Unstable societies and the canary in the tar sands

[wlach]

Avery just posted a pretty interesting article comparing the cultural institutions of the United States with those of France. The conclusion that he draws is that the states is an "unstable" society while France is a "flow" society. While I haven't spent enough time in Europe to really comment on the latter (although I suspect he may be somewhat

Comments

[caffeinemonkey]

The tar sands, like any other source of oil, is a good investment because fundamentally oil will run out some day. When viewed from that perspective, it makes (business, not environmental) sense to get your hands on as much freaking oil as you can. Plus, all jokes aside, Alberta (being part of Canada) is a politcally and economically stable place to do business, where pretty much all other significant sources of oil are not. If you can take 5:1 EROI that's guaranteed, but a risky 17:1 EROI, which do you take? Trick answer: you take both, because it's oil and it will run out! And hey, if the 17:1 risky crap goes to hell, maybe if you bought into enough of the "expensive" 5:1 stuff you can cover your ass...

[wlach]

Right, the tar sands are something of an environmental disaster, but let's leave that aside for now...

From everything I've read, I don't think we're ever going to "run out" of oil, just that it's going to get increasingly expensive (and dangerous) to extract. I still think it's quite indicative that people are getting so excited about something which was seen as completely not worthwhile not so long ago: if there were no (current or expected) supply problem, wouldn't we be more likely to see the same kind of investment placed elsewhere in the world economy? Remember that every business venture comes with an opportunity cost: there's a lot of things to invest in besides energy...

You're not wrong

[ext_42836]

There's a lot of investment going into getting harder-to-extract oil now and that is because the easy to reach reserves are depleting rapidly. We aren't going to run out in the near future but the resource is finite. Continued economic growth is not sustainable but while their are lots of rich powerful people viewing wealth as an end, not a means we will not change our socio-economic system. The armed presence in Iraq is all about securing those oil reserves. There are, apparently quite a lot of shale oil deposits in Canada, so just as soon as it becomes economically viable to get them, you might find the US looking for excuses to invade there next.

[pphaneuf]

From my recent visit in Danmark, and pondering energy issues, I'm afraid the best thing to do just seems to be "bloody use less of it". Just about all the ways to generate energy (including the 17%+ of "alternative energy" electricity in Danmark) has some pretty solid negative impact.

Oh well.

[wlach]

Sounds like a fine idea, but how do you generate economic growth without increasing the input of energy? Our assumptions of how society should operate go straight out the window.

Maybe some miracle form of energy with a better EROI than petroleum will come down the pipe to save us all, but I'm not betting on it.

[pphaneuf]

It would necessarily require improving efficiency, of course, which I suppose requires changing some assumptions of how society should operate. Yes, urban centers should be denser, not more dispersed. You can produce the same amount of light with a fluorescent lightbulb with only a fraction of a tungsten lightbulb. In a way, a business that fail can be a saving, as the market declared it to be spurious, and it can now finally stop wasting resources trying to do something nobody wants. With a more dense population and a good public transport system, unskilled workers changing job within a city isn't as much of a problem.

I'm not sure that economic growth necessarily requires more energy. Creation of wealth isn't a zero-sum game, wealth can be created from almost none (including energy), in some cases. Admittedly, this isn't quite the common case.

[wlach]

I don't have the source handy right now, but it's documented that the energy intensity of our societies has been going steadily down for the last 20 years or so (that is to say, the amount of energy needed to produce a unit of GDP). Nonetheless, our consumption of energy has continued to increase. This is Jevon's Paradox on a large scale: gains in efficiency are lost because consumption of resources just increases along with it.

With regard to your second point (creation of wealth isn't a zero-sum game and wealth can be created from almost nothing), I think that depends on how you define wealth. :) The cheap Chinese goods we intellectual property workers take for granted certainly weren't produced from "almost nothing". You can't wear or eat computer code and patents...