In my last entry I claimed that the phenomena of peak oil would cause great economic and social hardships on the entire world. Here I hope to shed light on the more specific threats we can expect to see in the coming decades. Many may argue that they are perfectly content to just ride a bicycle or that they have no need for a car where they live, and a few people even claim they would be fine without electricity and all of the work that entails. However, this is not the extent of the problem. The problem is that all of us, regardless of our attachment to modern luxury, have to eat to survive and currently the worlds agriculture is very heavily dependent on oil. In a recent article published in the The Salt Lake Tribune it was bluntly stated that, "Inhabitants of the United States literally eat oil. Oil is necessary to make the fertilizer and pesticides used on our crops; to irrigate them; and to fuel the machinery used to plant, cultivate, and harvest them. In one study conducted in 1994, it was calculated that feeding each American each year required the equivalent of 400 gallons of oil, exclusive of the energy, mainly oil, needed for packaging, refrigeration, transportation, and cooking. The authors calculated that for every calorie of food energy delivered to the consumer, 10 calories of other energy, mostly oil, are required. The lesson is clear: Without oil we starve."
Human life will go on without many of oils products such as the transportation, electronics and machinery but a break down in the farming system leads to famine. Human population has doubled in roughly 60 years and our oil consumption has increased even more exponentially. Traditional, pre-oil agriculture simply cannot feed 7 billion people. In a report sponsored by the European Union it was determined that the greatly enhanced yields from hydrocarbon aided farming produces about 75% of the worlds grain and feeds roughly 60% of the human population. As it stands, that is almost 4 billion people. Anything but the most optimistic of view points is rather troubling when all of this is considered.
Our species has become hopelessly dependent on a non renewable resource for its most basic needs. We consume over 85 million barrels of it everyday. Oil and other hydrocarbon fuel types power every aspect of our modern lives. This is not a "go green" sermon, this is not a climate change debate. This deals with a phenomena that we are certain will happen soon and it is called peak oil. Peak oil is described as the point in time when global oil production has peaked and then enters a terminal decline, as it is a finite resource and subject to depletion.
To help illustrate how important oil is to all of us, lets take a moment to look at what we would lose without it. Hydrocarbons provide the bulk of the energy needed in modern manufacturing. Therefore, every product in your house and the house itself is essentially an oil product. Oil's importance to all modern forms of transportation is obvious. All of our food and goods are transported over great distances with vehicles that burn gasoline. Certainly the most frightening issue is that our current method of agriculture depends entirely on oil. Without the gas powered machines and petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides, we would not be able to produce enough food for our growing population. As scarcity of oil increases, so will the price of every product and service that requires it. If this decline in oil production happens as sharply as some predict, we are in for one of the most difficult times in human history. Dr. Robert L. Hirsch, a Senior Energy Advisor for Management Information Systems Inc led a study for the U.S. Department of Energy on the subject of peak oil and said, "The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking."
Many experts predict this peak will occur between 2010 and 2020. There is no easy answer to this problem and it will take a combination of solutions and sacrifices to get through this period with our population in tact. Its going to take a combination of strict conservation, heavier reliance on alternative energy sources, more efficient vehicles, better oil extraction methods and new technologies in chemical fuels to replace the void that cheap oil will leave.
