One of the most powerful ideas motivating people to advocate for a local, green economy is the concept of peak oil: the argument that at some point in the not-to-distant future, we are going to face acute petroleum scarcities that will demand a complete overhaul of our society and economy.
Defenders of the peak oil theory say you don’t have to be a shrieking Cassandra to believe that the oil-and-gas age is coming to a close. You simply have to recognize the basic laws of science. As we all learned in elementary school, fossil fuels are not a renewable commodity. To wonder when the petroleum we depend on will start running out misses the point: We’ve been running out ever since the first commercial oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859.
The rules of geology mean that at some time, oil production will decline. Already, the petroleum firms are going to extreme lengths—pursuing deep-sea drilling, exploring for oil in tar sands and shale deposits, trying to wring the last drops from existing wells using high-powered steam—to eke out the globe’s remaining oil. A common misconception is that society will face an energy crisis when we reach the last drop of oil. But the trouble will start long before that, as soon as we have used up more than half of all the oil that exists. Because after that point—the peak of global petroleum production—the laws of supply and demand will kick in, making oil increasingly expensive, so that it is no longer financially feasible for society to rely on it as we currently do.
When will we hit that peak? No one knows for sure. Many geologists and observers believe that we will hit the peak sometime in the next 10 years. Others say it’s farther in the future. In any case, it’s clear that anyone born in the last quarter of the 20th century will live to see a post-oil age.
For a time, natural gas may be able to fill the gap. But gas, like oil, is also held hostage to the rules of science. Geologists expect natural gas production to climax within a few decades of the petroleum peak. Clean energy sources such as wind, solar, and mini-hydro will be able to make up some of the difference. New research and development may uncover energy sources never even imagined. Yet the contribution of all these sources is limited. There is simply nothing as energy dense and as easily transportable as petroleum, no quick-fix alternative.
So what will Peak Oil mean for our lives? For one thing, cheap travel will become a thing of the past—goodbye, backpacking trips to Bali and cross-country road trips. Our transportation infrastructure is utterly dependent on oil. Forty percent of all the petroleum we consume goes into our personal cars and trucks, and another 20 percent is burned by our trains, semi trucks, and airplanes. As fuel costs rise, our freeways could crawl to a stop, our airports could be shuttered. The process of economic globalization, which is so dependent on inexpensive transport, will hit a brick wall.
Then things could get really ugly. Modern agriculture has become completely reliant on carbon energy inputs. The synthetic nitrogen fertilizers that are essential for high crop yields are a by-product of natural gas. Gasoline and diesel fuels power the combines that rumble through the grain fields. Countless kilowatts of electricity are burned up in the factories that process all the packaged goods that line the supermarket shelves. And then there’s the gasoline required simply to get food to market. Without the help of fossil fuels, farming as we know it would collapse.
Authors such as Richard Heinberg (The Party’s Over) and James Howard Kunstler (The Long Emergency) have sold thousands of books detailing the nightmare scenarios of a post-oil age. But, as these writes show, the future doesn’t have to be gloom-and-doom; our fate remains in our own hands. If we can find a way to re-localize our economies—to make them more reliant on regionally available resources—then we may be able to avoid the apocalypse some fear.
If not? Then, as David Goodstein, another Peak Oil author, warns, we are in big trouble. Goodstein is no greenie; a former provost of California Polytechnic State University, he is firmly in the scientific mainstream. Goodstein worries that society is ill-prepared to manage the transition. In his book Out of Gas, he writes: “Civilization as we know it will not survive unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels.”