The Quiet Road

So what’s the relationship between “peak oil” and climate change? Is there one? After all, with less of the stuff to burn, there’ll be less “greenhouse gas” emissions. Right? Does fossil fuel depletion have a silver lining?

Well. No. I’m afraid not. Leastways if there is a silver lining on peak oil’s cloud, it’s not an antidote to anthropogenic climate change.

But you knew I was going to say that right? After all, I’m always soooo negative. But it’s not like I want to be a harbinger of doom. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than announcing; “hey! y’know all that peak oil malarky? Turns out it’s a bunch of arse. Magic pixie dust from space-land will sort everything out!”

One day I’ll have some good news for you. I promise. But statistically speaking it’s unlikely to be today.

Less oil = More emissions. Huh?

I know, I know. Counter-intuitive or what? But the world is a lot like that. It’s rarely as it seems. And even when it is, chances are you’re looking at it wrong. It’s a bit like Oliver Kamm walking into a room containing other people and not being punched repeatedly in the face by all present. Common sense insists it shouldn’t happen. Yet apparently it does.

The first thing that I want to stress is that there’s a fundamental sloppiness with the term “peak oil”. In reality, when I (and most informed people) use the term, we are using it as a shorthand for “peak oil and natural gas”. Even ASPO uses the shorthand… the name of the organisation is actually “Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas” but they clearly realised that ASPOaG isn’t the catchiest of acronyms.

There’s now data to suggest that conventional crude oil production peaked late last year. Dr. Colin Campbell has made it clear that total oil production will peak within 5 to 15 years of conventional crude. His analysis also suggests that we’ll reach a peak in natural gas production within a few years of peak oil production. Gas, however, has an entirely different depletion profile to crude oil (often referred to as the natural gas “cliff” to distinguish it from the relatively gentle Hubbert “curve” of oil depletion) and production rates plummet rapidly soon after hitting peak.

Unfortunately, as any free-market-economist-type person will tell you, even if oil and gas were to begin depleting (a scenario many of them will actually deny… insisting that greater demand will lead to greater investment leading to greater supply; what I refer to as “The Spoilt Child Hypothesis”), the market will merely switch to supplying alternatives. The demand isn’t for oil per se, but – more abstractly – for the uses that oil can be put to.

At this point some economists will use the phrase, “the infinite transformability of units of production”. However they’ll use it out of earshot of me as I’ve a tendency towards violence when I hear it.

Economists: Right about one thing

Well, they’re probably right about slightly more than one thing. But in this case they’re right about people not wanting oil for oil’s sake (or gas). They want something that’ll make their car go, or something that’ll generate the electricity for their homes, or something that’ll keep them warm in the winter and cook their food.

Unfortunately there are no adequate substitutes for either oil or gas. But there are plenty of inadequate ones. Which is where the carbon emissions problem raises its sooty head.

If the market is given free rein to attempt to fill the supply shortfall as demanded by consumers of the high-energy lifestyle, then we will see an inevitable return to coal-fired power plants. Replacing gas power generation with coal would see a massive increase in carbon emissions. Don’t believe that guff about “clean coal”… it’s sleight-of-hand, like the electric car; merely moving the emissions away from the end user. The atmosphere doesn’t distinguish between emissions from a “clean coal” processing plant and those from burning “dirty coal” in your fireplace.

And it doesn’t end there.

A reduction in fossil-fuel availability will inevitably result in an increase in wood-burning and consequent increase in deforestation. As any school-child will tell you, trees are the planet’s natural solar-powered carbon sequesters. With fewer trees, less of our carbon emissions will be recycled out of the atmosphere. And this is part of a particularly vicious positive-feedback loop. Less trees begets less trees. Just ask the Easter Islanders.

