Download Evidence - APPG on Population, Development and Reproductive

POPULATION & ENERGY
- PERSPECTIVES ON THE INTEGRATION OF THE ISSUES Paul Allen B.Eng (Hons) FRSA
Development Director, Centre for Alternative Technology Charity Ltd.
Summary
Although the triple challenges of global equity, peak oil and climate change have
become increasingly familiar individually, their respective experts work in relative
isolation and their respective solutions are rarely considered in unison. There are
solutions to peak oil which accelerate climate change, and there are solutions to global
equity which exacerbate peak oil.
These kinds of measures – solving one challenge at the expense of another -- will not
do. The key to our future collective well being is to solve the three main challenges
together. Once we join the dots and look for the bigger picture, we find plenty of
common ground. Many aspects of an energy strategy which deals with climate change
are the same as the strategy for dealing with to dwindling fossil fuel reserves. In fact,
facing up to our oil addiction and re-thinking our diet, buildings, energy, water, work,
clothing, heating, holidays and healthcare could actually increase global well-being.
But getting the best out of such a massive triple challenge means using the time and
the oil we have left to their very best effect. If we wait until the challenge is really
upon us before becoming serious about developing the solutions, in the ensuing chaos
we may no longer be able to muster the resources required.
The key to success is to integrate energy and population goals. The ‘contraction and
convergence’ towards a global fair share does not mean a return to pre-industrial
energy capture based on annual sunlight falling on croplands. We now have a wide
range of renewable energy generators to vastly increase the available annual energy
yield. We will also be able to use some conventional fossil fuels. In addition there are
potential inputs from clean coal with carbon capture and storage.
Our choice is clear: if a minority of powerful nations continue to favour an economic
system under-pinned by centralised technologies and vulnerable supply lines, they
will need to protect it with a huge world-wide police force at enormous expense and
risk to global equity and our ability to limit global population growth.
On the other hand, if we begin a shift to a decentralised world economy based on
equitable and efficient use of renewable energy sources, and re-localised supply
systems, we can create global communities that no one can easily threaten and,
perhaps more importantly, which threaten no one else.
An integrated approach
Although the triple challenges of global equity, peak oil and climate change have
become increasingly familiar individually, their respective experts work in relative
isolation and their respective solutions are rarely considered in unison. There are
solutions to peak oil which accelerate climate change, and there are solutions to global
equity which exacerbate peak oil. These kinds of measures – solving one challenge at
the expense of another -- will not do. The key to our future collective well being is to
solve the three main challenges together. Once we join the dots and look for the
bigger picture, we find plenty of common ground. Many aspects of an energy strategy
which deals with climate change are the same as the strategy for dealing with to
dwindling fossil fuel reserves. In fact, facing up to our oil addiction and re-thinking
our diet, buildings, energy, water, work, clothing, heating, holidays and healthcare
could actually increase global well-being.
But getting the best out of such a massive triple challenge means using the time and
the oil we have left to their very best effect. If we wait until the challenge is really
upon us before becoming serious about developing the solutions, in the ensuing chaos
we may no longer be able to muster the resources required.
Global equity and population stabilisation
Our first challenge is one of global equity. We in the developed west simply haven’t
been sharing out the energy, or anything else for that matter, very fairly. One average
American consumes as much oil as 35 citizens of India. Here in the overdeveloped
west, we continue to use vastly more energy than is required to deliver our well being,
whilst the majority world strives to provide the basic schools, railways hospital and
welfare systems which are not only a basic human right, but are a vital tool in
stabilising global population.
Despite record increases in global economic activity, the rich are still getting richer
and the very poorest are being left behind. Never in the field of human commerce has
so much been earned by so many, for so few. This unfair distribution of resources has
been going on for so long that the majority world is now demanding what we have
been flaunting for the past 50 years, and they are industrialising at a rapid rate to get
it. And who are we to refuse them? Competitive labour rates sweep the board,
generating the economic & political power required to claim equity. New gigantic
markets such as those in India and China have opened up to modern consumerism and
have driven the global thirst for oil through the roof.
If China were to have 3 cars for every 4 people like the US does, it would use 99m
barrels of oil a day. But the world only produces 84 m barrels a day and current
production is about as high as it gets.
Runaway climate change
Our second challenge is runaway climate change. Leading climate scientists now
conclude that if global greenhouse gas emissions exceed the planet’s critical ‘tipping
point’, it will set us on course for abrupt, accelerated or runaway climate change. This
could entail massive agricultural losses, widespread economic collapse, international
water shortages, dangerous rises in sea levels, a slowdown of the Gulf Stream, and
tens of millions of environmental refugees -- a complex of global catastrophes on a
scale that would dwarf the recent events in New Orleans and run for tens of thousands
of years.
