Oil Rant.
Interesting, McCain is calling for a lifting on the US ban on offshore Oil drilling, seems to me that of all the ways of extracting oil, offshore is probably one of the best, in terms of overall environmental impact, seems that in the US Coastal states they are all afraid of oil spills and damage to the tourist industry
( Read more... )
Of course offshore oil drilling is an environmental nightmare, but it's a better idea than leaving oil under the sea relatively close by and heading off around the world to dig it out of the ground, in an unstable part of the world like Burma or the Middle East, ruining the environment there, (not to mention proping up some unpleasant regimes while your at it) and then putting it in a ship, with a Diesel Engine that could be up to 12,500 times bigger than you'd have in a 2 litre mini-van, running for thousands of miles at a top speed of around 30kmph to get it to market.
You can huff and puff all you want about whether or not Africa can be generalized as a continent or as a group of individual countries with their own success and failures. But the point remains that the countries on that continent by and large are as I said a complete mess, from a socio-economic point of view, and my point that discovery of large oil deposits in the parts of Africa I mentioned will probably lead to further exploitation by the Oil companies still stands.
My point about the Europeans sitting down and drawing lines on the map was that the act of drawing those lines caused a lot of the tribal conflicts. You just have to look at the long straight borders of Chad or the crazy right angled borders of Mali and Mauritania to realise that Africa was carved up by people with little or no understanding of historical tribal boundaries.
"There will be no new energy sources. Get out of your car."
Nonsense, there are already alternative energy sources, perhaps not on the same scale or with the same efficiency as we get from oil, but there are alternatives, the only sane solution is ramp down oil dependancy and ramp up the other options. This will mean changes and energy won't be as readily available. The more oil we have during the transition the steadier that ramp down will be, and the less likely we are to cause the entire global economy to come to a shuddering halt, economic crashes have historically led to some fairly nasty people coming to power.
Of course US and Europe won't be the first to starve, we have huge areas of arrable land, which is easily accessable (even if we need to go back to using oxen to haul produce to market having an extensive road network will help), we have a vastly literate workforce who can easily be taught to grow their own food and we have a climate that makes it pretty easy to do so.
Besides which fertilizers and pesticides push up the profit margins of the food producers by increasing yields, but increased yields only serve to keep the cost per kilo competitive in a world where it is economically viable to ship in food grown in a country where labour is cheaper. It is a complete myth that the western world will starve first if denied oil, the choice would be limited, and you'd have to eat whatever was in season, but we wouldn't be the first to starve.
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You can say whatever you want to justify single-occupier car journeys, but the only actual sane solution is to build a society that isn't car-dependent. Apart from the fact that this one invention has more-or-less single-handedly squandered the vast oil reserves the world had and could have been put to better use, the car is anti-society, encouraging selfishness, destroying communities and killing little old ladies.
"we have huge areas of arrable land"
No we don't. Europe's land mass cannot support its hugely dense population. Without oil-based fertilisers and imports, we wouldn't be able to support ourselves unless we all turn vegan.
In the states the situation wouldn't be much better:
From http://dieoff.org/page40.htm:
"This means that only 0.6 acres of farmland would be available to grow food for each American in 2050, as opposed to the 1.8 acres per capita available today. At least 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current American dietary standards."
Back to Europe. Applying these figures to a European country, e.g. Germany:
1.2 acres = 0.00485622771 km^2
0.00485622771 * 82,369,548 = 400,005 km^2 needed to support the population.
Yet there is only 119,007 km^2 of arable land. Bummer.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gm.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany
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How is that different from what I did say ? You can spout on all you like about the utopian end-point that we are aiming for, but in the real world these changes don't (and won't) happen overnight, there will need to be an interim solution that allows for the creation of the infastructure that will support a society that doesn't need it's cars.
Clearly reducing the emissions and the ecological cost of that interim solution is a valid exercise. For example, I don't for one second believe that Hybrid cars are the solution to anything, but for now, it's a step in the right direction. When proper electrical or otherwise powered cars become available, that too will be a next step, and so on. We are not going to transition directly from a society with petrol and diesel engined cars to a society with no cars in one move, and any suggestion that we can or will is preposterous.
As to the food situation, your assumptions for the US are based on a speculated population growth of 1.1%, but in reality the current US population growth rate is 0.88%.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS280&q=US+Population+Growth+Rate
Also your figure of 1.2 acres per person is to "to maintain current American dietary standards", but what those standards are is not stated.
From your own arguement we could support ourselves if we switched to a vegan diet, best estimates I can find on this range from 0.1 - 0.3 acres per person. Which essentially quarters the amount of land required, meaning that if all the arable land in Germany was dedicated to producing vegan food, it could feed it's own poplulation. Anyone wanting meat would find it easy to raise a few chickens or rabbits on small patches of non-arable land feeding them entirely on their own kitchen scraps. Similarly goats and sheep could be raised on non-arable upland areas. To say nothing of fish, assuming the commercial fishing industry would die without diesel engined trawlers, the fish populations could recover significantly in a couple of decades and sustainable line fishing from small boats could provide an additional food source. (Smoking and Salting will preserve fish for long periods without oil dependent refrigeration)
My point was that in the developed world we have many more options to adapt where we are currently producing vast surpluses than in the developing world where food production is in many areas stretched to it's limit. So my point that people in the developing world are more likely to be the first to starve, still stands.
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Any "interim" solutions that protects this unsustainable model is going to fail at some stage. My point is that it's better for this to happen now, while we still have to resources to move towards the "utopia" scenario.
I take your reasoning, but I'll stand by my point that the developing world will do better out of peak oil, and I will add:
- Globalization has had a disadvantageous effect on African economies in general. The standard of living has actually decreased in the last 100 years. Without oil-enabled world trade, maybe that can be reversed:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/table2-7.pdf
- The famines and conflicts of the 80s and 90s in Ethiopia and Sudan can be attributed to the excesses of the West and climate change brought about by our oil addiciton:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061501857.html
Plus, I like goats.
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The idea is to wean people off their dependence of cars, rather than just push the price of fuel up until it becomes impossible for people to afford to use them, which will put a strain on public transport systems. This poses a much bigger challenge for places like Ireland and the US than it does for Other parts of Europe.
The focus seems to be on the cities at the moment, but the challenges of removing cars from rural life will be perhaps even more acute.
As to the African question, it is difficult to predict, absolutely Globalization has not been a good thing for the developing world, and a collapse of the oil funded trade could well be a benefit.
Certainly land now used for growing things like coffee, tea and other such cash crops can be redistributed for food production. But without easy access to markets in Europe and the US, the emerging African economies may find it difficult to prosper.
In the long term, I do agree that peak oil will narrow the gap between rich and poor nations, so yeah, Africa will do better out of peak oil than Europer will, but I would still hold that in the shorter term, with the damage done by climate change already causing problems in Africa and the current situation in many parts of Africa, they will feel the effects much sooner than Europe.
Time will tell I suppose.
I also like goats, when I was 5, I tried to share my Ribena with a goat in the zoo, but he just ate the top off the straw instead.
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