How To Destroy The Planet In Seven Easy Steps  

The Futures Foundation has an article on a presentation by Professor Ian Lowe called "Stealing from the future (or how to destroy the planet in seven easy steps)" at the "Global Mind, Global Soul, Global Action" conference at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

"There are many possible futures. We should be trying to establish a future that can be sustained, even if not for the four to five million years that the earth is expected to last. Not doing that is selling short our children by funding our lifestyles from the future."

Taking an unusual approach, Professor Lowe then set out to describe how one might go about destroying a planet, by destroying its future.

"How could we do it?

We could start with exponential population growth.

Then we could increase the rate of consumption per person. We could base our economy on consumption, stimulating consumption that is not necessary. In fact, we could stimulate consumption by appealing to the seven deadly sins. (Or, as Clive Hamilton puts it, we could use money we don't have to buy things we don't want to impress people we don't like.)

Then we could deplete significant mineral resources, starting with oil. We could over-use potentially renewable resources like fisheries and forests and groundwater.

And we could disrupt the global climate.

In the social dimension we could widen inequality between rich and poor, ensuring that the future is less socially stable. And we could replace traditional spirituality by promoting materialism.

A visitor from another galaxy would see these strategies as deliberate, would see that we were intelligent and would assume that for some reason we wanted to destroy life on Earth."

Professor Lowe explored some of these issues more closely, starting with the "biological bottom line" of population growth.

"There have only ever been three models of change over time in a species population in a closed system. The population can:

* increase over time until it comes into balance and remains in balance;
* exceed the sustainable level, collapse, increase again etc.; or it can
* grossly exceed the resources and collapse.

Yet in the face of this basic scientific understanding, he says, "there are not many countries on earth which have set a strategy of sustaining their population." Since 1960, the planet's human population has doubled (increasing at 80m a year); water use has doubled; food production has increased by 2.5 times; energy use has trebled; and economic output has increased by a factor of six.

What about resources? Our most crucial resource is petroleum. Production will decline, price will increase, we will have to make fundamentally different decisions about personal transport and the provision of food, which are currently predicated on the presumption of cheap transport."

Professor Lowe anticipates the peak of oil production will occur in 2009, plus or minus a few years - indeed, it may have happened already. The peak of gas production will be around 2040. After these dates, production will decline with depletion of the natural resources.

Yet for all this, Ian Lowe insists that there is no energy shortage.

"The natural flows of solar, wind, tidal, hydro, and geothermal energy are thousands of times greater than any conceivable consumer demand," he told the conference. "For example, the world's 6.5bn humans, in an entire year, for all purposes, only use about twice the energy that the sun delivers to Australia alone, in one day alone.

Energy flows are huge, but there is a shortage of the energy generator that is most convenient for transport because of its high density.

Availability of fresh water is another key factor in creating a sustainable future for the planet."

The ABC has a good radio interview with Professor Albert Bartlett about exponential growth and symptoms such as peak oil (Real Audio).

Robyn Williams: Talking about politicians: have you been to Congress or places like it to talk about some of these ideas, including general ideas about sustainability?

Albert Bartlett: Only to give my regular talk. I gave it that once that I mentioned in the Capital Building, in the lunchroom in the basement. I’ve given it I think three times in hearing rooms of the United States , but in all of those there were just staff people there, there weren’t any members of Congress there.

Robyn Williams: How well were you received?

Albert Bartlett: They are always polite.

Robyn Williams: You mean with their teeth gritted.

Albert Bartlett: Well, you know, the staff people don’t make policy, they are influential but they can’t make policy and so I can’t cite any big things that have happened. Although there’s been one Congressman from Maryland, whose name is Roscoe Bartlett, and we’re not related, he’s very much taken up the concern about the Hubbert Curve for world oil production and I attended a meeting in Denver about a month ago, Peak Oil, an American group on Peak Oil, it’s sort of following in the lines of the European Peak Oil Group.

Robyn Williams: That’s suggesting we’ve actually reached a peak and from now on it goes down, the supplies will diminish?

Albert Bartlett: That’s right, supplies will diminish, demand is going up and population is going up, so the conflict is imminent.

Robyn Williams: Within what sort of time frame do you think, 3 years, 10 years or what?

Albert Bartlett: I think certainly less than 10 years and this recent escalation in world oil prices I think is just sort of the first hint of what’s going to be happening.

Robyn Williams: What will happen next? The gist of something we did on television about two weeks ago was that within a short time, certainly the lifetime of most people, there will be a crunch coming that will make you have to live in a different way because there’s far less oil than there was. So how will we notice immediately?

Albert Bartlett: Well, the prices at the gasoline pump will be sort of a very obvious thing that everyone notices because our life is so centred around gasoline and the farmers will notice it, it’ll be reflected in the food prices. In the States they say the average distance travelled by an item of food as it goes from the farm where it was produced to your dinner plate is like, 1500 miles, and that’s all done with petroleum. We have fresh fruit flown up from Chile in South America.