Whether we know it or not, humanity is now conducting a vast experiment with the
planets climate, taking us all into uncharted territory. The key to this experiment lies
in the vast tracts of rainforest which have remained un-changed for millions of years,
at least so we thought. The prevailing belief has always been that the world’s
rainforests; such as those in the Amazon Basin have long ago reached a steady state.
Growth is balanced by decay, so at any one time, the carbon being locked up equals
the carbon being released. However, recent research has shown this to be far from the
truth. The rainforests in the Amazon Basin are in fact growing at a rapid rate. This
astounding growth rate is clearly a relatively recent phenomenon, as new growth at
such a rate could not be sustained for more than a few decades without reaching
physical limits. During the past 200 years of industrialisation the atmospheric
concentration of carbon dioxide has increased from 220 parts per million to around
370 parts per million. This is a massive 30% increase. In fact levels are now higher
than at any time during the previous four ice ages. Carbon dioxide is one of the basic
building blocks from which plants are made; it is in effect their food. Each year we
know we give off around six billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, yet the
concentration in the atmosphere has only been rising by around 3 billion tonnes. The
terrestrial biosphere, such as the oceans the soils and the vast tracts of rainforest such
as the 5000 million hectares in the Amazon Basin are acting as a massive carbon sink,
re-absorbing 50% of the carbon we give off, and slowing climate change – but the
question is for how long?
Many climate models now predict that if business as usual continues and carbon
dioxide concentrations rise, year on year, the El Nino weather phenomenon may ‘lock
on’ and become an annual event, so causing a net increase in the dry season which
would turn the Amazon Basin from rainforest into savannah. This would change the
Amazon rainforests from a net carbon sink into a massive carbon source, releasing
huge amounts of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, causing climate havoc on a
truly global scale and in particular warming the oceans.
Beneath the oceans there exists a vast amount of an even more vicious greenhouse gas
60 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Methane formed from the an-aerobic
decay of organic materials falling to the seabed. It is held in a semi-solid form as a
methane hydrate by the ocean's pressure and low temperatures. However as the seas
begin to warm; particularly in the shallow polar waters where it is the low temperature
which is the crucial factor, the methane can begin to escape into the atmosphere
causing global climate havoc on an unprecedented scale.
Peak Oil
Our third challenge is the realisation that our unstoppable oil economies are now
being halted by the immovable facts of geology. Rather than talking about when oil
could "run out", the peak oil experts predict that despite accelerating demand, global
rates of production may be at, or approaching, its peak. This is not news, way back
1956; an oil geologist named M King Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil production
would peak in 1970. His superiors at Shell Oil were aghast. They even tried to
persuade him not to speak publicly about it. His peers, accustomed to decades of
making impressive oil discoveries, were highly sceptical, arguing technological
improvements in exploration and recovery would increase the amount of available oil.
But after decades of derision, Hubbert was proved right. U.S. oil production did
indeed peak in 1970, and it has declined steadily ever since. Even impressive
discoveries such as Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, with 13 billion barrels in recoverable
reserves, or the developments of new extraction technologies haven't been able to
reverse the trend – it is simply imposed by the geology. Peak Oil should come as no
shock the oil industry who well understands the process of discovery, extraction and
depletion. World oil discovery peaked in the 1960s. Since 1999, the discovery of large
oil and gas fields has collapsed: sixteen in 2000, eight in 2001, three in 2002, and
none in 2003. North Sea oil has peaked, as have the supplies of Mexico, Indonesia,
China, Oman and Norway. The inevitable peak of world oil production is now
imminent, and to compound the problem we are using oil quicker than ever before.
There will be warning signs. Set against escalating demand, prices will rise
dramatically and become increasingly volatile. With little or no excess production
capacity, any supply disruptions such as hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico will drive
world oil markets into frenzy. As will occasional admissions by oil companies and
oil-rich nations that they have been overestimating their reserves. Despite continuous
warning from oil geologists and oil economists across the world little action has been
taken to deal with Peak Oil, and its inevitable price shock. Why not? Because the
prevailing belief is that the free market will take care of it. However, normal
economics break down when it comes to oil. In most cases if the price of something
goes up, more of it is produced. But the price of oil has no effect on how much oil
there is to be found. We are currently using oil that we found 40 years ago. The
industry can of course switch to remote smaller fields, containing harder to extract oil,
or make oil from coal but this is neither cheap nor quick. A high price will not bring
back the massive, easily accessible discoveries of the early days. In addition, free
market principles forget about time lag.
