Rex Weyler: Oil Shock

SOCAR Oil Fields #4, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2006 by Edward Burtynsky

This article was generously shared by Rex Weyler

“While the energy crisis will have severe economic impacts, it is not fundamentally about economics. It is about human ecology and the limits of growth.”
Dr. William Rees, University of British Columbia, author of Our Ecological Footprint.

The world oil harvest has peaked. For geologists this is not news. Science and industry have known about oil limits for over fifty years, at least since Shell Oil geologist M. King Hubbert described the phenomenon in 1956. In 2005, after a century of growth, liquid petroleum fuel production peaked. Since then, it has maintained a wobbly plateau at about 85 million barrels per day, and will eventually begin an inevitable and relentless decline.

Meanwhile, the burning of hydrocarbons has increased carbon-dioxide in our atmosphere, heating Earth, turning oceans acidic, and threatening the entire human community. From the point of view of carbon emissions, an oil decline appears positive, but we shall discover that the impacts on the environment and society are not simple and not equally shared across the human community.

The popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain exposed the limit of global oil production. Libya provides about 1.8 percent of world production, but even the threat of losing a portion of this sent oil prices to their highest level since the months before the 2008 economic collapse.

Humanity took the cheap, easy, high-quality oil first – as we did with most resources – and the remaining oil fields produce a progressively lower grade, harder to retrieve oil. The Libyan fields produce a good-quality, low sulphur oil, prized for making gasoline. However, such oil is quickly disappearing, replaced by dirty, low-net energy oil such as tar sands crude and coal-to-liquid fuel. These sources increase environmental destruction and carbon emissions.

Since peak oil has arrived, every disruption creates shortages, increases prices, and triggers inflation, which hurts the poor first and sparks social unrest. Thus, we witness how ecological fundamentals impact society. Peak oil disrupts industrial societies addicted to oil and developing societies maintaining modest communities with much more limited energy supplies.

Peak oil recessions

In 2003, as the oil industry approached maximum world production, a barrel of oil cost about $30. When production stopped growing in 2005, world demand kept rising, outpacing supply, and the oil price rose to $40, 50, then $60 per barrel. By the fall of 2008, oil had reached $147/barrel, helping trigger a recession. The 2008 economic breakdown revealed ecological limits as well as financial blunders.

The rise of oil from $30 to $147 per barrel – reflecting the limit of the resource – added about $3.5 trillion per year to the world’s energy budget, almost 5 percent of the entire world economy. History shows that national and global economies rise and fall with available energy. Since energy is fundamental to economy, nations, companies, and households paid the rising energy costs in 2008, but this reduced budgets for all other economic activity, including food, travel, and loan payments. As economies faltered, companies and homeowners in the wealthy nations defaulted on loans, exposing financial fraud and unsecured derivatives. The financial collapse of 2008 signalled the first “peak oil” economic crisis.

“Oil shocks create global recessions,” explained Jeff Rubin, former Chief Economist at Canadian International Bank of Commerce World Markets. In February of this year, Steven Kopits from Douglas-Westwood energy consultants presented a report to the United States House of Representatives Energy Subcommittee staff. He told them, “2008 was an oil shock, not just a financial crisis.” But his warning did not stop there. More oil shocks are on the way “most likely in 2013, although 2012 is not precluded.”

The Next Oil Shock

In February, the world learned from Wikileaks that ex-Saudi-Aramco executive Dr. Sadad al-Husseini believes the Saudi company overstated its oil reserves. Since 1990, Saudi Arabia has produced about 10 million barrels per day (mb/d), but that production is in decline. According to Kopits, since 2008, the Saudi oil fields have failed to produce about 1 mb/d of expected “spare capacity,” considered critical to the global economy during oil disruptions such as the uprisings in North Africa. These revelations suggest that Saudi production may continue its decline and fail to produce any spare capacity within the next two years. Kopits predicts “Oil shock thereafter.”

Furthermore, the diminishing returns on oil investment present more evidence of peak oil and eminent decline. Typically, as a resource declines, the quality deteriorates, ecological impacts increase, and the costs to retrieve that resource increase. Witness the oil industry. The quality of oil has plummeted. Oil fields in the 1930s yielded 100 barrels of oil for each barrel of oil burned to recover it. This was “100-to-1” net energy oil, low in sulphur, easy to recover. Today, tar sands producers, for example, recover 3 or 4 barrels of oil for one barrel of oil energy used for extraction. The product is heavy, high-sulphur oil, yielding higher carbon emissions and leaving behind greater ecological devastation. Similar energy costs and ecological impacts result from deep-sea oil rigs, such as the one that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
Densified Oil Filters #1
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 1997 by Edward Burtynsky.


