By Francois Houtart
June 23, 2009
[Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by ZCommunications]
Confronted as we are by a financial crisis which is affecting the world economy and which combines with a food, energy and climate crisis that is leading to a social and humanitarian catastrophe, various reactions are being expressed. Some suggest that the actors be changed and punished (the "chicken stealers", as Michel Camdessus, former IMF director, calls them) in order to continue as before. Others, like George Soros, stress the need to regulate the system, but without changing the parameters. And then there are those who believe that it is the logic of the contemporary economic system itself that is in question and alternative solutions have to be found.
The urgency of solutions is the greatest challenge. There is not much time left to act effectively on climate change. According to FAO, during the last two years, 100 million people have fallen below the poverty threshold and the necessity to change the energy cycle has become imperative. There are a multitude of alternative solutions in every field but they need to be coherent with each other if they are to be effective: they require, not a new dogma, but an articulation between them.
In the same way that the Universal Declaration on Human Rights was proclaimed by the United Nations, a Universal Declaration on the Common Well-being of Humanity could play this role. It is true that human rights had a long way to go between the French and American revolutions and their adoption by the international community. The process was also gradual before the third generation of rights, including a social dimension, was proclaimed. It was very Western in its perspective and the document was completed by an African Declaration, while a similar initiative was taken in the Arab world. Of course the Declaration has often been manipulated for political interests, particularly by the Western powers. But it is still a basic reference that is indispensable for all political legitimacy and the protection of persons.
The time has come for the process to be completed because the survival of humanity and of the planet is at stake. Four founding principles could give coherence to new initiatives that seek to construct alternatives and guide all new practices.
1. A sustainable and responsible use of natural resources. This means another approach to the relationships between human beings and nature, moving from exploitation to respect for nature, the source of all life.
2. To give priority to the use value rather than to exchange value. Thus, the economy as an activity should create, while respecting social and ecological norms, the bases of the physical, cultural and spiritual life of all human beings on the planet.
3. To generalize democracy in all social relationships and in all institutions. It should not only be applied and strengthened in the political field, together with a new definition of the State and international organizations, but extended to include the economy, culture and men-women relationships.
4. Multiculturalism, in order to make it possible for all knowledge, all cultures, all philosophical and religious traditions to participate in the definition of the common good of humanity and in the elaboration of its ethics.
The adoption of these principles would make it possible to start up a genuine alternative process as opposed to the rules that currently dominate the capitalist economy, the world political organization and the Western cultural hegemony which have brought about the social and natural consequences that we know today. The above principles could lead to general orientations that can be sketched out.
Clearly, respect for nature requires the collective control of resources. It also requires the essential constituents of human life, such as water and seeds, to be considered as the heritage of humanity, with all the juridical consequences that this entails. It also means taking into account the ecological ‘externalities' in economic calculations.
Preference must be given to use value which means a transformation of the production system, at present based mainly on exchange value to contribute to the accumulation of capital considered as the engine of the economy. This means restoring public services, including health and education - that is, they would not be treated as merchandise.
The generalization of democracy, particularly in the organization of the economy, mean the end of the monopoly over decision-making linked to the ownership of capital, but also the starting up of new forms of participation in which citizens becomes their own subjects.
Accepting multiculturalism in the building of these principles means not reducing culture to one of its components but allowing the wealth of the human cultural heritage to express itself, putting an end to the patents that monopolize knowledge and enabling a social ethic to be expressed in different languages.
Utopia? Yes, because it does not exist today, but it could tomorrow. It is a necessary Utopia, because it is a synonym of inspiration and the creator of coherence between collective and personal efforts. But it is also of very practical application, recognizing that changing a development model does not happen in a day and that it is constructed by an ensemble of actions which require different periods of time to come to fruition. How, then, to propose measures that form part of this logic and could be the objective of popular mobilizations and political decisions? Many proposals have already been made, but others could be added.
At the level of natural resources, an international pact on water that envisages its collective management (not exclusively by the State) would reflect an existing consciousness of the problem. Some other orientations could be proposed: the sovereignty of nations over their energy resources; the prohibition of speculation on food products; the regulation of agro-fuels so that they respect biodiversity, the conservation of soil and water quality and the principle of peasant agriculture; the adoption of measures necessary to limit the increase of the earth's temperature to 1ºC during the 21st century; public control over oil and minerals through an international code of exploitation, verified and authorized, concerning the ecological and social effects (including, inter alia the rights of indigenous peoples).
