Reese: Bad Times Coming: The End of the Oil Age 3/3/04

[Guest guest]

3/3/04

 

Bad Times Coming: The End of the Oil Age

By Charley Reese

(syndicated columnist)

 

One of the things the Bush administration is ignoring is the coming

catastrophe that is likely to impoverish the world and plunge it into

global warfare.

It will be the end of civilization as we know it, and it will occur in

this decade or the next. Not since the fall of the Roman Empire will

human progress so forcefully and quickly reverse itself. I'm talking

about the end of the oil age.

 

Several experts now agree that world oil production will peak soon and

begin an unalterable decline. The price of oil will skyrocket, and as

the supply dwindles, some of the nations that can't afford it will try

to take it. Nation-states will be like starving hounds fighting over a

few scraps.

 

Things we take for granted, like electricity, the family car and air

transportation, will become unaffordable for the great mass of people.

Petroleum permeates our economy, not only in the form of gasoline,

diesel fuel and heating oil, but also in the myriad of petrochemicals

that are made from it. Many of these are essential to large-scale

agricultural production.

 

The impact of the loss of oil would be better understood if someone had

not mislabeled the Industrial Revolution. It was instead a fossil-fuel

revolution. Prior to that, in the course of human history, poverty had

been the norm. The only sources of energy were human and animal muscle,

wind and water. Oil and coal existed, of course, but no one knew how to

convert them into energy that could do work. That's why for most of

human history, slavery was universal.

 

Whatever work was to be done -- agricultural or construction -- had to

be done by human muscle, assisted, if they were available, by animals.

Water could be used to grind grain, and wind was the principle source of

propulsion on the seas. Since the human population was small, slaves

were considered simply as the spoils of war, a valuable commodity.

 

The invention of the steam engine, followed by the internal combustion

engine, the diesel engine and the electric motor, allowed mankind to use

fossil-fuel energy to do the work of civilization. At first the main

fossil fuel was coal, until cheaper oil put it into a secondary

position. Now our civilization is dependent on oil, and so is

development. The big net importers of oil today are the United States,

China and Japan. As other countries try to develop, they will need cheap

oil, and so even as supply peaks and then dwindles, demand is constantly

increasing. That spells skyrocketing prices, conflict and poverty.

 

For a more academic discussion, you might read the new book "Out of Gas:

The End of the Age of Oil " by California physicist David Goodstein.

Others in the petroleum industry are also forecasting the same thing.

 

President Bush, instead of trying to increase the profits of his

corporate oil buddies by opening up new areas for exploitation (which

won't amount to a drop in the bucket), should be mobilizing the nation

to face the coming crisis. Uninformed talk about hydrogen won't do it.

Goodstein points out that it takes the energy of seven gallons of

gasoline to produce enough hydrogen to do the work of one gallon of

gasoline.

 

What is needed is the equivalent of a new Manhattan Project, the

extraordinary government effort to develop the atomic bomb. The best

brains in America need to be mobilized to prepare the country for that

soon-to-come day when the world demand for oil exceeds the world supply.

Unless we can find alternatives -- cheap, mass-produced alternatives --

Americans face a catastrophic decline in their standard of living, not

to mention a dangerous world in chaos and conflict.

 

If you think I paint too grim a picture, imagine what your household

budget will be like when the price of oil has climbed to a $100 a

barrel. It is an unfortunate truth of history that nations sometimes

face extraordinary challenges just when their political leaders are

poorly equipped by nature and nurture to deal with them.

 

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