Caveat: The item below this introduction has just made the rounds of the Delaware Valley Sustainability list-serve and seems authentic. Although extremely pessamistic, from an anthropocentric point of view, this kind of talk and information has been quietly echoing through the halls and off the cliffs for a number of years.
"Peak Oil Breaking News
"Dear Reader,
"Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely-respected geologists, physicists, bankers, and investors in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global "Peak Oil."
"In a similar sense, an oil based economy such as ours doesn't need to deplete its entire reserve of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 10 to 15 percent is enough to wholly shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty."
"The effects of even a small drop in production can be devastating. For instance, during the 1970s oil shocks, shortfalls in production as small as 5% caused the price of oil to nearly quadruple. The same thing happened in California a few years ago with natural gas: a production drop of less than 5% caused prices to skyrocket by 400%. Fortunately, those price shocks were only temporary."
"The coming oil shocks won't be so short lived. They represent the onset of a new, permanent condition. Once the decline gets under way, production will drop (conservatively) by 3% per year, every year. War, terrorism, extreme weather and other "above ground" geopolitical factors will likely push the effective decline rate past 10% per year, thus cutting the total supply by 50% in 7 years."
These estimate comes from numerous sources, not the least of which is Vice President Dick Cheney himself. In a 1999 speech he gave while still CEO of Halliburton, Cheney stated: "By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves.That means by 2010 we will need in additional 50 million barrels per day."
"Cheney's assesement is supported by the estimates of numerous non-political, retired, and now disinterested scientists, many of whom believe global oil production will peak and go into terminal decline within the next five years. Many industry insiders think the decline rate will far higher than Cheney predicted in 1999. Andrew Gould, CEO of the giant oil services firm Schlumberger, for instance, recently explained: "An accurate average decline rate is hard to estimate, but an overall figure of 8% is not an unreasonable assumption."
"An 8% yearly decline would cut global oil production by a whopping 50% in under nine years. If a 5% cut in production caused prices to triple in the 1970s, what do you think a 50% cut is going to do?"
"Other experts are predicting decline rates as high as 10% to 13%. Some geologists now believe 2005 was the last year of the cheap-oil bonanza, while many estimates coming out of the oil industry indicate "a seemingly unbridgeable supply/demand gap opening up after 2007," which will lead to major fuel shortages and increasingly severe blackouts beginning around 2008-2012. As we slide down the downslope slope of the global oil production curve, we may find ourselves slipping into what some scientists are already calling the coming "post industrial stone age."
About Matt Savinar
"Matt Savinar was born and raised in California. He received his undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of California at Davis. He received his law degree from the University of California at Hastings College of the Law, is a California licensed attorney.
He has appeared on numerous national and international radio shows to discuss global Peak Oil, the ramifications of a declining oil supply, and what we can do to address our energy issues.
His work has been quoted extensively on the floor of the United States Congress and has been featured prominently in the pages of Fortune Magazine. His website, LifeAftertheOilCrash.net is assigned reading at multiple university courses around the world."
Afterwords:
The LATOC position reflects a polar extreme in the degree of "energy and climate uncertainty" that is somewhat balanced by the technocornucopian outlook of visionaries like Buckminster Fuller, Rocky Mountain Institute, the Natural Capitalists, and sustainablity visionaries like William McDonough, Michael Braungart, and Chris Zelov. The only way we can discover the most efficient path to adaptation as we plan our Relocalization strategy is to discover what we might need to be adapting to. That is revealed in the range of possibilities, much like the projection of a hurricane track a week or two into the future.
Since the data, to date, has been ambiguous, and our human tendancy is to usually discount worst-case scenarios, my experience as operations director and disaster planner with the Philadelphia Civil Defense Rescue Services and the South Western Connecticut EMS Systems Advisory Council tell me to pay attention to the extremes of possibility.
The folly of avoidance is nowhere better illustrated in the U.S. than by the California wildfires of 2003 and the hurricanes in the U.S. Gulf coast in 2005. The preparations for the recent California fires were made far more effective by lessons learned from the failures during the prior disasters. Examples in the developing world, especially the Asian tsunami of January 2005 have not provided the same rapidity of adaptation despite the horrific loss of life and devastation and the relatively low cost of installing adequate warning systems.
However, the scale and scope of the "triple threats" posed by peak oil, global climate change, and global resource depletion will not allow nations the luxury of getting it wrong the first time around, like is often the case. We'll have one shot at this and although there is virtually no hope of achieving perfect preparations this late in the warning window, we can do better if we are nimble in what we set in place, and be ready to adapt our plans to changes that only become visible over time. To be effective, there has to be provisions that won't not lock humanity out of options for a shifting pattern of worst-case scenarios.
