Peak Oil? No: Peak Personal Transportation
(posted by Jennifer Abel)
The one good thing about the worldwide economic meltdown is that it’s nudged my worries about Peak Oil onto the back burner for now, for much the same reason I’d stop worrying about occasional acne if I’d just been diagnosed with a malignant melanoma.
You might not know what I’m talking about. Worries about Peak Oil have never occupied much space in the mainstream consciousness. This is partially the fault of Peak Oilers themselves (or rather, the ones who care enough to start Web sites about it); if you do an online search for “Peak Oil” you’ll find its most prominent sites predict “TEOTWAWKI,” The End Of The World As We Know It: we’re all so dependent on oil, they say, that pretty soon declining supplies of it will make civilization collapse and technology regress to the Stone Age. Mad Max was an optimist, and your great-grandchildren will huddle around campfires embellishing myths about their powerful ancestors who lived in the magic land of Lectra City, where lights and heat and music from the air could all be had at the touch of a button. But we, their ancestors, lost this power after the god named Petroleum turned his back on us.
What I’m trying to say is, if Peak Oil were Christianity its best-known proponents would be snake-handling faith-healers who go to church five times a week and speak in tongues without getting drunk first. They overshadow us Peak Oil Secularists, the ones who only go to church on Easter and Christmas and if we speak in tongues while there it’s only because we went a little overboard drinking bourbon beforehand so the sermon wouldn’t bore us.
Not that I’m defensive about believing in Peak Oil or anything. And since I’m not defensive about it, I’ll say “I’m not one of those people” only once before explaining my own concern: in America, moreso than anywhere else in the world, we’ve built a system where the average person finds it impossible to live their lives without heavy reliance on a form of cheap personal transportation powered by gasoline.
The basic peak oil theory says that world oil fields either have reached or will soon reach the point where the amount of oil extracted from them will decrease rather than increase year-over-year. That’s certainly happened with individual fields throughout the world: once upon a time, the United States was the world’s premier oil producer, and the name “Pennsylvania” associated with oil wealth much as “Saudi Arabia” is today. But as American oil fields grew old the country’s oil production started to decline, in the early 1970s, despite oil discoveries like that in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay.
On a worldwide level America’s oil decline didn’t matter, since there were rich oil fields elsewhere to pick up the slack. But what happens when the whole world – not just one country in it – finds its oil production rates in decline?
The fundamentalist view says “doom.” Petroleum is indeed a vital part of modern life, not just for fuel but as a raw material used to make fertilizers, medicines, plastics … thousands of essential items (and millions more frivolous ones). But I personally don’t share doomer fears like “The majority of humanity will starve because we won’t have enough petroleum to continue modern agriculture.” No, only a tiny fraction of petroleum use is for the raw materials that make such things possible. Petroleum as a raw material doesn’t worry me; petroleum as an energy source does. And the overwhelming use for oil – especially in America – is to process into fuel for personal transportation.
That’s the concern: not Peak Oil for America, but Peak Personal Transportation. Unless you’re one of the relative few American residents who live someplace like Manhattan or core Boston, you need a car to live your daily life. It’ll be relatively easy to replace, for example, the small percentage of household and business electricity that’s generated by oil. Folks won’t sit around in the dark (though I expect electricity prices to rise). What we can’t currently replace, at least without significant economic pain, is the cheap energy we use to transport ourselves large distances every day, to go to work and school and the store and friendly visits and everything else. There’s also the lesser concern of the huge numbers of homes which require lots of cheap energy to be livable.
And now we’ve got the oil-independent credit meltdown on top of that.
Sure, gas and oil prices have dropped from their all-time highs this past summer. Prices always drop after summer driving season, and there’s demand destruction (i.e., Americans driving less) due to economic cutbacks. But oil-price concerns haven’t gone away; they’re just on vacation.
What happens when they return? Too early to say in detail, but here’s a few concerns: abandoning far-distant suburbs to move closer to jobs in cities (economic dislocation as cities become evermore expensive while the suburbs lose more value than the deflating housing bubble has already stripped from them). More Americans switching to mass transit systems that do not currently exist, and would be expensive to build even if we didn’t have other economic millstones weighing us down. And mass anger as more and more Americans find their standard of living steadily decreasing.
Bad economic juju. Not the end of the world as we know it, but quite possibly the end of the world we’d prefer. Sooner or later some genius will invent or discover new technology that will make petroleum engines as obsolete as stone knives. But is this invention likely to come about in time to preserve America’s car-dependent system? I doubt it.