As for use value, some practical examples would include re-establishing the common good of water, electricity, the post, telephones, internet, public transport, health, education, in function of the specifics of each sector. It will be necessary to demand a guarantee of five years on all manufactured goods, which would prolong the life of products and diminish the use of raw materials and energy. A tax should be levied on manufactured goods that travel over 1,000 kms between their place of production and the consumer (to be adapted according to the products), the proceeds of which would be used for the local development of the most fragile countries. The norms for working conditions established by the ILO should be reinforced, with a reduction of working hours and an improvement in their quality. The parameters of the GNP should be changed, with the introduction of qualitative elements that express the idea of "living well".
The application of generalized democracy are without number and could concern all institutions that require a publicly recognized status, both for their internal function and for the equality in gender relationships: businesses, unions, religious, cultural and sports organizations. At the level of the United Nations, a rule could be proposed of two-thirds agreement for major decisions and absolute majority for measures that are to apply them.
As for multiculturalism, it would include, among other things, the prohibition of patenting traditional knowledge, putting discoveries linked to human life (medical and pharmaceutical) at the disposal of the public and establishing the material bases necessary for the survival of specific cultures (territoriality).
This is an appeal for concrete proposals that can be put together to form a coherent ensemble of alternatives and which would constitute the collective objective of humanity and the applications of a Universal Declaration of the Common Well-Being of Humanity by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Translated by Victoria Bawtree
A collection of proposals is being organized on the web site of the World Forum of Alternatives. They can be communicated to: Houtart@hotmail.com
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21776
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Tomgram: Michael Klare, Goodbye to Cheap Oil
Buckle your seatbelt, you may be going nowhere -- and it could be a very bumpy ride. Oil futures have just passed $71 for a barrel of "light, sweet crude oil" (sweet for energy stocks, anyway) on its way to... well, we don't know exactly where, but it won't feel good, not at the pump and not in the economy either. In the Midwest and scattered other locations, gas prices are already at the edge of $3.00 a gallon and the height of summer isn't even upon us.
Much of this sudden rise has been fueled by OPEC production cuts, investor dreams of a global economic recovery (and so a heightened desire for energy), and the enthusiasm of market speculators. Explain it as you will, the price of crude, which hit a low of about $32 a barrel in December, as the planet seemed to meltdown economically, has doubled in recent months.
Oil is like the undead. Just when you think it's gone down for the count, it rises from the grave ravenous. As Clifford Krauss of the New York Times reported recently, gas prices have risen 41 days in a row, and yet the price at the pump is still "lagging behind the increase in the price of oil." According to Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, consumers are now shelling out one billion dollars a day to keep their tanks full. (It was $1.5 billion last summer when the price of a barrel of oil hit an astronomical $147.)
Whether this is the energy version of irrational exuberance and a mini-bubble to be burst as further economic bad times hit or the reality of our near future, sooner or later, far worse is in store on the energy front, as Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking World: The New Geopolitics of Energy, makes clear. But don't listen to him. Instead, check out his latest energy scoop -- the real news he found buried in the most recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy, whose seers have put irrational exuberance in mothballs and brought out the sackcloth and ashes. Tom
It's Official -- The Era of Cheap Oil Is Over
Energy Department Changes Tune on Peak Oil
By Michael T. Klare
Every summer, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy issues its International Energy Outlook (IEO) -- a jam-packed compendium of data and analysis on the evolving world energy equation. For those with the background to interpret its key statistical findings, the release of the IEO can provide a unique opportunity to gauge important shifts in global energy trends, much as reports of routine Communist Party functions in the party journal Pravda once provided America's Kremlin watchers with insights into changes in the Soviet Union's top leadership circle.
As it happens, the recent release of the 2009 IEO has provided energy watchers with a feast of significant revelations. By far the most significant disclosure: the IEO predicts a sharp drop in projected future world oil output (compared to previous expectations) and a corresponding increase in reliance on what are called "unconventional fuels" -- oil sands, ultra-deep oil, shale oil, and biofuels.
So here's the headline for you: For the first time, the well-respected Energy Information Administration appears to be joining with those experts who have long argued that the era of cheap and plentiful oil is drawing to a close. Almost as notable, when it comes to news, the 2009 report highlights Asia's insatiable demand for energy and suggests that China is moving ever closer to the point at which it will overtake the United States as the world's number one energy consumer. Clearly, a new era of cutthroat energy competition is upon us.
