for me to pull out of my phlegmy brain.
According to Thomas Friedman’s article in NYT, John McCain has voted zero times out of six times Congress met to discuss taxes to stimulate alternative energy . He’s bellowing for Congress to vote..
Democrats are not allowing to open US offshore drilling. In some ways I think we could set a good example of clean drilling and be less hypocritical that we use other countries coasts, however Speaker Pelosi on Stewart’s Daily show mentioned that there may be powerful groups connected to the Republicans ready to rip up our coasts..I can go on and on.
Local is always good in the economical sense and self-sustainability in growing some herbs, tomatoes, cukes etc ourselves.. We’ll just be more responsible about using oil if we can’t afford alternative energy.
Hi Kate:
Can you explain what you meant by McCain voting zero times out of six to discuss alternatives but now he’s bellowing for Congress to vote? It’s difficult to track where he stands beyond his Lexington Project proposals. He doesn’t want Congress to discuss it… meaning he seems to be against alternatives, or he wants them to stop endlessly debating and just get on with voting on something now? I’m not sure what you mean…
Also, Obama. Does anyone have any opinions on Obama’s stance on these issues?
hi chris,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08.....ref=slogin if anyone is registered with NYT, they shdn’t have a problem with the link. A few excerpts to help clarify:
“It was only five days earlier, on July 30, that the Senate was voting for the eighth time in the past year on a broad, vitally important bill — S. 3335 — that would have extended the investment tax credits for installing solar energy and the production tax credits for building wind turbines and other energy-efficiency systems.” This is due to expire in December and according to Friedman, McCain wasn’t present to vote for them (8 times it was presented at Senate for voting) including the one time he was in his senate office and didn’t bother going to vote).
McCain favors nuclear energy over other alternatives and Friedman notes that Obama was there three times to vote in favor of solar and wind credits. And that he wasn’t there on July 30 to vote.
Friedman spoke with a man (and quoted him) from the Stella Group, a group that tracks clean tech legislation in Senate. I haven’t looked them up on the website yet.. hope this helps.
Few people realize how much oil has truly permeated the very fabric of the American way of life we are all now accustomed to.
Food is a great example; we are ‘consuming’ oil. Once peak oil hits, food will become more scarce and more expensive. Many restaurants could go out of business. The local farmers become kings. Even fast food may go the way of the dinosaur.
Where we live also has a huge impact on the peak oil equation. Cities with sophisticated transit systems such as NYC or Chicago will fare well. Cities with sprawling suburbs such as Atlanta, Miami, and Los Angeles will not. There will be a mass migration that America will have never seen; people going to high density urban cores that are serviced by mass transit.
Employment will be severely curtailed if Peak Oil hits, and there is no adequate replacement. Oil allows the American worker to be truly productive. Take that away, and if there’s no equivalent energy substitute, people face the prospect of protracted unemployment, or worse, permanent unemployment.
Thank you for writing an article covering a complex topic such as Peak Oil, and yet, making common connections to everyday life we all can relate to. We truly need to wake up to this problem, and seriously explore renewable sources of energy that allows us to sustain the American way of life.
Hi Cousin Vinny:
Thank you. And that’s why the upcoming election takes on an added dimension of urgency. Hubbert’s peak places us much closer to world peak production than we ever have been. We cannot afford to find out that his predictions are correct. Massive changes in how we do things have to occur during this presidency, during this term. Short term solutions are probably necessary right along with long-term ones, but short term thinking might very well turn out to be suicidal ten or twenty years from now. I agree, alternatives, especially liquid fuel alternatives (or battery powered vehicles if that’s feasible), have to be scaled up fast. The directives that Bush signed recently (scaling up ethanol production and wind/solar production somewhat) are a good first step in spirit, but payoffs that are coming in 2020 won’t do much if we already hit peak in 2005.