According to Kopits, between 1995 and 2004, the oil industry spent $2.4 trillion on capital expenditures, and increased oil production by 12.3 million barrels per day. Then, from 2005 to 2010, the industry again spent $2.4 trillion in capital expenditures, but production declined by 0.2 mb/d. These diminishing returns on investment are typical of a depleted, degraded resource, a story as old as human civilization.

In January, Shell Oil released the “Energy Scenarios to 2050” report that acknowledged peak oil production and declining net-energy. Shell, which passed its own production peak in 2003, conceded, “The energy system will struggle to match surging demand for easily accessible energy.” The economic impacts range from higher food prices to industry slowdown. In February, the International Air Transport Association in Geneva estimated that rising oil prices will cut airline industry profits in half in 2011 compared to 2010.

Since world agriculture relies on oil-based equipment, fertilizers, and transport, rising oil prices drive food inflation, causing hunger and frustrations in the world’s poorest nations. Furthermore, the necessary transition to renewable energy also relies on oil-based infrastructure, mining, shipping, and manufacturing.


Transition: Harvesting energy

“Production” is not the correct way to describe energy acquisition. We do not “produce” oil; we harvest it. We do not produce any energy. We only capture and transform energy. We also do not produce copper, silver, or lithium for our new technologies. We harvest these as well. We mine such resources with oil-burning machines, and this harvest is limited by Earth’s finite capacity.

Human civilization must make a transition to renewable fuels. Ultimately, this is inevitable if there is going to be a sustainable human civilization. Environmental groups and a few visionary governments and companies have been pushing this transition for decades, against a great deal of resistance and denial. As we make the change to renewable energy over the next generation, we must be aware of two important realities about our natural world: scale and limits.

Oil has fuelled the massive scale of human enterprise today and the affluence and wastefulness in wealthy nations. However, the oil we burn represent 500-million years of solar energy, captured, primarily by ocean algae, transformed by photosynthesis, and stored deep in the Earth. We currently burn this ancient solar energy at the rate of about 5-million-years’ worth of recoverable energy in one year.

This should awaken us to our challenge. We cannot assume that we will replace the scale and extravagance of modern industrial cultures with energy that we harvest from the sun on a daily basis. The wealthy countries need to embrace simpler lifestyles. Hydrocarbons – coal, oil, and gas – represent 85 percent of human energy consumption. Nuclear (which is not a “low carbon” energy source due to the carbon emissions of cement, steel, mining, construction, decommissioning, and waste storage) comprises 6 percent. These high-carbon energy sources represent 91 percent of human energy consumption.

Wood and other biomass represents 4 percent of human energy. Hydro-electric dams – built on some 30,000 rivers since 1900 – represent 3 percent. The remaining renewable energy sources – solar, wind, geothermal, and biofuels provide about 1.2 percent of our energy. Wind has shown the most growth among the renewables, reaching 200,000 megawatts by 2010, about 0.3% of the energy we currently obtain from burning hydrocarbons.

“Beware of scale,” says David Hughes, petroleum engineer for 30 years with the Canadian National Resource Council. “There are no scalable alternatives to the dense energy available from fossilized sunshine, period. So we have to get with the picture: radical reduction in energy throughput.” The first priority of a sound energy transition will be conservation. Wealthy nations must lead in energy reduction, as we build localized, low-impact, renewable energy systems for all nations. Biological and social histories demonstrate that the key to sustainability is simplicity and restraint, not complexity and growth.

A good energy strategy will also protect the primary energy harvesting systems on Earth, our living forests, grasslands, and oceans. We will require good public transportation systems, reversing the trend toward highways and private automobiles. The sustainable model for individual transportation is still the bicycle. Most of these changes will take generations. We can help our progeny by beginning the transitions now. The decline of oil is inevitable, but how we respond will determine our progress toward genuine sustainability.