And then there’s the staggeringly destructive idea of automobile biofuels. People don’t demand petrol, they merely demand that their cars work. And if palm oil will make them work, then they’ll fill up with palm oil. During the past 20 years, more than 85% of the deforestation in Malaysia was carried out to clear land for palm oil plantations for the export market. Not only did this involve the displacement of indigenous peoples and mass slaughter of wildlife, but also the drainage of large areas of swampland.

Anyone paying attention in biology class knows the problems associated with draining swamp and bogs… as the peat and mosses dry out they decompose releasing huge quantities of greenhouse gasses. Palm oil, it seems, is almost as big a contributor (barrel for barrel) to anthropogenic climate change as its fossil counterpart.

Not a supply-side problem

This is the crux of the matter. And it’s something that perpetual-growth capitalists just can’t get their head around. The problem we face is not how to replace oil and gas to meet the demands of energy-hungry consumers. The problem is how we manage the demands of those consumers so that they become less energy-hungry and more responsible.

I don’t know the precise solution to that problem. But I do know that it can’t be provided by free markets.

The first target of my freshly loaded scatter-gun is, I’m sorry to say, David Attenborough. Or rather, the second programme in his latest series; Are We Changing Planet Earth?

I should point out that I’m a big fan of David Attenborough. The Blue Planet ranks high amongst the best things ever to grace a television screen, and over the years Attenborough has probably done as much for conservation and environmentalism as any individual. After all, it’s only by making the public aware of what they stand to lose that they will ever be motivated to change their ways.

His latest programme, Are We Changing Planet Earth? is a two-parter dealing with the issue of climate change, and specifically human-caused (anthropogenic) climate change. In part one, Attenborough revealed that he’d long been sceptical of the claims being made about anthropogenic climate change but that eventually the evidence provided by climatologists had become – to his eyes – utterly compelling. He presented that evidence in an easily-digestible format and by the end of the first episode had done a fine job of demonstrating that anthropogenic climate change is in fact occurring.

Episode one ended with a question; “What can we do about it?”; and the promise that episode two would answer that question.

But it didn’t. Or rather, it provided the wrong answer. Wrong by quite a margin.

I don’t know how much of the second episode was intended as sugar-coating; an attempt to get the ball moving by taking a resolutely optimistic stance and preaching business-as-(almost)-usual. Did Attenborough make an editorial decision “not to be depressing”? In a world where half of us seem to be on anti-deps, perhaps that’s unsurprising. But it’s also dishonest.

Let’s get something straight… there’s a lot of depressing shit going on right now. We can decide to hide behind denial and prozac, but that doesn’t make the shit go away. Indeed it tends to reinforce it and encourage it to multiply.

Attenborough presented a seven-point plan which aimed at ensuring that carbon emissions remain static between now and 2050. Right now, here in 2006, emissions are the highest they have ever been. Having spent an episode and a quarter revealing the damage already done and underway as a result of anthropogenic climate change, it was mind-boggling that he then chose to imply that 2006 emission levels were hunky dory.

Even worse, the seven-point plan didn’t make any sense. There was a recommendation to increase the amount of electricity generated by nuclear power by a factor of three. As I’ve pointed out before, estimates of remaining uranium reserves talk about another 50 or so years at current rates of consumption. Trebling that rate would – presumably – reduce the lifespan of nuclear power to roughly 17 years. Even if we double the known reserves (i.e. discover as much uranium ore between now and 2050 as we know currently exists), we still only get to 2040 before our reserves are depleted. What then?

And what about the carbon emitted by the construction of almost a thousand new reactors? And the threefold increase in uranium mining, processing and transportation? Are these numbers factored into the total “saving”? One number that isn’t factored in, of course, is what level of carbon emissions will be generated by the systems used to deal with the waste during the next 10 millennia. Perhaps it’s minimal… but we simply don’t know; so any claim that nuclear energy provides a net reduction in carbon emissions over the longterm is plainly dishonest.

The programme made much of the disintegration of Antarctic ice-shelves and the melting of the Greenland pack ice and Patagonian glaciers… processes that are still accelerating as a result of carbon emissions from the past couple of decades. Any plan, therefore, to stabilise emissions at current – historically high – levels is surely, by definition, too little too late.

