After Petroleum: Twelve Theses
By Peter Goodchild
06 June, 2012
Countercurrents.org
1. World oil production in the year 2030 will be about half that of the year 2000. (The mathematics for this began largely with M. King Hubbert in the 1950s.) If we combine those figures with those of world population, we can see that there were 5 barrels of oil per person per year in 2000, but there will be only 2 barrels of oil per person per year in 2030. Roughly the same proportion is true of other fossil fuels, and most metals are also in decline.
2. Alternative sources of energy are a failure mainly because of insufficient net energy -- "energy return on energy invested." It takes "oil energy" to make "alternative energy," e.g. in the case of the production and maintenance of equipment. "Alternative energy," in other words, is merely one more product of our vast fossil-fuel civilization. Some alternative sources, such as water power (for hydroelectricity) and nuclear power, have other limitations in practicality that can never be solved.
3. Because the entire world economy is tied to fossil fuels for manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, mining, electricity, and so on, the decline in these fuels leads to an increasing problem of low wages and high prices ("stagflation"). Such economic struggles will in turn eventually result in "erosion of investor confidence" and collapse of the currency market and stock market. It is pointless to wait for the "recovery" of the global economy, because it cannot happen.
4. The shortage of oil will continue to result in warfare, which will be increasingly global in nature, at least while "modern" warfare is still possible.
5. The above events will cause considerable mortality. Above all, "peak oil" means "peak food." The enormous problem of overpopulation, in other words, will be followed by population contraction. The human population can only be maintained permanently at less than one percent of its present level.
6. The conventional news-media and the politicians will not state the problems. It is bad business to deliver bad news, and always has been; e.g., during the Great Depression of the 1930s the newspapers denied the existence of any problem.
7. Solutions on a global scale are impossible, because there is no responsible governing body for all those billions of people, or even for a large segment of those people: most politicians deny the existence of an imbalance between population and natural resources, but they are merely spouting hypocrisy to win votes. There is also not much that the academic community can do (even if it wanted to), since there are about 5,000 languages, and most people do not read.
8. Nevertheless, planning for post‑oil survival must eventually be on a scale larger than that of the individual person. Anthropological studies such as those of Robin Dunbar indicate that the working group (i.e. the group that collectively performs most daily activities) in most societies is about 100 people. Even groups of that size may be impossible at first, but the number provides an ideal to be kept in mind.
9. Since the Industrial Revolution, most people in developed countries have increasingly lost touch with the concepts of "native land" and extended family. They have not "followed the plow" but rather the factory, which has been built or rebuilt wherever and whenever the owners found it convenient to do so. Returning to those earlier concepts will therefore be necessary.
10. In general, survival in smaller population centers will be easier than in larger ones, because the larger ones are more dependent on the importation of food, water, heating fuel, and other materials. Cities do not produce (i.e. they do not produce essentials); they only consume.
11. The modern world has been characterized by an elaborate infrastructure (transportation, communication, etc.) and an elaborate division of labor. The old-fashioned and more-basic skills for providing food, clothing, and shelter have therefore been largely forgotten, but they must be relearned.
12. Most writing on "country living" contains a great deal of misinformation, because often one writer merely copies from another. Relearning will therefore be largely a matter of doing a good deal of experimentation.
Some Basic Reading:
Bagdikian, B. H. (2000). The media monopoly. 6th ed. Boston: Beacon.
Broadfoot, B. (1973). Ten lost years 1929‑1939: Memories of Canadians who survived the Depression. Toronto: Doubleday.
Catton, W. R., Jr. (1980). Overshoot: The ecological basis of revolutionary change. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press.
Gever, J. et al. (1986). Beyond oil: The threat to food and fuel in the coming decades. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger.
Kaplan, R. D. (1996). The ends of the earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia. New York: Random.
Klare, M. T. (2002). Resource wars: The new landscape of global conflict. New York: Henry Holt.
Meadows, D. H. et al. (1972). The limits to growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind. New York: Universe.
Peter Goodchild is the author of Survival Skills of the North American Indians, published by Chicago Review Press. His email address is prjgoodchild[at]gmail.com
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