Andrea Peloso: Vegetables, Greens, Sauces, Milks

With regards to vegetables - virtually ALL of them can last outside of the fridge. The question is: for how long? All root vegetables keep fantastically, cool dark areas are best, but even a fruit bowl with added root veggies is great. Traditional methods to store root vegetables through the winter abound, one I like is storing them in boxes in cool, clean sand. But we're just talking about a few weeks or more here, so you should be fine just keeping them out. Yes, perhaps covering them with a towel would protect them. I just keep mine in my no-longer-plugged-in fridge.

Suggestions for buying lettuce. BUY LOCAL. There is way more of a chance that it will be fresh and last longer. BUY ORGANIC - it's safer for your health. Even in the winter it is possible to find local greens at places like THE CULINARIUM if you are in Toronto and other markets. There are also local organic lettuce heads served with the roots and a bit of soil still there. These do amazingly well sans fridge. Just place the bulb of roots in a cup of water.

Greens and herbs - just put them in fresh water in cups. They look beautiful and will last for a few days. Experiment with this as some will last longer than others. For instance, Basil is a fast wilter, but also dries quite easily if just hung and turned upside down. My dandelion greens tonight look hearty and I suspect they will last me at least until 2 days from now. But the encouragement here is to eat your greens fresh!! Get that basil right on your pasta!! No time to waste. In the end, you will find that you are eating much fresher food as a result.

Almond milk, so glad you asked! Almond milk, of all the milks out there, is the absolute best for going without a fridge. It will keep longer, especially by a cool window or sitting upright in a sink of cool water. I find I can have a big glass one evening, then add it to my cereal the next morning, and finish it off later in the day. In the winter, or any time I have access to cold, the shelf life of almond milk can really last. Next to a cold window, or in a pot of fresh snow, it can last as long as it would in a fridge if you keep it cool enough, as would all milks. I have not tried. If you think you could not consume this much almond milk in the time I've mentioned, try this recipe for a fast, fresh, daily dose:

handful of almonds(preferably soaked overnight but if you forget, just go for it...use them anyway)
filtered water
tiny pixie dust of salt
(below 3 ingredients optional)
dash of vanilla
sprinkle of cinnamon
drop of maple syrup, fair trade sugar, agave, or local honey.

blend!!

This is by far the most fun way to consume almond milk. Takes the amount of time grabbing and tossing some almonds and rinsing the blender takes... so 1 min or so.

For a local option, try homemade oat milk:

Fill a large jug with one-third oats and two-thirds water. Mix, and leave overnight. The next morning, sieve the mixture and you will be left with a milky liquid that can be drunk as it is or used in place of cow's milk in some recipes. You can add sweeteners or other things suggested above for more flavour.


Here's an interesting article from the Guardian on 7 alternatives to milk:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2006/mar/04/healthandwellbeing.fitness

Of course, winter is an amazing time to store animal milks, like goat or cow. Goat is lighter on the planet! I also feel compelled to mention as a side note that goats jump when they play, make friends with dogs and horses, climb trees, check out these photos before we move on to sauces!


goats play by jumping completely into the air...

climb trees...

okay, this little guy was just cute...

Find kind dairy farmers who care for their animals if they milk them!!
And animals are always best as friends!!

Prejarred Sauces:

So many can be kept outside of the fridge after opening. I recommend still keeping them in a cool dry place if you think they will be around for a while. But any way, they will keep. All nut butters, including tahini do just find outside of the fridge. As well as non-dairy curry pastes, soy sauce, hot sauces, and beyond. Even miso will keep but is much more delicate and definitely need the cool dry place.

Hope this answers some of your questions... keep them coming!!

The Unplugged Home: Happy Earth Hour! It's Easy

artwork: "Sleeping House"

I realized once I had unplugged my fridge that I was able to leave my entire apartment without using one 'drop' of power when I did not need it. This felt incredibly liberating. I felt in control of what I was using, conscious of what was happening, like I had at least found a personal solution to waste. I would leave my house, and not one tiny red light was blinking for no reason.

Conventionally, the fridge is always running. I am tempted to add 'always already' running but let's save Heidegger for another time...

We anticipate the need to use power without knowing whether or not we will actually need it. Our unquestioned assumption is that we will always need power.

The fridge motivated me to turn off the rest of the simple gadgets living sleepless lives in my space. I had a battery operated watch which I would use to set a battery operated alarm, or just rise by the sun. My computer/tv/stereo could easily be unplugged by simply bending down once, simply getting up again.