Chris — you speak the truth here. It’s going to be bad. But what’s more immediate is the meltdown in the financial industry. Don’t buy a house right now =)
I forgot to add the end quote after ‘vote).”. An update: the republicans are asking to add on gas and oil as credits. Obama agrees and welcomes it as a compromise.
Compromise is all good long as the gas and oil credits don’t trump the others. See-see. I hope eventually the US govt will embrace sugar cane as an alternative for energy since corn (heavily subsided and more healthy for consumption!) sucks as the ethanol alternative. I think Brazil is having a better time with their sugar cane based fuel.
-kate
We’re importing oil from countries that hated us - Saudi Arabia, Venezuala, Nigeria, etc. Are those liberal environmentalists in bed with them since they are silent on those countries’ human rights violations as shown at http://www.amnesty.org and http://www.hrw.org
You might check out
http://www.wecansolveit.org/
which is a site dedicated to Al Gore’s challenge to have clean energy in 10 years. I found the info useful and motivating — they are trying to mobilize people for political action. Like Chris says, we should be demanding leaders who give us a clear vision for positive solutions. And to be fair, both Obama and McCain have talked quite a bit about investing in renewable energy sources etc. I’m sure they will be addressing this more in their upcoming debates.
Chris
Americans use 25% of the world’s energy output everyday. Americans is only 4% of the world population. Americans ought to ask the rest of the world how 96% of the world population besides Americans manage to use only 75% of the world’s energy output without freezing or sweating or panting. The solutions to our (American) energy problem is easy to take but we want to waste energy so to generate tax revenues on the energy we use. it is a same analogy to our health industry which sick, tired, and weak patients are wanted and needed to keep the industry thriving and generating tax revenues for our government. Illness prevention or energy conservation doesnt generate tax revenues so we ignore them…
Hi Gumby:
I largely agree with your points in this and other posts but there is one small point I’d like to make in return: “Energy” is a broad term. There’s a lot of sunlight, for example, that hits the surface of the earth every second that we don’t make use of, so in a sense we “waste” it because we haven’t built enough solar arrays to capture it. Same thing goes for wind power, tidal power, geothermal power, etc. And in that limited sense, who is or isn’t using a greater percentage of the world’s “energy output” doesn’t really matter, so long as that energy is renewable. If all of the countries of Africa got together to build windmills and solar arrays, something to capture tidal power–what have you–and as a result those percentages shot up (for example, now America is using 25% of the world’s energy output and Africa is using 50% and everybody else combined is using the remaining 25%), that’s all fine. The real problem is when that power comes from non-renewable resources (oil and coal and natural gas, as you state), and when the whole of the world’s economy is dependent upon these non-renewable resources. Then we have a big problem. Natural gas will peak soon after oil, and coal will eventually peak too, as will uranium and everything else.
The only reason I bring this up is that America shouldn’t be knocked for using as much “energy” as it does. It should be knocked for using as much energy as it does that comes from sources that aren’t renewable, have to be imported, etc.
On a lighter note, I did see a ricksaw (two, in fact) in downtown Alexandria the other day. So that’s something. Saw more than a few buses running on Soybean oil, too.
As we run out of oil and natural gas, we will move to coal, nuclear and alternate energy like solar and wind so to keep generating tax revenues without regards to the environment. We do educate about energy conservation but we dont want to get too deep into it or it will reduce our tax revenues. There is so much to conserve but we dont want to get there too far. The rest of the world probably could not afford energy and they managed to keep themselves warm or cool or mobile without the need of too much energy. Maybe Americans can try rickshaws, I dont know.
Some Americans like environmentalists believe that education is the best way to help America. Sure, some Americans can learn but most doesnt have the time, gumpton, or the care to do it..
General question for anybody who is still following this post… what do you guys think of wind vs. nuclear power? McCain wants to scale up nuclear power, and I’m pretty sure Obama is hesitant to do this. I’d mention competitive sources other than wind but wind power seems to be the strongest sector in renewables right now.