We cannot assume that as soon as oil becomes scarce and expensive alternative forms
of generation will be ready to completely fill the gap. If the new energy technologies
we require are not developed fast enough There may well be period of great hardship
and abrupt dislocation when oil become cripplingly expensive and supplies
intermittent. Although it is an unprecedented challenge, there are encouraging
examples which can act as guides. With the loss of Soviet oil in 1990, Cuba was
forced to undergo the loss of over half of its oil imports and survived. Cubans call this
their ‘Special Period’. It was an astounding transition from large farms or plantations
and reliance on fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, to small organic farms and
urban gardens. Cuba made the transition from a highly industrial society to a
sustainable one. If we wait until the three challenges are really upon us before
becoming serious about developing the technologies we require, we may very
well no longer be able to muster the resources needed.
Population, denial and our addiction to fossil fuels
We see the crisis, we have the solutions – but our almost total failure to take the
actions which could avert it is making it increasingly obvious that our entire culture,
indeed our entire civilization, is locked into ‘oil denial’. Denial is the primary
psychological symptom of addiction. It is both automatic and unconscious. Addicts
are often the last to recognize their disease, pursuing their addictions to the gates of
insanity as their world collapses around them. Denial is a "defence mechanism". It
defends the individual or collective consciousness from some truth which they cannot
afford to acknowledge because it would expose overwhelming feelings of fear, shame
or confusion. There are many subtypes of denial, including projection ("I don't have a
problem - you have the problem."), rationalization ("I need consumerism because of
my crummy job / life / wife / parents etc."), intellectualization (keeping it on a
detached, theoretical level), minimizing (sure I consume here and there, but it's not a
problem"), and suppression (refusing to admit the problem to conscious thought). The
ultimate irony lies in geographic escapes (“I just feel so much better if I take a week
out in Thailand”). As long as we remain in denial about climate change, peak oil or
the suffering of the majority world we are free from the very painful feelings, and can
lose ourselves in our affluence.
Denial is not the only symptom of addiction. When the supply of the addicted
substance is restricted or removed, it is common for anti-social behaviour to emerge
on a collective or individual level. Nothing is more important than the addiction itself.
Everything is geared towards getting the dependence met, and the deeper into
addiction we go, the greater the selfishness. In the case of powerful addictions, the
addict will even break national or international law in order to secure their supply.
Consequently, addicts often hide their behaviours from others or create smokescreen
excuses to justify their anti-social behaviour. At long last, following this year’s State
of the Union Address, America and her over-developed allies now admit they are
addicted to oil. The recovery plan must not stop here however, the next step is to
reduce the usage rate and so curb the anti social behaviour.
We should also be very cautious of swapping one addiction for another. Some
technologies are very hard to kick once you pick up the habit. Britain for example
must maintain expensive nuclear facilities far into the future, if it is to safely deal with
its waste and decommissioning liabilities. Indeed, if the Romans had used nuclear
power, we would still need to be tending their wastes, which I am sure we would be
happy to do in their honour, but what would have happened to it during the Dark
Ages? If we take another nuclear fix, lots of other countries will want a try. If we
want to stem the flow, we should quickly re-brand the UK as ‘Beyond Plutonium’.
Why is an oil addiction so hard to break?
Around 400 million years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere was rich in carbon dioxide.
The sun blazed down on this vast, fertile greenhouse. The abundant carbon dioxide
and resultant higher temperatures created an ideal hothouse. A verdant carpet of
plants covered the single continent of Pangaea, soaking up the sun, as did the
surrounding oceans of single-celled algae. This went on for millions upon millions of
years. The vast surface area of the earth was turning the sun’s energy into plant and
animal matter, compressing and concentrating it in carbon-rich black seams, hence the
name Carboniferous period.
This 70 million year reserve of ancient sunlight lay slowly concentrating for further
eons until in 1859 oil was discovered in Pennsylvania USA. This represents a critical
moment in human history, for up to that point humanity had been fed only by the
annual sunlight falling on croplands (topped up with the addition of a little coal in
Europe, Asia, and North America). With the advent of oil, humanity started living off
our planet’s ‘sunlight-reserves’. We had discovered a massive energy “bank account”.
As a result of this artificially cheap fossil-fuel energy we developed global models of
industry, commerce, food production, and finance that will collapse without it. We
also discovered we could use oil for plastics and chemicals too, so it has become
indispensable to almost every aspect of our lives. It’s not just food, it’s also drinking
water, home heating, manufacturing, communications and personal transport, and
that’s just the start.