Robyn Williams: We have your cherries in the middle of winter.

Albert Bartlett: And we have New Zealand apples: enormous petroleum consumption to bring those in.

Robyn Williams: You’re suggesting we won’t be able to afford that much longer?

Albert Bartlett: That’s what it looks like to me and all the talk about alternative energies is talk and not a lot of progress is being made. There are two aspects: the first aspect is, you have to get the technology worked out and the second aspect is that you have to get this infrastructure made and in place nationwide. So if you’re going to talk about hydrogen for vehicles you’ve got to have hydrogen filling stations in every village and city in the country, you’ve got to have big distribution facilities. The cost of this is just staggering, it can’t happen very fast.

Robyn Williams: And of course, what you were saying about the planes flying, there is no substitute really for the petrol which they use in planes is there?

Albert Bartlett: No, you don’t fly planes on nuclear reactors and of course hydrogen doesn’t make sense unless you get hydrogen from solar power. If you build coal fired electric plants to make hydrogen from water that takes enormous of energy, there’s big waste. You know in a coal fired plant two thirds of the energy is wasted and one third appears as electricity on the bus bar, and if you use hydrogen from solar energy then at least you have chance to get ahead. Now in the States if you buy a cylinder hydrogen at a chemical supply house, chances are that hydrogen is made by breaking down natural gas. You’d be better off burning the natural gas than going to all the problem of breaking it down into hydrogen. But somehow the policy makers in Washington DC don’t seem to recognise these obvious things and they say, well, we’ve got to get started and so on and natural gas supplies worldwide are not nearly as large as I think some people imagine. And this for instance, I was reading recently that Australia is a major exporter of liquefied natural gas from up in north/west Australia. You know, I think somebody, some minister, somebody ought to look at this and say we’ve got to save some of that for future generations in Australia.

Australasian Investment Review has a long, rambling, occasionally inaccurate and inconclusive article on peak oil.

The longer term rally in the oil price to date has been driven from the demand side and not the supply side. The supply side has played its part in that capacity has been caught short, hence as demand outstripped supply the only way for the price to go was up. Economists are less concerned about demand-side rallies in the shorter term than they are about supply-side rallies, as demand will always find a level at which the price is simply too high.

This was actually happening. Post Katrina, the demand for oil, particularly in the US , began to subside. Basic economics was at work. To assist in reducing the price of oil the US released crude oil reserves while refineries went into overtime to make up for lost production. Regular maintenance was postponed. It was also very fortuitous that the US experienced a balmy fall which, to date, has given way to a balmy winter.

But now the real spectre looms. Comparisons are often made in oil price terms to the oil shocks of the seventies. Those shocks were supply-side shocks, brought about by OPEC oil embargoes instigated to hurt the evil West. Increased demand in the new millennium has meant that we’ve had to get used to generally higher oil prices. But as suggested, demand will always begin to drop off when the price is just too high.

If supply is affected, however, real panic can set in. Supply disruptions mean actual shortages that have immediate effect on everything from workers getting to work to factories being able to operate. Naturally, the price responds, but whereas increased demand forces a general consideration of alternative fuels or lifestyle choices, loss of supply causes fear.

So this is now where we find ourselves – back in the seventies.

...

It would seem the world has taken higher oil prices in its stride. Merrills expects world GDP growth to be 3.9% in 2006 and 3.5% in 2007, suggesting the global economy has simply weathered the higher oil price environment. At the household level, indications are that the retail sector has taken the hit, such that the demand for petrol has not noticeably fallen. It has been signifi cant that infl ation has not become a problem, and thus interest rates have remained low. The irony is that China – held largely responsible for the demand surge – has also provided cheap exports that have counteracted higher oil prices in the inflation balance.

There are, however, little signs that suggest higher oil prices are indeed on the back of everyone’s minds – globally. Take Iceland for example. Iceland is fast-tracking plans to harness thermal energy and switch to hydrogen-powered transport, eventually banishing the need for any oil. Okay – if Iceland stopped importing oil no one would notice, but the thought’s there.

Brazil – now this might make people take notice – is leading the world in ethanol production as a fuel additive/alternative. It helps if you’ve got lots of sugar, but Brazil wants to sell ethanol to the world. Even the greatest gas-guzzler of them all – the US – has just been given a wake-up call as well, as Ford has begun laying off staff, and GM is teetering on the brink. The response? “We need to satisfy the demand for smaller cars and hybrid vehicles”. Who would have thought?

Oh, and the sale of bicycles in Australia has jumped considerably.

Then of course there’s the renewed world interest in nuclear power (including from Iran ). But that takes us down another path. Suffice to say, indications are that there must be a longer term ceiling on the oil price. It cannot just keep going up forever. And that’s without even considering the genuine desire from most of the world’s little people – the Joe Averages – to reduce greenhouse gases.

One of the jarring notes in the article was the paragraph below - have any of you US readers heard of this supposedly enormous untapped field ?

