Sustainable development and Population Reduction

[drpmjhess]

Sorry, but using nuclear is jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Those nuclear power plants become so radioactive in just 40 years that no human being can go near them.

As far as conserving, Americans are just too used to luxury and independence. In Germany, where people are also extravagant in many ways, they are basically very content with the simplest accommodations and food. They think nothing of walking 2 or 3 miles in the course of their work day and getting to and from work and shopping. Bread for breakfast and bread for supper. No one eats between meals, because it isn’t customary. The cooked food is pretty simple, too. People eat lots of potatoes and not too much meat…

Leeta, you are thinking of old reactors; the situation has changed a lot since the first generation. I too used to have a knee-jerk opposition to nuclear, and while it is not a panacea (there is only enough uranium for about two centuries) I believe it is the only way to keep billions from dying for lack of water, heat, and air conditioning.

Smaller replacement-rate families (which most European countries have) allow for smaller accommodations. I agree with you that Americans live far too high on the hog calorically, and that costs energy.

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

Cars may run on hydrogen now. I think that in the future that will be the fuel for cars…

Leeta, I hope so. A colleague of mine fr9m ASPO (Association for hte Study of Peak Oil) sent this today. Petrus

"Peak production of conventional oil came 30 months ago and although new production projects will come on stream in the next few years, they will have a hard time balancing the depletion from existing fields which various speakers placed at 4-5 percent a year and probably increasing. As a greater share of world production shifts to undersea production, which is expensive and is usually water flooded to get the oil out as quickly as possible, some believe the annual world depletion rate could increase to six percent or more.

The most ominous development for countries such as the U.S., which must import most of its oil, is the emerging concept of “peak exports” which was discussed by several speakers. Peak exports simply means that oil-producing countries are using more and more oil at home - leaving less to sell abroad. Moreover, sentiment is starting to develop in many nations that they must save some oil for future generations, not just sell it to the foreign devils as quickly as possible.

This clearly means that major oil importers will face a shortfall in their ability to obtain oil many months or years sooner than they had been anticipating. The fall in the amount of oil available for purchase is likely to drop much more quickly than declines in production. When world oil exports fall, if they have not started doing so already, effects are likely to sharp and painful.

The problem is that most people have no concept as to how soon the transformation will start and how much their lives are going to change. The President, his government, the Congress, the oil companies, and indeed the media have left us with the impression that we have the transformation to an alternative fuel future well in hand. Bills mandating and increasing the supply of ethanol have been passed or are in the hopper. The President makes periodic references to hydrogen-powered cars. The oil companies allege there is no problem and the media takes it all in and remains mute.

The peak oil problem is not that most of us don’t recognize a transition is coming - if for no other reason than reducing our dependence on “foreign oil” - it is that we don’t recognize that the transition will come soon and will inflict more economic pain and social dislocation on the American people than we have experienced since the Civil War or perhaps ever.

Thus the message from Houston was “it will be soon and it will be bad, very bad,” much sooner and much worse than 99 percent of the American people realize.

Earlier this week, a European Organization called Energy Watch released a paper concluding as many others have done that world oil production peaked last year and will decline steeply over the next 22 years so that by 2030 production will be in the vicinity of 40 million barrels per day which is less than half of current production. In ten years production will be down on the order of 20 million barrels per day.

What we in America have not yet begun to grasp is that numbers like this imply the near total demise of the private internal combustion powered automobile. Your local gasoline station is at the end of the distribution pipeline and is the most likely to be cut off. If gasoline available for distribution in the U.S. were to fall from 9 million barrels a day to the order of 5 million through a combination of declining production and declining exports, it is not hard to figure out what would happen when the government gets around to prioritizing uses.

Food production and distribution would come first, then public health (clean water, sewage, sanitation, medical services), then public safety including the armed forces, and finally some level of economic activity that uses petroleum products.

Thirty seconds of pondering this situation should leave you with the idea that there will be very little gasoline available for your gas station to sell to you. For sure, there will be a lot fewer gas stations around ten years from now and you are not going to like the prices.

 

[Al_Masetti]

If hydrogen was REALLY a viable fuel for cars, then there would be a fleet of them running around now, already … driven by some of the wealthy folks who are always the first ones to buy the newest thing.

If I were to guess … then, probably a plug-in hybrid electric car would be the next great thing … and wealthy folks and enthusiasts are already buying them … check out, for example, the Tesla.