In one small moment I had unconsciously converted my home from a home that perpetually used power to one that only used power when I needed it.

It's amazing how far our society has gone to prevent us from simply unplugging.

But its very easy. Its great to let the house sleep. We've created a culture with so many needless things running, tiny lights, nothing too quiet or still. We need rest, so does the earth.

I called Toronto Hydro. I am currently paying $3 a month in hydro, what I pay to Bullfrog Power, and a $17 connection fee. When I am away, they will suspend my power. I can save that money and also make the point that power is not always (already) necessary.

Brent La Rue: My Fridge-Free Kitchen in Nebraska

This article was written for Living without a Fridge and Beyond, and published with the permission of Brent La Rue


Well I travel a lot for work and wanted a cheap place to use as a workshop and living space. My goals were to keep a very simple lifestyle for as long as possible. After I was fully moved in I started setting up my kitchen. I really didn't think about it for long before I decided against having a fridge. It seemed to me as more of a hassle and an excuse to buy more food than needed.


Living without a fridge has been great. I work in wind surveying and spend half the month on the road so I don't worry about it when I'm gone; when I'm home I have time to go grocery shopping every couple of days. I have done this for the simplicity of it and have not bothered to packing a cooler full of ice or put food outside in the snow.

I'd like to convince more of my friends to do without. Having the time to go grocery shopping every couple days helps a lot. In general, I spend less and buy smaller quantities of the pricier items like meat, cheese, and beer. It's helped condition me to cook smaller meals and use everything I buy. I would go as far to say it's a lot healthier to live fridge less if done right.

Well, I can see if my eggs float before cooking to tell if they're rotten or not. One morning I wasn't quite awake and just dropped an egg into an empty cup!

My family is pretty used to me doing things like this and support it with a bit of skepticism. As for my friends, almost all of them are for it but not that many of them are going to try it for themselves.

I'd say it's a positive change. I eat better, waste less, and feel slightly unburdened. How often do you get to say that instead of buying something you just changed your own habits and did without? The only issue so far is I can't store film or screen printing emulsion for long periods of time.


This article was kindly written by Brent La Rue.

Democracy Now: Japan faces Worst Nuclear Meltdown since the Dawn of the Nuclear Age

Excellent coverage by Democracy Now that explores the Nuclear Catastrophe in Japan in the context of potential Nuclear Catastrophes here in North America. Some organizations working to end Nuclear Power in North America are Beyond Nuclear and Greenpeace (different websites for each country)

Arlene Tigar McLaren: Going carless or carfree?

This article was generously shared by *Arlene Tigar McLaren

In January, our 1995 Toyota Camry recently ended up in a scrap-it program. The salvage company that took the car is located in a wasteland of trashed automobiles, trucks and buses on the banks of the Fraser River in Surrey, BC. On the way home, our taxi driver said that many of the crushed vehicles will be shipped off for recycling in less developed countries such as India with cheaper labour, fueling the global economy. We left the car wondering if we would have any regrets as we began our new venture. Would we be carless or carfree? With the courtesy taxi ride to Metro Vancouver's Skytrain, we were on our way.

We joined the Vancouver Cooperative Auto Network and thanks to the scrap-it program, have $750 credit, which will likely last well beyond the year and maybe two or three years. So far, we've used the coop car only a few times and have not yet rented a car, which by joining the coop is cheaper at specific rental companies.

Do we miss the car? Hardly. Being carless is not all roses, but how can one regret leaving behind the expenses, hassles about repairs, traffic congestion, parking problems, and stresses of driving?

Being without a car has been a money saver. At minimum, maintaining and running our car cost us $4000 a year, or about $10 a day. In the last two months, savings are close to $600. Occasional trips to see family and friends on Vancouver Island, which were about $100 roundtrip for the car on the ferry (plus gas), now cost about $10.

Most of the time, we get around by walking and sometimes taking public transit, which we used a fair amount when we owned a car. Vancouver's public transit system could be better - a lot better. It's too costly for many and frustrating when the service is slow or inconvenient. But the transit system has the potential to provide services that would greatly benefit most people.

Luckily, the buses are quite good where we live and the rides are often entertaining. It's fun to people-watch, like sitting in an outdoor café yet getting where you want to go. In contrast to the car, the bus is a good place for talking to fellow passengers, reading, text messaging, listening to music, and using cell phones. It's a cool, connected and diverse public space.