A single day’s oil consumption now represents a line of barrels long enough to
encircle the earth. Access to these massive reserves of stored, concentrated energy has
allowed the global population level to triple in the lifetime of our current monarch.
In addition, it has allowed us to create vast areas of human habitation such as the
sprawling American suburbs, which depend on abundant cheap petrochemicals. As a
result, there are now half a billion cars and trucks currently in use around the world.
Oil and gas took hundreds of millions of years to form, and we’ve used half of it in
only 150 years. They are the most concentrated, transportable, convenient fuel we
have ever had – or ever will have!
So, how on earth can we in the overdeveloped west act ahead of events and begin a
process of contracting our excessive and addictive use of fossil fuels in order to
converge with the majority world at some global fair share?
The ‘contraction and convergence’ to a global fair share does not mean a return to
pre-industrial energy capture based on annual sunlight falling on croplands. We now
have a wide range of renewable energy generators to vastly increase the available
annual energy yield. We will also be able to use some conventional fossil fuels. In
addition there are potential inputs from clean coal with carbon capture and storage.
Towards an integrated solution
Powerdown: A re-think of our approach to how we use energy
The key to success is to integrate energy and population goals. We in the overdeveloped west are energy obese; we use far more energy than is good for us. Too
many years of too cheap petrochemicals have led us into some embarrassingly
wasteful habits. So much so that we have to spend more energy as we drive to special
places where incredible machines use yet more energy to give us the exercise to keep
our bodies working properly. Richard Heinberg’s original concept of ‘Powerdown’ is
a sane response to humanity’s increasingly grave problems. Powerdown is not the
same as energy efficiency: it goes very much further. We drive an oil powered
machine to plough the land, and another to plant the seed. We then use fertilisers and
pesticides made with oil, and irrigate with water pumped by oil. We harvest the crop
with oil-powered tractors and process it with fossil-fuelled electrical equipment.
Finally it is packed in plastic and driven further than you ever imagined. The bottom
line is that we eat ten calories of fossil fuel energy for every calorie of food we
consume. Switching to a locally sourced, mostly organic, less-processed, low-meat
diet will not only increase our general health and well being, it can massively reduce
the fossil fuel dependence of our eating habits.
The potential powerdown which could be achieved through a re-think of our food
alone is massive. For starters, we export some 102,000 tones of lamb to the EU,
whilst also importing 125,000 tonnes from the EU. Similar paradoxes exist for most
other products. Local food chains are not only more energy efficient, they are
considerably more reliable. But could we still feed ourselves if we broke our addiction
to oil? With a re-think, many people believe we could. Firstly it would require a
change of diet, but that’s something we need to do in any case. Secondly
supermarkets reject around 30% of vegetables because they are the wrong shape,
colour or size. Further waste occurs when food is processed into ready meals. Finally,
consumers bin about 30% of what they buy. If we stopped this wastage then we could
be far more self-reliant in food and vastly reduce the oil needed to provide it.
A major switch to renewable generation
If we powerdown, so contracting our energy requirements, delivering our needs with
renewable sources not only becomes achievable, it rapidly becomes cost competitive
as oil prices soar, and significantly more reliable as fossil energy supplies falter. It has
become clear that if our energy strategy is based on wastefully exploiting everdiminishing reserves of nuclear or fossil fuels, the inevitable demand-driven
improvements in extraction technology may increase short-term yield, but only at the
cost of depleting the reserves even faster – so making the problem worse! But if our
way forward is based on exploiting flows, the same demand-driven improvements in
extraction technology will increase annual yield but on a permanent basis.
Re-thinking ‘Development’
So-called ‘third world development’ could prove to be a dangerous myth. The
majority world is expected to pull itself out of poverty through globalised trade to
satisfy our selfish desires for cheap exotic products. Firstly the sheer scale will be
more than the Earth’s climate can bear, and secondly there isn’t enough cheap oil left
to make it a long-term solution. Far better we move from the ‘century of the self’ to
the ‘century of the self-reliant’, and begin transforming trans-national trade towards
what we actually need to buy from each other.
Conclusion
The key to success is to integrate energy and population goals. Our choice is clear: if
a minority of powerful nations continue to favour an economic system under-pinned
by centralised technologies and vulnerable supply lines, they will need to protect it
with a huge world-wide police force at enormous expense and risk to global equity
and our ability to limit global population growth. On the other hand, if we begin a
shift to a decentralised world economy based on equitable and efficient use of
renewable energy sources, and re-localised supply systems, we can create global
communities that no one can easily threaten and, perhaps more importantly, which
threaten no one else.
Paul Allen Draft text 17/3/06