You could plug in the car at night and recharge the battery on the cheap using a special off-peak rate from the electric company. Electric cars can run 200 miles on a charge, so they are perfect for just running around town, commuting, etc. For trips, you’d need a small engine-generator to keep the battery charged up.

The Tesla is a little pricey right now, though. $100K!]

For about $10K you could modify a Prius to have a plug-in feature. But the “electric range” would be shorter than the range of a Tesla.

 

[drpmjhess]

For about $10K you could modify a Prius to have a plug-in feature. But the “electric range” would be shorter than the range of a Tesla.

We will need all the options available to us. The thing that 99% of Americans aren’t aware of (in my experience of speaking to diverse audiences on this topic) is the economic cascade effect. Whatever good things we do individually to retrofit our homes for passive solar or photovoltaic generation and to change our diving habits, we cannot escape the fact that our entire economy is premised upon cheap oil. Independent truckers will only transport foodstuffs, hardware, beds, toys, and clothing so long as there is a profit in it for them; when diesel costs too much, they will go out of business. When supermarkets can no longer get food delivered to their shelves, what point will there be in continuing in business? When few people can afford to drive to work on $15.00/gallon gasoline around 2012, unemployment and mortgage defaults will skyrocket. This will slash the tax base, undercutting schools, hospitals, government, and police and fire protection service.

Without police protection, with internal refugees rendered homeless by hurricanes or wildfires, and with 50 million Mexicans eyeing their northern border when their own Cantrell Oil Field burps dry, there will no longer be a sense of inviolable private property. Will we be reduced to defending our families with shotguns, or to a society reminiscent of Lord of the Flies? Will Europe be overrun by refugees from Africa, Asia and the Islamic world? Will chaos reign in Arabic countries rendered powerless without oil to sell? Will see a new isolationism as air travel becomes a thing of the past, or available only to the super-rich in private planes?

This is, or course, the direst view, and God forbid it should be what comes to pass. But it will come to pass if we blithely continue as we are. It is folly to suppose we can support a petroleum-guzzling population of 6.7 billion suburbia dwellers growing indefinitely into the future. There are deep ethical issues here for everyone to tackle. Check this out:
worldometers.info/

Prayerfully yours,
Petrus

 

[Al_Masetti]

Economic changes happen gradually; not suddenly as would be the options and alternatives stated in this post.

As costs of petroleum-based fuels increase, the comparative advantage of other fuels will increase. The United States has humongous amounts of coal. And coal can be converted into liquid and gaseous fuels using processes that have been known for almost a century. BUT, they require building new facilities for the conversion and that means that environmental extremists will file lawsuits to prevent those plants from being built. In addition to extremists, the Riady family arranged to have one of the major locations placed off limits because that U.S. coal competes with their Indonesian coal,

There are numerous places in the United States to drill for oil and gas, but those locations have been placed off limits by extremists.

So, I think a lot of the restraints and limits on energy in the U.S. are artificial and political. In addition, the changes in costs will happen gradually and allow the economy to adjust.

We will need all the options available to us. The thing that 99% of Americans aren’t aware of (in my experience of speaking to diverse audiences on this topic) is the economic cascade effect. Whatever good things we do individually to retrofit our homes for passive solar or photovoltaic generation and to change our diving habits, we cannot escape the fact that our entire economy is premised upon cheap oil. Independent truckers will only transport foodstuffs, hardware, beds, toys, and clothing so long as there is a profit in it for them; when diesel costs too much, they will go out of business. When supermarkets can no longer get food delivered to their shelves, what point will there be in continuing in business? When few people can afford to drive to work on $15.00/gallon gasoline around 2012, unemployment and mortgage defaults will skyrocket. This will slash the tax base, undercutting schools, hospitals, government, and police and fire protection service.

Without police protection, with internal refugees rendered homeless by hurricanes or wildfires, and with 50 million Mexicans eyeing their northern border when their own Cantrell Oil Field burps dry, there will no longer be a sense of inviolable private property. Will we be reduced to defending our families with shotguns, or to a society reminiscent of Lord of the Flies? Will Europe be overrun by refugees from Africa, Asia and the Islamic world? Will chaos reign in Arabic countries rendered powerless without oil to sell? Will see a new isolationism as air travel becomes a thing of the past, or available only to the super-rich in private planes?