Rough economic times ahead, but not the end of civilization. And now that I’ve established I’m not one of those people, let me include a link to one of those people’s sites: Life After The Oil Crash, the granddaddy of Peak Oil warning pages, run by Matt Savinar. (Disclosure: I’ve never met him in person, but we do know each other online.) You can read his arguments here. I think he’s far too pessimistic; he thinks I’m far too optimistic; y’all can decide for yourselves.
October 15th, 2008 at 4:16 am
That’s the concern: not Peak Oil for America, but Peak Personal Transportation. Unless you’re one of the relative few American residents who live someplace like Manhattan or core Boston, you need a car to live your daily life. It’ll be relatively easy to replace, for example, the small percentage of household and business electricity that’s generated by oil. Folks won’t sit around in the dark (though I expect electricity prices to rise). What we can’t currently replace, at least without significant economic pain, is the cheap energy we use to transport ourselves large distances every day, to go to work and school and the store and friendly visits and everything else. There’s also the lesser concern of the huge numbers of homes which require lots of cheap energy to be livable.
The unspoken assumption here is that both personal transportation and home heating require oil, and that, while oil can be replaced by other sources in the electricity generation business, it cannot (or at least not economically) in the transportation and heating business.
Now, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with that; I’d just like to know if that is in fact what you think and if so why.
October 15th, 2008 at 5:58 am
I can’t speak for Jennifer, but that is definitely the issue that energy policy wonks break it down to. We have a fairly unlimited pool of “stationary” energy, but significantly less “mobile” energy.
Of course, the Holy Grail amongst these people is to be able to transform stationary to mobile in a useful manner. Most of the focus is on battery technology, but there are other possibilities. Most of what I’ve read seems to predict that in the next 50 years, none of these ideas are likely to greatly decrease the cost, so that any near term alternative is still likely to cost a fair amount more than we are paying for oil right now.
Of course, such prognistication can never account for revolutionary technology, so take that for what its worth. But I think it is also dangerous to assume that a revolutionary technology will save us.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Hi Jennifer,
According to the EIA, “transportation” accounts for two thirds of the U.S. oil consumption. But “transportation” doesn’t just include cars; it covers buses and trucks as well.
I believe that trucking is far more serious than that of personal transportation. Why? Because in the short-term, there more theoretical demand elasticity in personal transportation than in trucking: people can carpool, reduce the number of trips they take, get rid of one of their two cars, bike where possible, take public transit where possible, work from home (in many cases), switch to more fuel efficient cars (if they can afford it), etc. Not convenient or pleasant for most people, but in many cases doable.
But what happens if (when) there are substantial diesel shortages? How fast can the country switch its production delivery system from long-distance trucks to much more efficient trains and boats, for example? Not fast enough to severe avoid food shortages, in my opinion. Of course the solution to this is to rebuild local and regional economies. But that takes time, and a total change of mindset.
I’d also like to point out that oil for other “industrial” use is not small, at least according to the EIA:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/oil_market_basics/dem_image_us_cons_sector.htm
Finally, I can say from personal experience that the biggest problem in writing and talking about this issue is that its implications are so dramatic that people simply can’t believe it – not because they have any contrary evidence, but because “it just can’t be true.” So if you do believe it, you’re considered “crazy.”
But while all that might be interesting from a psychological or sociological perspective, it really has no bearing on the facts or what is likely to happen. (A lot of people thought I was crazy when I kept talking about how the housing bubble was going to be a catastrophe for the banking system; now CNN goes on and on about how “nobody” thought it was going to be this bad. I guess they never read Mish or any of the billion other websites out there on the topic).
Things will not be like Mad Max, because Mad Max was a ridiculous if somewhat entertaining movie. Evoking it is an appeal to absurdity (isn’t that a logical fallacy? I can’t remember which one). Think more: the collapse of the Soviet Union. Or if things get worse than that, Somalia, or Haiti. Unimaginable, but not really.
I think you have your illnesses reversed. Compared to malignant cancer of peak oil, it’s this credit crisis that’s just a bad case of acne.
Lakis
October 15th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Quasibill explained my reasons why I don’t think electricity or something similar will replace gasoline for transportation energy on the near horizon. Granted, it’s always possible some inventive genius will pull a rabbit out of his hat in time to save us, just as it’s possible my personal financial situation will vastly improve in the next year after someone offers me a super-lucrative job or I pick winning lottery numbers, but I feel safer in planning for the future as though these will NOT happen.