One of the world’s biggest oil fi elds currently lies untapped underneath the Colorado River Valley. Lying, as it does, within a major national park this reserve has been largely left alone. The Bush Administration has, however, renewed feasibility studies on the area. The problem, of course, is that a major oil drilling program would likely be environmentally devastating.

The Iraq oil for food scandal is still trundling along, with Senator Norm "dumb as a post" Coleman continuing to posture in Washington, while down here the Rodent is trying wriggle out of any association with the bribe paying by the AWB - he even went on national TV one morning to suggest the whole thing is largely a conspiracy orchestrated by the US wheat industry (which probably contains a grain of truth, if you'll forgive the pun).

If we hadn't tagged along on the whole Iraq misadventure perhaps we'd see AWB executives using the Galloway defence instead.

While the release of East Timor's truth and reconciliation commission report has got rather less press then the travails of AWB and the government, it is probably worse from a moral point of view than simply handing out bribes to Saddam Hussein, with the report being particularly scathing of Lord Downer of Baghdad.

Australia wanted East Timor to remain an Indonesian province and the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, lobbied Jakarta to delay a vote for independence, a report to the United Nations has found.

East Timor's truth and reconciliation commission has been collecting evidence from thousands of witnesses for the past three years about Indonesia's takeover of the former Portuguese colony in 1975.

Its final report, which says about 183,000 East Timorese died as a result of the occupation, was handed to the UN two weeks ago. The 2500-page study was published this week on the website of the US-based International Centre for Transitional Justice.

The report says Australia "contributed significantly to denying the people of Timor-Leste their right to self-determination before and during the Indonesian occupation".

In order to maintain a good relationship with Indonesia, Australia violated its obligations under international law and backed the bigger neighbour's push to take over East Timor in 1975. It also was influenced by a desire to get the most it could out of maritime boundary negotiations affecting oil and gas reserves.

Australia also gave Indonesia economic and military assistance throughout the 24-year occupation and advocated on its behalf in the international community, the commission said.

It also makes special mention of the more recent role of Mr Downer before the vote for independence in 1999. It says he lobbied Indonesia to delay the poll because it was in Australia's interests for East Timor to remain part of the archipelago.

Labor Party leader Kim Beazley is due to announce the ALP's fuel policy later this month at a function in Fremantle. He has been reported previously talking about his vision of Australian transport being fueled by LPG from our offshore fields - presumably the new policy will continue this line of thought.

ALP Federal Leader Kim Beazley will launch the party's new fuel policy in WA at a seminar in Fremantle on Saturday February 18th. The WA Sustainable Transport Coalition Convenor will also speak on peak oil.

I am writing to invite you to a forum I am hosting on Labor's plan for the Australian fuel industry - Blueprint Number Three - Developing the Australian Fuel Industry. The blueprint outlines Labor's commitment to a new goal: to end Australia's reliance on foreign oil, and diversify the Australian fuels industry.

A copy of the plan may be accessed at: http://www.alp.org.au/policy/index.php

Sales of Australian made cars fell by 20% last month. I wonder when local manufacturers will start to think about making hybrids (preferably flex fuel hybrids) ?

"Sales of Australian-made cars have slumped as the shift towards smaller vehicles continued in January. After Mitsubishi's move to cut 250 jobs in Adelaide in a response to disappointing demand, official auto industry sales figures on Friday showed demand for Australian built vehicles fell 20 per cent last month. The slide came in a total market which rose 0.4 per cent as the shift towards smaller, more fuel efficient cars continued.

"The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) said on Friday 13,285 locally made vehicles were retailed last month compared to 16,648 in January last. At the same time demand for imports jumped from 53,065 to 56,718."

Griffith University's Urban Research Program has released a paper called "Oil Vulnerability in the Australian City" (pdf - via Rex - Energy Bulletin also picked it up more recently, commenting that "A rare example of an academic urban policy study incorporating a Peak Oil analysis.

The paper focuses on public transport availability to conclude that life will be especially harder post-peak in the middle to outer suburbs of the studied cities, especially in those areas of lower economic status.")

The paper assesses the resilience or vulnerability of urban communities to increased fuel prices and how the socio-economic impacts will be spread across different localities.

In particular, the paper seeks to assess how different socio-economic groups will be affected by rising fuel costs, at the neighbourhood level. We base our analysis on ABS Census variables that are combined to indicate potential household vulnerability to fuel price rises, based on existing levels of social disadvantage, household motor vehicle ownership and current dependence on motor vehicles for work trips. This information is used to generate a ‘vulnerability index for petroleum energy rises’ (VIPER).

Maps generated with the VIPER demonstrate that high levels of oil vulnerability are present in Australian cities but that this vulnerability is unevenly distributed. Localities situated on middle and outer suburbs are most vulnerable to the socio-economic impact of oil price rises. New policies emphasising public transport services are needed to avoid, remedy or mitigate the impacts of oil price rises.

Red = most vulnerable.