This is, or course, the direst view, and God forbid it should be what comes to pass. But it will come to pass if we blithely continue as we are. It is folly to suppose we can support a petroleum-guzzling population of 6.7 billion suburbia dwellers growing indefinitely into the future. There are deep ethical issues here for everyone to tackle. Check this out:
worldometers.info/

Prayerfully yours,
Petrus

 

[DanteAlighieri]

i believe that God desires us to return to a more natural lifestyle in harmony with the created order. our current american life style is unsustainable, materialistic, wasteful and artificial. globalism and free market capitalism is like a giant ponzi scheme that will come to a catastrophic end. something has got to give. i do believe that at some point in the near future, our consumptive lifestyle will be forced to change.

it’s not God’s desire that we live on top of on another in overcrowded cities. to be separated from creation is more like living in hell to me. i don’t understand why we need immigration at this point. it’s a fact that most immigrants flock to big cities making them even more overcrowded.

but, i’m the last one to support forced population control. it is just that at some point, the world could be overcrowded.

Since the dawn of civlization (note, I did not say “the dawn of man”), we have gravitated toward urban centers. There is nothing inherently wrong with this – we are social beings, and that is part of our design.

Your preference would be to return to a rural, or even nomadic, lifestyle?

Having the population concentrated in large cities is not what makes our lifestyle “consumptive” – it’s greed that does that. You don’t think there was greed before man put down roots and said, “I’m going to call this chunk of land ‘City Town’”?

Peace,
Dante

 

[drpmjhess]

Since the dawn of civlization (note, I did not say “the dawn of man”), we have gravitated toward urban centers. There is nothing inherently wrong with this – we are social beings, and that is part of our design.Peace,Dante

Dante, you are right about our being social beings. The problem is that when our cities become megalopolises – so big that all food has to be trucked in long distances – the average piece of food travels 1,500 miles. When the cheap oil is gone in this generation, that will no longer be possible; no more fresh tomatoes from Chile in winter. The point is not to go back to living in caves, but to situate our cities in such a way that they are smaller and are surrounded by farmland, so that food can be consumed on a regional basis, and that most transportation to work, schools, churches, medical centers, and places of amusement can be done by light rail or bicycle.

Petrus sum

 

[drpmjhess]

So, I think a lot of the restraints and limits on energy in the U.S. are artificial and political. In addition, the changes in costs will happen gradually and allow the economy to adjust.

Al, economic changes can happen quite rapidly – witness the 1929 . The run on corn for ethanol is already pushing corn prices out of the reach of some in Mexico, who rely on it for food. And while it is true that the market makes adjustments, this can happen quickly. When gasoline reaches a per gallon price point that renders it unaffordable for the average family commuting long distances ($8.00? $12.00 $15.00?), we are not suddenly going to see alternatives kicking in to the point that gasoline goes back down to $3.00 per gallon.

We will find alternatives, but many of them are petroleum-dependent (photovoltaic, wind, tidal) for construction and maintenance. And at the same time that petroleum reserves fall, demand is increasing; in Beijing alone 1,000 new cars per day are being licensed. The danger zone is the period between the decline of the cheap petroleum we have enjoyed since 1859, and the time when alternatives kick in that can sustain humanity for the next 10,000 years.

Petrus sum

 

[Al_Masetti]

The thing that happened in 1929 was a financial panic, of which the United States (and probably every other country) has had many over the years. There are financial speculations and excesses, and then the hangover.

Read more here: [Whether or not they are cyclical is another issue, but interesting]

davidmcminn.com/pages/fcnum56.htm

 

[Trader]

Buffaloes are not lemmings

Actually there is a connection between buffaloes and lemmings. Native Americans of the great plains used to hunt buffalo on foot by dirving herds off cliffs until what seemed like a miracle occurred. People from an unknown continent brought them horses and greatly improved their productivity.

The population pessimists show little appreciation for our gift of intelligence and creativity. Living standards have greatly increased at an accellerating rate from unpredictable gains in human productivity. Malthus was wrong because he could not anticipate electric motors, antibiotics, genetic science, petroleum, nuclear power, telephones, computers, airplanes, metallurgical science, or modern democracies–just for starters.

Our future will see more advances that I am unable to predict. One of them will most certainly be generation of electricity by nuclear fusion. That could supply enough energy to desalinize sea water and produce hydrogen for use as a transportation fuel.
It will be expensive by today’s standards. How would you have explained to 1850’s family what the average American family could afford today?

Just look around you a little harder. God the Mighty has done great things for me.

