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COMPLEX SYSTEMS AND MULTIPLE
CRISES OF ENERGY
JOHN URRY
Director, Centre for Mobilities Research, Lancaster University
@johnurry
Schumacher: ‘There is no substitute for energy. The whole
edifice of modern society is built upon it….it is not ‘just
another commodity’ but the precondition of all commodities,
a basic factor equal with air, water, and earth’
J Paul Getty ‘The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its
mineral rights’.
John McNeill: ‘We have deployed more energy since 1900 than
all of human history before 1900’
Žižek: ‘Nature is crazy. Nature is one big catastrophe.
Oil, our main source of energy—can you even
imagine what kind of ultra-unthinkable ecological
catastrophe must have happened on earth in order
that we have these reserves of oil? ... Nature is not
Mother Earth....is imbalanced’
David Owen: ‘Oil is liquid civilization’
Martin Rees, Our Final Century (London: Arrow
Books, 2003).
Richard Heinberg, The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the
Fate of Industrial Society (New York: Clearview
Books, 2005).
Roy Woodbridge, The Next World War. Tribes, Cities,
Nations, and Ecological Decline (Toronto: Toronto
University Press, 2005).
James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia (London:
Allen Lane, 2006).
Fred Pearce, When the Rivers Run Dry (London:
Transworld, 2006).
Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down.
(London: Souvenir, 2006).
James Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the
Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century (London:
Atlantic Books, 2006).
Bill McGuire, Global Catastrophes: A Very Short
Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Charles Perrow, The Next Catastrophe (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2007).
Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe. A
Frontline Report on Climate Change (London:
Bloomsbury, 2007).
Fred Pearce, With Speed and Violence. Why Scientists
fear Tipping Points in Climate Change (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2007).
Eugene Linden, Winds of Change. Climate, Weather and
the Destruction of Civilizations (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 2007).
Meyer Hillman, Tina Fawcett, Sudhir Raja, The Suicidal
Planet. How to prevent global climate catastrophe (New
York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007).
David Montgomery, Dirt. The Erosion of Civilizations
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
Kurt Campbell (ed), Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign
Policy and National Security Implications of Climate
Change (Washington: Brookings, 2008).
Stephen Haseler, Meltdown (London: Forumpress, 2008).
Vaclav Smil, Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next
Fifty Years (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008).
David Orr, Down to the Wire. Confronting Climate
Collapse (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat and Crowded (London:
Penguin, 2009).
Ulrich Beck, World at Risk (Cambridge: Polity, 2009).
Keith Farnish, Time's Up!: An Uncivilized Solution to a
Global Crisis (Totnes: Green Books, 2009).
James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia. A final
warning (London: Penguin, 2010).
James Hansen, Storms of my Grandchildren (London:
Bloomsbury, 2011).
Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times (London: Verso,
2011).
Jared Diamond, Collapse: how societies choose to fail
or survive (London: Penguin, 2011).
Systems and process
 that all systems are necessarily processual and flow within time with no
tendency for systems to move towards equilibrium
 be no distinction to be made between states of equilibrium and periods of
growth
 the unpredictability of systems
 the significance of positive feedback mechanisms and lack of
proportionality or ‘non-linearity’ between apparent ‘causes’ and ‘effects’
 the way that systems once established can get ‘locked in’
 the significance of the ordering of events in time that are then not
‘forgotten’ and hence ‘time matters’
 systems adapt and co-evolve in relationship to each other
 each system has to find its place, to climb the peaks, within a fitness
landscape
 almost all systems significant in the contemporary world are
simultaneously economic, physical, technological, political and social
 there is increased interconnectedness or the linking of system
components through software, cybernetic architecture and a networked
character of life
CLIMATE CHANGE
• 20% risk of more than a 5°C increase in temperatures –
increase beyond 2°C by 2050 now ver market failure’
• 4 major potential non-linear transformatialmost inevitable:
Stern: climate change is ‘the world’s greatest eons: Greenland
ice sheet, Antarctica ice sheets and melting permafrost
• transformation of the world’s physical and human geography
• reductions in overall population worldwide instead of 2-3
billion increase
• impacts especially in poorer countries – ‘climatic genocide’
• huge conflicts over the likely rate, scale and impact of change;
and of the likely costs of mitigation
• the power of carbon capital in powerfully contesting climate
change externalities – ‘merchants of doubt’
• big increases in energy demands and reduced energy supplies
from changing climates
CLIMATE CHANGE
increases in ‘failed states’ (and failed ‘city states’) unable
to cope with oil shortages, droughts, heatwaves,
extreme weather events, flooding, desertification and
millions of climate change refugees.
rising sea levels and storm surges resulting in the
flooding of roads, railways, transit systems, and
airport runways
growing insecurities in the supply of clean water
increasingly significant problems of food security - food
production depends upon hydrocarbon fuels
significant reductions in the standard of living around
the world.
Thomas Homer-Dixon
‘I think the kind of crisis we might see would
be a result of systems that are kind of stressed
to the max already … societies face crisis when
they’re hit by multiple shocks simultaneously
or they’re affected by multiple stresses
simultaneously’
NORTH EAST USA 2012 HAS THE FUTURE ARRIVED?
THE ‘PERFECT STORM’
A major item on a 2009 BBC news programme showed how by
2030 the world may be confronted by a catastrophic ‘perfect
storm’, of runaway climate change, huge water, food and energy
shortages and enormous population growth.
This was a mainstream news item, illustrated by reports on
developments worldwide that showed how such a storm was
being formed. The UK Government Chief Scientist, John
Beddington, was the source of this material.