Peak Oil Becomes the New Norm
As recently as 2007, the IEO projected that the global production of conventional oil (the stuff that comes gushing out of the ground in liquid form) would reach 107.2 million barrels per day in 2030, a substantial increase from the 81.5 million barrels produced in 2006. Now, in 2009, the latest edition of the report has grimly dropped that projected 2030 figure to just 93.1 million barrels per day -- in future-output terms, an eye-popping decline of 14.1 million expected barrels per day.
Even when you add in the 2009 report's projection of a larger increase than once expected in the output of unconventional fuels, you still end up with a net projected decline of 11.1 million barrels per day in the global supply of liquid fuels (when compared to the IEO's soaring 2007 projected figures). What does this decline signify -- other than growing pessimism by energy experts when it comes to the international supply of petroleum liquids?
Very simply, it indicates that the usually optimistic analysts at the Department of Energy now believe global fuel supplies will simply not be able to keep pace with rising world energy demands. For years now, assorted petroleum geologists and other energy types have been warning that world oil output is approaching a maximum sustainable daily level -- a peak -- and will subsequently go into decline, possibly producing global economic chaos. Whatever the timing of the arrival of peak oil's actual peak, there is growing agreement that we have, at last, made it into peak-oil territory, if not yet to the moment of irreversible decline.
Until recently, Energy Information Administration officials scoffed at the notion that a peak in global oil output was imminent or that we should anticipate a contraction in the future availability of petroleum any time soon. "[We] expect conventional oil to peak closer to the middle than to the beginning of the 21st century," the 2004 IEO report stated emphatically.
Consistent with this view, the EIA reported one year later that global production would reach a staggering 122.2 million barrels per day in 2025, more than 50% above the 2002 level of 80.0 million barrels per day. This was about as close to an explicit rejection of peak oil that you could get from the EIA's experts.
Where Did All the Oil Go?
Now, let's turn back to the 2009 edition. In 2025, according to this new report, world liquids output, conventional and unconventional, will reach only a relatively dismal 101.1 million barrels per day. Worse yet, conventional oil output will be just 89.6 million barrels per day. In EIA terms, this is pure gloom and doom, about as deeply pessimistic when it comes to the world's future oil output capacity as you're likely to get.
The agency's experts claim, however, that this will not prove quite the challenge it might seem, because they have also revised downward their projections of future energy demand. Back in 2005, they were projecting world oil consumption in 2025 at 119.2 million barrels per day, just below anticipated output at that time. This year -- and we should all theoretically breathe a deep sigh of relief -- the report projects that 2025 figure at only 101.1 million barrels per day, conveniently just what the world is expected to produce at that time. If this actually proves the case, then oil prices will presumably remain within a manageable range.
In fact, however, the consumption part of this equation seems like the less reliable calculation, especially if economic growth continues at anything like its recent pace in China and India. Indeed, all evidence suggests that growth in these countries will resume its pre-crisis pace by the end of 2009 or early 2010. Under those circumstances, global oil demand will eventually outpace supply, driving up prices again and threatening recurring and potentially disastrous economic disorders -- possibly on the scale of the present global economic meltdown.
To have the slightest chance of averting such disasters means seeing a sharp rise in unconventional fuel output. Such fuels include Canadian oil sands, Venezuelan extra-heavy oil, deep-offshore oil, Arctic oil, shale oil, liquids derived from coal (coal-to-liquids or CTL), and biofuels. At present, these cumulatively constitute only about 4% of the world's liquid fuel supply but are expected to reach nearly 13% by 2030. All told, according to estimates in the new IEO report, unconventional liquid production will reach an estimated 13.4 million barrels per day in 2030, up from a projected 9.7 million barrels in the 2008 edition.
But for an expansion on this scale to occur, whole new industries will have to be created to manufacture such fuels at a cost of several trillion dollars. This undertaking, in turn, is provoking a wide-ranging debate over the environmental consequences of producing such fuels.
For example, any significant increase in biofuels use -- assuming such fuels were produced by chemical means rather than, as now, by cooking -- could substantially reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, actually slowing the tempo of future climate change. On the other hand, any increase in the production of Canadian oil sands, Venezuelan extra-heavy oil, and Rocky Mountain shale oil will entail energy-intensive activities at staggering levels, sure to emit vast amounts of CO2, which might more than cancel out any gains from the biofuels.
In addition, increased biofuels production risks the diversion of vast tracts of arable land from the crucial cultivation of basic food staples to the manufacture of transportation fuel. If, as is likely, oil prices continue to rise, expect it to be ever more attractive for farmers to grow more corn and other crops for eventual conversion to transportation fuels, which means rises in food costs that could price basics out of the range of the very poor, while stretching working families to the limit. As in May and June of 2008, when food riots spread across the planet in response to high food prices -- caused, in part, by the diversion of vast amounts of corn acreage to biofuel production -- this could well lead to mass unrest and mass starvation.