 

[johnnycatholic]

We will need all the options available to us. The thing that 99% of Americans aren’t aware of (in my experience of speaking to diverse audiences on this topic) is the economic cascade effect. Whatever good things we do individually to retrofit our homes for passive solar or photovoltaic generation and to change our diving habits, we cannot escape the fact that our entire economy is premised upon cheap oil. Independent truckers will only transport foodstuffs, hardware, beds, toys, and clothing so long as there is a profit in it for them; when diesel costs too much, they will go out of business.

As a trucker, I’m pretty sure that the transportation industry is well aware of the increase in fuel prices. As a result they have a vested interest in coming up with alternative fuels and vehicles which will go into service about ten seconds after they have milked the maximum profit off the last drop of oil! Truckers will always make a profit. If fuel prices increase the trucker doesn’t go out of business it’s just that the price of everything goes up. The truckers who don’t transfer to whatever new fuel or vehicle they come out with will go out of business though. There is too much of an intrenched transportation paradigm for it to change too drastically. The transportation industry has the mega bucks to be ready for any loss of oil resources, they are the ones who will lead the way in financing the development of any new tchnology. It’s their bread and butter ya know I mean we are talking about huge amounts of money that could potentially be lost and they just won’t allow it. So no worries about the cascade effect from the price of diesel.

 

[drpmjhess]

It’s their bread and butter ya know I mean we are talking about huge amounts of money that could potentially be lost and they just won’t allow it. So no worries about the cascade effect from the price of diesel.

The cascade will come when the cost of transportation – experienced by and passed on to consumers by truckers – is added to the increased cost of foodstuffs made from corn, and the increased costs of everything else that isn’t manufactured locally.

There are some useful sites to educate ourselves about the decline of oil:

lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
oilcrisis.com/

 

[drpmjhess]

Malthus was wrong because he could not anticipate electric motors, antibiotics, genetic science, petroleum, nuclear power, telephones, computers, airplanes, metallurgical science, or modern democracies–just for starters.

Our future will see more advances that I am unable to predict. One of them will most certainly be generation of electricity by nuclear fusion.

Malthus was right – biologists recognize that every animal species has a maximum carrying capacity, including humans. Because we are a clever animal we can tinker with the parameters better than other animals and increase our carrying capacity somewhat, but not permanently and not for infinite expansion.

If we can stick around long enough to perfect fusion energy, this will help a lot for land transportation. But this is yet many years in the future, whereas affordable oil will be effectively gone within a generation. We have the interim between the disappearance of the oil and the coming on line of fusion, and in this interim we will have to feed 9 billion people without benefit of inexpensive petroleum-based fertilizers.

 

[jman507]

Malthus was right – biologists recognize that every animal species has a maximum carrying capacity, including humans. Because we are a clever animal we can tinker with the parameters better than other animals and increase our carrying capacity somewhat, but not permanently and not for infinite expansion.

If we can stick around long enough to perfect fusion energy, this will help a lot for land transportation. But this is yet many years in the future, whereas affordable oil will be effectively gone within a generation. We have the interim between the disappearance of the oil and the coming on line of fusion, and in this interim we will have to feed 9 billion people without benefit of inexpensive petroleum-based fertilizers.

I wouldn’t exactly say that we can increase our carrying capacity somewhat. Carrying capacity is a bit like capital. In the short term it can only be changed somewhat, but in the long term it can change. We should know that carrying capacity can change for animals, because of the climate change debate. From year to year, it may not change all that much, but when taken on a bit of a wider range subtle climate changes can drastically change the carrying capacity in a given region for an organism.

Today we have we have billions of people, but that could not have been sustained a century ago. One thing that probably spurred on the change that needed to be made was at least partly due to coming up against limits of carrying capacity. While some resources could be met by the innovations created, not all were. Then there was a need for those lagging industries to caught up.

The outcomes of any critical crisis tend to follow two basic paths: innovate or die. The answers may not really be known, if you look at incremental improvements, that may not account for breakthroughs. If incremental improvements could be made, then there probably wouldn’t really be a crisis. Also there are better possible alternatives, but it is hard to really move towards them because we are in habits. Habits are hard to break, until they really cause a problem. Do you think anyone would quit smoking if there were not health consequences? Just the amount of capital invested in order to have a fairly reliable energy pathways, makes it tough to break down the system to go with something new.

