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PEAK OIL AND THE
FATE OF HUMANITY
Chapter 1 – Oil, the Lifeblood of a
Technological Civilization
By Robert Bériault
Why do you say
oil is so
valuable for you
Earthlings?
 Why oil is so valuable:
Canadians use an enormous
amount of energy.
In fact, Canadians are the world’s biggest
users of energy
 Why oil is so valuable:
Half of Canada’s
energy supply
comes from oil.
Statistics Canada: http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/prim72.htm
 Why oil is
so valuable:
The average
Canadian uses an
amount of energy
equivalent to what
200 men would
expend -- working 24
hours a day.
Click
here
The average modern human has 200
“energy slaves” working for him or her
C.J.Campbell, December 2000
 Why oil is so valuable:
95% of transportation
is fuelled by oil
 Why oil is so valuable:
Look around you…
 Why oil is so valuable:
Can you see any
object here…
… that has not
been transported
by vehicles…
… fuelled by oil?
Even the walls, the floor and the ceiling
would not be here without transportation
fuelled by oil
 Think of the construction industry:
Cement plant
Cement truck fuelled by diesel (oil)
Delivers materials
to construction site
Could anything be
built without
transportation?
 Think of manufacturing:
A flat-bed truck fuelled by diesel (oil)
Delivers materials
to the factory
Could anything be
manufactured
without a reliable
transportation
system?
 Think of how items reach the store:
Factory
Distributor
Store
For goods to
reach the retailer
we depend on a
complex
distribution
system…
…that simply could
not work without
an ample supply of
easily available oil
 Think of the food you eat:
Processing
plant
Distributor
Farm
Plate
 Think of the food you eat:
Food travels
an average of
2080 km from
farm to plate
The Party’s Over, Richard Heinberg
Food travels an
average of 2080 km
from farm to plate
How would our
food get into the
cities without
transportation
fuelled by oil?
 Think of international trade
Grain carrier
Cargo plane
Container ship
How would we ship
billions of tons of
goods without oil?
 Think of how
we would get
to work if it
weren’t for
oil…
Park?
Ski centre?
Gym?
Church?
Without
gasoline, how
would we get
to…
Lake?
Lessons?
 Think of how public transit also
depends on oil:
 Think of services rendered by air:
Crop spraying
Power line inspections
Access to remote places
Forest fire fighting
All
of
these
run
on
oil
 Think of energy hungry municipal
services:
 Think of mineral extraction:
• Everything we buy
depends on the
mining industry,
which is efficient
because of cheap
oil.
 Think of labour saving machinery :
All these use oil
 Even around the home we use
oil-consuming machines
 Think of the sports that could not
exist without oil
 Tourism only exists because cheap
oil is available
Our health care system needs oil for:
Instrumentation
Hospitals
Pharmaceuticals
Disposable (plastic) supplies
Without oil, how could our hospitals run their:
Surgical rooms?
Diagnostic laboratories?
Teaching facilities?
Intensive care?
Calgary winter
Oil accounts for a large proportion of heating for
houses and commercial buildings.
Oil is used for electrical generation
in many parts of the world

Oil is so versatile…
The petrochemical industry can refine oil into many
different fuels
Gas
Naphtha
Gasoline
Kerosene
Diesel
Lubricants
http://science.howstuffworks.com
 And it can be made into 1000s of
products including plastics, textiles, etc.
Modern, intensive
agriculture
depends on oil
 Fertilizers and pesticides are made
from natural gas and oil
 Almost all farm machinery
operates on oil
 Because of inexpensive oil …
…1 farmer can feed 100 people
Without agricultural
chemicals and machinery
how would we meet
the world demand for food?
…everything depends on an ample supply
of petroleum
 Why oil is so valuable:
Everything we do, our
agriculture, our
technology, the way we
live, the cities we’ve
built…
 Why oil is so valuable:
NONE OF THIS
WOULD EXIST
WITHOUT AN
AMPLE SUPPLY OF
CHEAP OIL
Boy! Oil enables
you humans to
make a lot of
stuff!
Indeed! Lots of stuff!
Not only has oil enabled us to make a
lot of stuff, but the price of stuff has
been going down, down and down.
I’ll give you an example…
Let’s look at the cost of a refrigerator
When I was a child
in 1949
it cost my father 20%
of his annual salary
to buy the above
refrigerator
When I got married
in 1965
it cost me 10% of my
salary to purchase this
much superior
refrigerator
Today the average
person needs
only spend 2 % of
their salary to buy
the same thing*.
* Average salary: $40,000 vs. cost of fridge $800
The reason why
consumer goods are so
cheap today is that
we’ve put the
energy from oil
to work for us.
If we can extract
resources and build
factories, automated
assembly lines, and
computer operated
robots, it is thanks to
having access to oil.
Oil is what
feeds our
economy.
Growth of TSX
I’m not the only one
who says oil’s important
to the economy:
The Energy Information
Administration, Department
of Commerce and Bureau of
Economic Analysis, U.S.A.:
“The availability of oil,
natural gas, and coal is what
made the United States’ rise
to a global economic
superpower possible. As
energy consumption
escalated, so did the nation’s
economic output as
measured by annual gross
domestic product.”
This graph shows
that GDP increases
when oil production
(energy) increases.
In other words,
economic growth
requires growth of
energy supply.
There’s lots you
humans could do to
save energy. Those
energy savings would
enhance the
economy.
In other words,
improving
efficiency:
-- replacing a
process or an item
with one that uses
less energy – right?
Two things are
involved:
1) Creating the new process or
item requires an input of
energy
2) Often requires ditching the old
item or assembly line (thus
wasting the energy that went
into making it)
Lets consider what happens when we switch to
a more efficient technology:
1600 litres per year
800 litres per year
Efficient Hybrid Technology
Internal combustion engine
Savings:
Click
800
hereL
Savings:
800 L
800 litres are now
available on the
international
market.
800 litres on the
international
market
Consequence 1:
Causes a DOWNWARD PUSH
on the price of oil
Consequence 2:
The lower price INCREASES DEMAND:
Someone else uses the oil to make
other goods
Energy is always needed
to increase efficiency
Indeed there’s a lot we could do to increase efficiency.
But there’s a limit to improvements in efficiency.
And increasing efficiency doesn’t reduce the economy’s
dependence on oil.
Read David Delaney’s “Why Energy Efficiency Won’t Reduce Consumption”
See: “Further Reading” in the “Chapter Choice” page
In a nutshell, the
endowment of oil
that Nature has
bequeathed us
has led to today’s
high standard of
living
-- and we need
oil to maintain
that standard.
IN a
nutshell…
National Geographic, “End of Cheap Oil”, June 2004,
published this picture of items made mostly from oil-based
polymers, all found in a single home.
If you’ve wondered when we’re
going to run out, go to Chapter 2
Chapter
selection page