A Heavy Energy Footprint on the Planet
The geopolitical implications of this transformation could well be striking. Among other developments, the global clout of Canada, Venezuela, and Brazil -- all key producers of unconventional fuels -- is bound to be strengthened.
Canada is becoming increasingly important as the world's leading producer of oil sands, or bitumen -- a thick, gooey, viscous material that must be dug out of the ground and treated in various energy-intensive ways before it can be converted into synthetic petroleum fuel (synfuel). According to the IEO report, oil sands production, now at 1.3 million barrels a day and barely profitable, could hit the 4.4 million barrel mark (or even, according to the most optimistic scenarios, 6.5 million barrels) by 2030.
Given the IEA's new projections, this would represent an extraordinary addition to global energy supplies just when key sources of conventional oil in places like Mexico and the North Sea are expected to suffer severe declines. The extraction of oil sands, however, could prove a pollution disaster of the first order. For one thing, remarkable infusions of old-style energy are needed to extract this new energy, huge forest tracts would have to be cleared, and vast quantities of water used for the steam necessary to dislodge the buried goo (just as the equivalent of "peak water" may be arriving).
What this means is that the accelerated production of oil sands is sure to be linked to environmental despoliation, pollution, and global warming. There is considerable doubt that Canadian officials and the general public will, in the end, be willing to pay the economic and environmental price involved. In other words, whatever the IEA may project now, no one can know whether synfuels will really be available in the necessary quantities 15 or 20 years down the road.
Venezuela has long been an important source of crude oil for the United States, generating much of the revenue used by President Hugo Ch�vez to sustain his social experiments at home and an ambitious anti-American political agenda abroad. In the coming years, however, its production of conventional petroleum is expected to fall, leaving the country increasingly reliant on the exploitation of large deposits of bitumen in the eastern Orinoco River basin. Just to develop these "extra-heavy oil" deposits will require significant financial and energy investments and, as with Canadian oil sands, the environmental impact could be devastating. Nevertheless, successful development of these deposits could prove an economic bonanza for Venezuela.
The big winner in these grim energy sweepstakes, however, is likely to be Brazil. Already a major producer of ethanol, it is expected to see a huge increase in unconventional oil output once its new ultra-deep fields in the "subsalt" Campos and Santos basins come on-line. These are massive offshore oil deposits buried beneath thick layers of salt some 100 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and several miles beneath the ocean's surface.
When the substantial technical challenges to exploiting these undersea fields are overcome, Brazil's output could soar by as much as three million barrels per day. By 2030, Brazil should be a major player in the world energy equation, having succeeded Venezuela as South America's leading petroleum producer.
New Powers, New Problems
The IEO report hints at other geopolitical changes occurring in the global energy landscape, especially an expected stunning increase in the share of the global energy supply consumed in Asia and a corresponding decline by the United States, Japan, and other "First World" powers. In 1990, the developing nations of Asia and the Middle East accounted for only 17% of world energy consumption; by 2030, that number, the report suggests, should reach 41%, matching that of the major First World powers.
All recent editions of the report have predicted that China would eventually overtake the United States as number one energy consumer. What's notable is how quickly the 2009 edition expects that to happen. The 2006 report had China assuming the leadership position in a 2026-2030 timeframe; in 2007, it was 2021-2024; in 2008, it was 2016-2020. This year, the EIA is projecting that China will overtake the United States between 2010 and 2014.
It's easy enough to overlook these shifting estimates, since the reports don't emphasize how they have changed from year to year. What they suggest, however, is that the United States will face ever fiercer competition from China in the global struggle to secure adequate supplies of energy to meet national needs.
Given what we have learned about the dwindling prospects for adequate future oil supplies, we are sure to face increased geopolitical competition and strife between the two countries in those few areas that are capable of producing additional quantities of oil (and undoubtedly genuine desperation among many other countries with far less resources and power).
And much else follows: As the world's leading energy consumer, Beijing will undoubtedly play a far more critical role in setting international energy policies and prices, undercutting the pivotal role long played by Washington. It is not hard to imagine, then, that major oil producers in the Middle East and Africa will see it as in their interest to deepen political and economic ties with China at the expense of the United States. China can also be expected to maintain close ties with oil providers like Iran and Sudan, no matter how this clashes with American foreign policy objectives.