When I was in high school we used better programs to put our school newspaper together than what the major city newspaper used. We where so small we could change what we did at a drop of a hat. What it would take for them to change would be more tricky. Everyone would need to be retrained, and the switch would have to happen without a glitch. The newspaper comes out twice a day. Eventually though the newspaper did switch to using computers, but it was still lagging far behind.

The race should be on for trying to figure out new ways to exploit ways to increase energy capacity. Hopefully the crisis can be met before a collopse occurs.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Got to thinking and there is one kind of social phenomenon that does take place RAPIDLY… Communist Revolution.

Accompanied by mass executions of “enemies of the people”.

Accompanied by seizure by the government of most of the private property and all of the industry.

Followed by a rapid decline in the economic vitality of the nation.

Interested persons might want to visit their favorite on-line book store and get a copy of “The Black Book of Communism”.

amazon.com/Black-Book-Communism-Crimes-Repression/dp/0674076087/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-8665672-7610058?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193710978&sr=1-1

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Hardcover)
by Stéphane Courtois (Author), Nicolas Werth (Author), Jean-Louis Panné (Author), Andrzej Paczkowski (Author), Karel Bartosek (Author), Jean-Louis Margolin (Author), Mark Kramer (Editor), Jonathan Murphy (Translator), Stephane Courtois (Author), Jean-Louis Panne (Author)

 

[RWMorris]

Actually there is a connection between buffaloes and lemmings. Native Americans of the great plains used to hunt buffalo on foot by dirving herds off cliffs until what seemed like a miracle occurred. People from an unknown continent brought them horses and greatly improved their productivity.

The population pessimists show little appreciation for our gift of intelligence and creativity. Living standards have greatly increased at an accellerating rate from unpredictable gains in human productivity. Malthus was wrong because he could not anticipate electric motors, antibiotics, genetic science, petroleum, nuclear power, telephones, computers, airplanes, metallurgical science, or modern democracies–just for starters.

Our future will see more advances that I am unable to predict. One of them will most certainly be generation of electricity by nuclear fusion. That could supply enough energy to desalinize sea water and produce hydrogen for use as a transportation fuel.
It will be expensive by today’s standards. How would you have explained to 1850’s family what the average American family could afford today?

Just look around you a little harder. God the Mighty has done great things for me.

This is true.
HOwever I agree with other posters that the American lifestyle is much too consumption-oriented.

 

[drpmjhess]

The race should be on for trying to figure out new ways to exploit ways to increase energy capacity. Hopefully the crisis can be met before a collapse occurs.

Yes, one would hope so. There is a huge and growing gap between energy produced at Hubert’s Peak (2006?) of the oil production curve and the energy that will be needed to replace the 6-7% annual decline in production from now on. The trick will be to find enough replacement energy to make up for all the lost oil, plus enough on top of that to meet the rising demand from the growing world population. So far that replacement energy is not being met.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Yes, one would hope so. There is a huge and growing gap between energy produced at Hubert’s Peak (2006?) of the oil production curve and the energy that will be needed to replace the 6-7% annual decline in production from now on. The trick will be to find enough replacement energy to make up for all the lost oil, plus enough on top of that to meet the rising demand from the growing world population. So far that replacement energy is not being met.

China and India are probably the largest energy users in the world. Certainly their energy demands are the fastest growing. How will they come up with “replacement energy”?

This has nothing to do with “American lifestyle”. It has to do with improving life for people and the only way to do that is by use of energy other than human muscle.

 

[po18guy]

China and India are probably the largest energy users in the world. Certainly their energy demands are the fastest growing. How will they come up with “replacement energy”?

This has nothing to do with “American lifestyle”. It has to do with improving life for people and the only way to do that is by use of energy other than human muscle.

And the U.S. gets jumped for not signing onto the Kyoto Accords, which exempt China and India from many of the most onerous requirements. This allows them to continue polluting while we must redouble our efforts. I guess everything will be fair once th U.S. becomes third world.

 

[drpmjhess]

China and India are probably the largest energy users in the world. Certainly their energy demands are the fastest growing. How will they come up with “replacement energy”?

Good question. If they can put in place the requisite solar, nuclear, tidal, wind and geothermal installations – while there yet remains enough petroleum to fuel the manufacturing, transportation, digging, equipment installation – this would be good.

Water will be an equally crucial element in ensuring Asian sustainability, since as global warming increases the Himalayan glaciers that feed the six major rivers of the region will shrink dramatically, increasing seasonal droughts.

Petrus sum