If public transit is well organized, the ride is not only entertaining but also freeing. You don't have to use seat belts, deal with congested traffic or find parking spots. You can get more easily on and off than in a car. Ramps for buggies, scooters and wheelchairs and racks for bikes have made buses more accessible.

As our default mode, walking has come to have a different feeling about it than it had before; you just do it since the car is not an option. The more one walks, the easier it becomes; even the steep hill that is sometimes necessary to climb to our home has become more surmountable over time.

Exercise is now integrated into daily routines of not just walking our dog, but going to nearby local shops for groceries and other items. Our habits are changing. A light knapsack is a constant companion. The food is fresher. It might even be possible one of these days to 'ditch the fridge'

The experience and subjectivity of distance is changing. I'm not sure why, but ironically, journeys that used to feel long when traveling by car can seem shorter if walking, bicycling, riding a scooter, or taking public transit.

(wear your helmet!! - hard to find images with helmets)

The collapsing of distance may have to do with no longer having the stress of driving. It is also possible that distances feel shorter as a result of short cuts. Driving a car usually means following arterial roads, but non-motorized transport often includes exploring quieter streets that provide more direct routes, which can actually be entertaining, making the feeling of time and distance diminish.

Public transit might also reduce the sense of distance because of the way it stitches communities together.

Only recently, for example, did I discover (and why isn't this kind of knowledge more widely circulated?) how well public transit coordinates travel from Vancouver to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal. What once seemed far away requiring a car now feels closer because of the good connections between the skytrain and express buses that pull together several communities (Vancouver, Richmond, Delta and Tsawwassen).

In addition, using this transit system frees up worrying about traffic and whether or not the ferry will have enough room for the car. It's a good feeling to know that once you've left the bus, you simply reach the ferry as a pedestrian.

Popular culture and commercial advertisements portray the car as a means of escape, freedom, adventure, convenience, safety and fun - providing all the good things in life. The truth is that as the most injurious and deadly of daily activities, with almost 3000 people dying each year in Canada from crashes, motor vehicles fail abysmally the test of representing wellbeing. That tragic figure is only the tip of the iceberg of injuries and near misses that are far more numerous and impossible to count.

Driving is supposed to fulfill the modern dream of individualism but how can it? It has become one of the most constrained and frustrating activities of daily life, with its seat belts, car seats, road rage, rules and regulations.

Its promise of individualism is highly over-rated. In contrast to the isolated cocoon of the car, non-motorized travel and public transit provide people with opportunities that many crave: to connect with local neighbourhoods, the general public and social media.

Needless to say, car dependence is degrading the quality of life as it encourages sprawl, holds us hostage to oil, pollutes the air and atmosphere and usurps public space.

I have a dream…. a more democratic future in which cities such as Vancouver will have a railway/streetcar/rapidtransit/bus/mini-bus/customtransit/bike(scooter)path/walking complex connectivity that is a lifeline in support of everyone's travel - that is safe, accessible, sustainable and pleasurable for people of all ages, incomes, genders, races, abilities and walks of life, that allows everyone to participate more fully in society.

The road and transportation system in most Western cities is built around the world of drivers of a certain age, activity, ability and income. It excludes most of society particularly those who are young, old, have physical or mental disabilities, or inadequate incomes.

When Vancouver was a fledgling city with a much smaller population, it had a well-developed streetcar and inter-urban system that tied neighbourhoods and communities together. That was progress! Back to the future! Without a car, one can feel more carefree. But, getting around sure could be a lot more liberating if we had a publicly supported transportation system that benefited everyone and that was subsidized as highly as is the private motor vehicle.

Here's a clip - the earliest film of Vancouver - and of its streetcar routes in 1907:



*Arlene Tigar McLaren is the Co-editor (with Jim Conley) of Car Troubles: Critical Studies of Automobility and Auto-Mobility. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

Henry David Thoreau: Morning Air & How to Live Immersed in Nature

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature-of sun and wind and rain,
of summer and winter-such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun’s brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if anyone should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?

What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? Not my or thy great-grandfather’s, but our great-grandmother Nature’s universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always. . . . For my panacea. . .let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If people will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world.

Solitude (Walden)