At first glance, the International Energy Outlook for 2009 hardly looks different from previous editions: a tedious compendium of tables and text on global energy trends. Looked at another way, however, it trumpets the headlines of the future -- and their news is not comforting.
The global energy equation is changing rapidly, and with it is likely to come great power competition, economic peril, rising starvation, growing unrest, environmental disaster, and shrinking energy supplies, no matter what steps are taken. No doubt the 2010 edition of the report and those that follow will reveal far more, but the new trends in energy on the planet are already increasingly evident -- and unsettling.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Henry Holt). A DVD of the documentary film based on his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available by clicking here.
Copyright 2009 Michael T. Klare
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175082/michael_klare_goodbye_to_cheap_oil
Much of this sudden rise has been fueled by OPEC production cuts, investor dreams of a global economic recovery (and so a heightened desire for energy), and the enthusiasm of market speculators. Explain it as you will, the price of crude, which hit a low of about $32 a barrel in December, as the planet seemed to meltdown economically, has doubled in recent months.
Oil is like the undead. Just when you think it's gone down for the count, it rises from the grave ravenous. As Clifford Krauss of the New York Times reported recently, gas prices have risen 41 days in a row, and yet the price at the pump is still "lagging behind the increase in the price of oil." According to Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, consumers are now shelling out one billion dollars a day to keep their tanks full. (It was $1.5 billion last summer when the price of a barrel of oil hit an astronomical $147.)
Whether this is the energy version of irrational exuberance and a mini-bubble to be burst as further economic bad times hit or the reality of our near future, sooner or later, far worse is in store on the energy front, as Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking World: The New Geopolitics of Energy, makes clear. But don't listen to him. Instead, check out his latest energy scoop -- the real news he found buried in the most recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy, whose seers have put irrational exuberance in mothballs and brought out the sackcloth and ashes. Tom
It's Official -- The Era of Cheap Oil Is Over
Energy Department Changes Tune on Peak Oil
By Michael T. Klare
Every summer, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy issues its International Energy Outlook (IEO) -- a jam-packed compendium of data and analysis on the evolving world energy equation. For those with the background to interpret its key statistical findings, the release of the IEO can provide a unique opportunity to gauge important shifts in global energy trends, much as reports of routine Communist Party functions in the party journal Pravda once provided America's Kremlin watchers with insights into changes in the Soviet Union's top leadership circle.
As it happens, the recent release of the 2009 IEO has provided energy watchers with a feast of significant revelations. By far the most significant disclosure: the IEO predicts a sharp drop in projected future world oil output (compared to previous expectations) and a corresponding increase in reliance on what are called "unconventional fuels" -- oil sands, ultra-deep oil, shale oil, and biofuels.
So here's the headline for you: For the first time, the well-respected Energy Information Administration appears to be joining with those experts who have long argued that the era of cheap and plentiful oil is drawing to a close. Almost as notable, when it comes to news, the 2009 report highlights Asia's insatiable demand for energy and suggests that China is moving ever closer to the point at which it will overtake the United States as the world's number one energy consumer. Clearly, a new era of cutthroat energy competition is upon us.
Peak Oil Becomes the New Norm
As recently as 2007, the IEO projected that the global production of conventional oil (the stuff that comes gushing out of the ground in liquid form) would reach 107.2 million barrels per day in 2030, a substantial increase from the 81.5 million barrels produced in 2006. Now, in 2009, the latest edition of the report has grimly dropped that projected 2030 figure to just 93.1 million barrels per day -- in future-output terms, an eye-popping decline of 14.1 million expected barrels per day.
Even when you add in the 2009 report's projection of a larger increase than once expected in the output of unconventional fuels, you still end up with a net projected decline of 11.1 million barrels per day in the global supply of liquid fuels (when compared to the IEO's soaring 2007 projected figures). What does this decline signify -- other than growing pessimism by energy experts when it comes to the international supply of petroleum liquids?
Very simply, it indicates that the usually optimistic analysts at the Department of Energy now believe global fuel supplies will simply not be able to keep pace with rising world energy demands. For years now, assorted petroleum geologists and other energy types have been warning that world oil output is approaching a maximum sustainable daily level -- a peak -- and will subsequently go into decline, possibly producing global economic chaos. Whatever the timing of the arrival of peak oil's actual peak, there is growing agreement that we have, at last, made it into peak-oil territory, if not yet to the moment of irreversible decline.