Another of the seven points presented by Attenborough was the switch to fuel-efficient cars, along with a 50% reduction in our use of those cars. If we had a couple of generations in which to wean people off their cars, then this might be a sensible idea. But it’s just too damn late for mollycoddling motorists – the despoilers of our planet. Almost 50% of the carbon emissions produced by any private car (fuel-efficient or not) occur prior to the tank being filled for the first time. That’s right; half the carbon produced by your new car was produced before you bought it.

So you’ll understand why I balk at the idea of massively increasing demand for new cars. It’s music to the ears of the auto industry of course, but it just sounds like noise to me. Had Attenborough’s programme made all the same points (even the nuclear nonsense) but simply included a couple of lines about the basic unsustainability of the private car then this article would never have been written. But instead we have a programme that talks about purchasing new cars that get 60 miles to the gallon, and using them less. All in order to keep our carbon emissions at levels already causing significant shifts in our climate.

It makes no sense.

Of course, Attenborough should be praised for further raising the profile of this important issue. And most of his seven points were eminently sensible suggestions… greater energy efficiency in our homes (10% of our electricity is wasted by TVs and stereos left on standby)… a major expansion of wind power… a reduction in air travel. All good ideas whose time is already long overdue. But I am increasingly frustrated by those who suggest that a few minor tweaks to our absurdly energy-intensive lifestyle will solve the problem of anthropogenic climate change. That’s just not good enough.

So, off the top of my head, here’s my own 7-point plan to combat climate change:

1. Halt all investment in both nuclear and fossil-fuel powered electricity generation (China is planning on building 50 new coal-fired power stations every year for the next two decades. Scary, huh?)
2. Massively increase investment in wind and tide power generation. Allow individuals to offset the increase in electricity costs by all the efficiency measures discussed by Attenborough in his programme.
3. Announce a tenfold increase in car tax, road tax, road tolls and petrol tax. The increases will occur 3 months after the announcement to allow people to plan for a drastic reduction in car use. Announce that these taxes will be increased by a similar rate year-on-year. Implement a similar tax on jet fuel.
4. Invest heavily in public transport, but also in localisation strategies so that people don’t need to travel as far.
5. Legislate so that all new homes are built to the Passivhaus standard.
6. Legislate so that no electronic equipment may be manufactured with a standby mode.
7. Pass laws which stipulate that a percentage of all produce stocked in a store must be sourced from within 50 miles of that store. This percentage to increase year-on-year.

Remember, these are off the top of my head, but I nonetheless guarantee that they’d make genuine inroads into dealing with the problem of anthropogenic climate change. Unlike Attenborough’s seven points. Which – at best – will keep things static… a non-solution.

A pernicious white fungus has spread “like snow” in the caves of Lascaux in France, where the fabulous rock art has been described as the Sistine Chapel of prehistory. The fungus is believed to have been introduced after contractors began to install a new air-conditioning system that was meant to preserve the precious 17,000-year-old cave paintings from heat and humidity.
– Irish Independent

It’s possible that the above link may require (free) registration to the Indo, so I’ll give you the jist of the story…

An artist, or group of artists, produced a series of paintings on the walls of a cave system in Lascaux, France. Seventeen thousand years later, authorities decided that the paintings needed to be protected from heat and humidity and installed an air conditioning system.

The air-conditioning system altered the environment of the caves – which had remained fairly stable for 17 millennia – and within weeks the ground was infested with a white fungus. The authorities who installed the air conditioning claimed that the fungus wouldn’t spread to the paintings. They claimed that it would remain on the ground.

It didn’t.

Now the fungus has begun to encroach upon the paintings and the authorities who installed the new technology are employing people to very carefully remove strands of the fungus from the paintings by hand in order to protect them from their first serious threat in 17,000 years.

A news story and a parable.