Lakis, the reason I’m more concerned about personal rather than business transportation is that businesses can afford far more options that ordinary people. Improving the railroad system to carry freight, for example, would be far easier and more feasible than improving the railroad system to carry passengers from their far-flung suburban homes to their jobs.
One fundamental flaw with the “doomers” is that they seem to think when things get really bad, every single person on earth will simply throw his hands in the air, scream “Oh, hell, we’re screwed!” and do absolutely nothing else. No, people will make changes if they’re forced to; they won’t necessarily like it, though, and those changes sure as hell won’t necessarily be for the better. Businesses can afford to make larger and more substantial changes than ordinary paycheck-to-paycheck Americans.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I wish I shared your confidence about businesses being able to adapt. It seems to me that in an energy scarce world entire business models (the warehouse on wheels, for example) will be entirely unworkable.
I agree with you about the tendency of doomers to see peak oil as a kind of singularity (John Michael Greer would call it the myth of apocalypse) rather than a dialectical process. What I foresee is a very bumpy road, punctuated by many twists an turns as individuals, businesses, institutions and governments respond, sometimes wisely and other times with mind-blowing stupidity, and no one knows how exactly it’ll turn out.
October 15th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
t seems to me that in an energy scarce world entire business models (the warehouse on wheels, for example) will be entirely unworkable.
True, but the “warehouse on wheels” is not the only way a business model can work. A store that’s accustomed to getting daily shipments can adapt to weekly shipments instead with more ease than a working stiff can adapt to finding his car and house growing ever-harder to afford as energy prices rise.
Remember, “maintain the status quo as is” and “watch everything descend irrevocably into hell” are NOT the only two options.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I’m with you as being a peak-oil ‘believer’ but think it’s going to be even less of a ‘big deal’ than you say.
First, on personal transport, nat gas cars cost about as much as gas/dsl in new construction, and electric only cost marginally more (i.e. as much as 50-100% but not an order of magnitude). As petroleum gets more expensive, these will be even more economically competitive. And the entire personal vehicle fleet is essentially replaced every 15 years or so.
But even if 2nd order effects (e.g. trucking) requires large scale population shifts, it’s still will just be a marginal change. According to the census about 1 in 6 americans move in any given year (half within the same county, half further than that). And the average american moves about 10 times in their lifetime. So like the auto shift, the change will take place over a generation, and be no more disruptive than the large scale movement from the Great Lakes / North East to the South and West post WW-2. Dramatic, yes. But not in the aggregate destructively disruptive.
So, I say of peak oil: BFD. Just like America was not permanently hamstrung by ‘peak Whale’ - or as a more useful comparison ‘peak Land’ in 1890 - rising petroleum prices will be countered organically by the billions of choices that millions will make over a generation or more.
October 16th, 2008 at 3:39 am
So, I say of peak oil: BFD. Just like America was not permanently hamstrung by ‘peak Whale’ - or as a more useful comparison ‘peak Land’ in 1890 - rising petroleum prices will be countered organically by the billions of choices that millions will make over a generation or more.
I live in Taipei without a car happily — the mass rail transit is excellent and I doubt you’ll find many residents who’d say a bad word against it.
but it’s not something that can be created “organically” by individual consumers.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:13 am
I think Peak Oil “doomers” are actually pretty optimistic, considering that they typically aren’t taking climate change into account when describing their worst-case scenarios. And our worst-case climate change scenarios don’t involve merely the end of our civilization, but the end of our species.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Kolohe,
*If* we lived in something approaching a free market, your proposed outcome would probably occur. However, we live in a political economy where a large number of people apparently believe that the rich who created this mess must be bailed out by robbing the poor and middle class - for the good of the poor and middle class, of course!
With such ignorance supporting the centrally planned economy that we actually have, I don’t think people will be allowed to organically respond in any rational way. The people who’ve gotten rich off the system and their ignorant lackeys will see to it.
October 16th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Yes, government will make things much worse than they have to be. One reason we’re so car-dependent is that we’re required by law to be — in my area, for example, it’s commonplace to find building codes like “no more than a single house can be built per two or three acres of land.” There’s no way you can live in such a place without having a car. Want to cut back on electricity bills by installing solar panels or a small windmill? Even if you have the money, local zoning codes might not allow you to do so. Even something as simple as an outdoor clothesline, to free you from the use of an electric dryer, is often forbidden.
I’d be a lot less pessimistic about peak oil if I thought people would simply be left to their own devices to solve the problem. But we won’t, especially not in America.