This BBC report suggested that without the reversal of various
systems, the world is racing headlong into multiple interlocking
catastrophes. These interlocking catastrophes would leave much
of the world's population poorer, less mobile, hungrier and more
likely to be fighting for increasingly scarce resources. All societies
would be impacted by these post-peak developments
SPINDELTOP,
TEXAS 1901
FIRST OIL
GUSHER
OIL DEPENDENCE
•provides almost all transportation energy in the modern world (at least
95%) - is the single resource which uniquely makes possible family life,
friendship, business life and professions;
•fuels the world’s ships that transport components, commodities and
food globally;
•is an element of most manufactured goods produced worldwide (95%);
•is crucial to at least 95% of food production and distribution for a rising
world population through irrigation, the movement of food and the
provision of pesticides and fertilisers;
•is important for much domestic heating especially in oil-rich societies;
•is crucial in providing back-up power and lighting when other energy
sources fail (as in hospitals or nuclear power stations);
•generates around a third of all greenhouse gas emissions and is a major
category of such emissions still increasing around the world
.
LOCKED INTO OIL
Fast travel
• the growth of automobility throughout the world increasingly in the world’s
two most populous societies of China and India.
• the rapid growth of cheap air travel based on new budget business models.
• a significant resurgence of rail transport especially of high speed trains
across Europe and Japan
• new kinds of globally significant themed leisure environments that have to
be visited from afar
• increased ‘miles’ both flown and travelling on the world’s 90,000 ships by
manufactured goods, components and foodstuffs.
• much greater distances travelled by work colleagues, members of leisure
organisations, families and friends in order to sustain patterns of everyday
life that are ‘at-a-distance’
• in 1800 people in the US travelled 50 metres a day – they now travel 50
kilometres a day
• world citizens move 23 billion kilometres; by 2050 with business as usual
that will have increased to 106 billion
• carbon use within transport accounts for around one third of carbon dioxide
emissions - second fastest growing source of such emissions and expected to
double by 2050
OIL AND ENERGY DESCENT
The US peaking of oil in 1970 - now imports 75%; UK peaked 1999; China just
peaked
Rifkin argues: the oil age is ‘winding down as fast as it revved up’. Strahan
refers to the ‘imminent extinction of petroleum man’. Fatih Birol: the IEA
considers that crude oil production peaked in 2006. Chief Economist, HSBC
Bank (2011) ‘Energy resources are scarce. Even if demand doesn’t increase,
there could be as little as 49 years of oil left’.
Two trillion barrels of conventional oil; about half now used
4 barrels consumed for every new one discovered; may soon go up to 10:1
Worldwide the largest oilfields were discovered over half a century ago, with
the peak being in the mid 1960s.
Moreover, there appear to be no systemic alternatives for many uses of oil.
US National Intelligence Council: ‘an energy transition, for example, is
inevitable...An energy transition from one type of fuel (fossil fuels) to
another (alternative) is an event that historically has only happened once a
century at most with momentous consequences’.
OIL DISCOVERY AND CONSUMPTION 1900-2030 –
IEA PRONOUNCED PEAKING IN 2006
RISE AND FALL OF EUROPEAN OIL (N SEA)
US OIL PRODUCTION AND
CONSUMPTION
The extent of treasure islands
• almost all major companies have offshore
accounts/subsidiaries (83%),
• more than half of world trade passes through
such tax havens,
• almost all High Net Worth Individuals possess
offshore accounts enabling tax ‘planning’,
• ninety-nine of Europe's hundred largest
companies use offshore subsidiaries
• fewer than 10 million people currently own a
US$21 trillion offshore fortune, equivalent to
combined GDPs of the US and Japan
CRASH 2007-8
• 2007-8 crisis was partly brought about by oil shortages and price
increases.
• The speculative building and risky funding of extensive tracts of
‘marginal’ suburbs depended upon cheap land, mortgages and petrol
• These made it seem that the continued upward movement of house
prices was inevitable.
• Brenner in 2006 observed how financial speculation was generating a
real estate mania. The total value of residential property in the major
economies rose thirty trillion US dollars between 2000-2005.
• But these began to unravel when oil prices dramatically soared in the
mid-2000s (15 fold increase in a decade), because of long-term
shortages and more immediate shortages in US because of Katrina.
• House price fall were greatest in most far flung suburbs which were
the first to demonstrate very high foreclosure rates
• Murray and King (former UK Government Chief Scientist) maintain
that the crash of 2007-8 was not just a credit crunch but an ‘oil-price
crunch’, triggering the long recession that is still ongoing
PEAKING OF TRAVEL IN US?
NATURE RECLAIMING DETROIT
PEAKING
Peaking of oil, gas, water, ‘western incomes’,
European welfare states, travel??
‘At peak and just beyond, there is massive potential
for system failures of all kinds, social, economic, and
political. Peak is quite literally a tipping point.
Beyond peak, things unravel and the center does not
hold’ Kunstler
RESOURCE WARS
•extreme weather events and extensive flooding
•oil (and gas and water) wars
•substantial breakdown of many of the mobility, energy and
communication connections
•a plummeting standard of living
•a relocalisation of mobility patterns
•‘warlords’ controlling recycled forms of mobility and weaponry
•no monopoly of physical coercion in the hands of a national state
•only the super-rich would travel for pleasure – Virgin Galactica
•a Hobbesian war of each warlord dominated region against their
neighbours
James Lovelock: ‘So is our civilization doomed, and will this
century mark its end with a massive decline in population,
leaving a few survivors in a torrid society ruled by warlords
on a hostile and disabled planet?’ MAD MAX 2