Until recently, Energy Information Administration officials scoffed at the notion that a peak in global oil output was imminent or that we should anticipate a contraction in the future availability of petroleum any time soon. "[We] expect conventional oil to peak closer to the middle than to the beginning of the 21st century," the 2004 IEO report stated emphatically.
Consistent with this view, the EIA reported one year later that global production would reach a staggering 122.2 million barrels per day in 2025, more than 50% above the 2002 level of 80.0 million barrels per day. This was about as close to an explicit rejection of peak oil that you could get from the EIA's experts.
Where Did All the Oil Go?
Now, let's turn back to the 2009 edition. In 2025, according to this new report, world liquids output, conventional and unconventional, will reach only a relatively dismal 101.1 million barrels per day. Worse yet, conventional oil output will be just 89.6 million barrels per day. In EIA terms, this is pure gloom and doom, about as deeply pessimistic when it comes to the world's future oil output capacity as you're likely to get.
The agency's experts claim, however, that this will not prove quite the challenge it might seem, because they have also revised downward their projections of future energy demand. Back in 2005, they were projecting world oil consumption in 2025 at 119.2 million barrels per day, just below anticipated output at that time. This year -- and we should all theoretically breathe a deep sigh of relief -- the report projects that 2025 figure at only 101.1 million barrels per day, conveniently just what the world is expected to produce at that time. If this actually proves the case, then oil prices will presumably remain within a manageable range.
In fact, however, the consumption part of this equation seems like the less reliable calculation, especially if economic growth continues at anything like its recent pace in China and India. Indeed, all evidence suggests that growth in these countries will resume its pre-crisis pace by the end of 2009 or early 2010. Under those circumstances, global oil demand will eventually outpace supply, driving up prices again and threatening recurring and potentially disastrous economic disorders -- possibly on the scale of the present global economic meltdown.
To have the slightest chance of averting such disasters means seeing a sharp rise in unconventional fuel output. Such fuels include Canadian oil sands, Venezuelan extra-heavy oil, deep-offshore oil, Arctic oil, shale oil, liquids derived from coal (coal-to-liquids or CTL), and biofuels. At present, these cumulatively constitute only about 4% of the world's liquid fuel supply but are expected to reach nearly 13% by 2030. All told, according to estimates in the new IEO report, unconventional liquid production will reach an estimated 13.4 million barrels per day in 2030, up from a projected 9.7 million barrels in the 2008 edition.
But for an expansion on this scale to occur, whole new industries will have to be created to manufacture such fuels at a cost of several trillion dollars. This undertaking, in turn, is provoking a wide-ranging debate over the environmental consequences of producing such fuels.
For example, any significant increase in biofuels use -- assuming such fuels were produced by chemical means rather than, as now, by cooking -- could substantially reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, actually slowing the tempo of future climate change. On the other hand, any increase in the production of Canadian oil sands, Venezuelan extra-heavy oil, and Rocky Mountain shale oil will entail energy-intensive activities at staggering levels, sure to emit vast amounts of CO2, which might more than cancel out any gains from the biofuels.
In addition, increased biofuels production risks the diversion of vast tracts of arable land from the crucial cultivation of basic food staples to the manufacture of transportation fuel. If, as is likely, oil prices continue to rise, expect it to be ever more attractive for farmers to grow more corn and other crops for eventual conversion to transportation fuels, which means rises in food costs that could price basics out of the range of the very poor, while stretching working families to the limit. As in May and June of 2008, when food riots spread across the planet in response to high food prices -- caused, in part, by the diversion of vast amounts of corn acreage to biofuel production -- this could well lead to mass unrest and mass starvation.
A Heavy Energy Footprint on the Planet
The geopolitical implications of this transformation could well be striking. Among other developments, the global clout of Canada, Venezuela, and Brazil -- all key producers of unconventional fuels -- is bound to be strengthened.
Canada is becoming increasingly important as the world's leading producer of oil sands, or bitumen -- a thick, gooey, viscous material that must be dug out of the ground and treated in various energy-intensive ways before it can be converted into synthetic petroleum fuel (synfuel). According to the IEO report, oil sands production, now at 1.3 million barrels a day and barely profitable, could hit the 4.4 million barrel mark (or even, according to the most optimistic scenarios, 6.5 million barrels) by 2030.
Given the IEA's new projections, this would represent an extraordinary addition to global energy supplies just when key sources of conventional oil in places like Mexico and the North Sea are expected to suffer severe declines. The extraction of oil sands, however, could prove a pollution disaster of the first order. For one thing, remarkable infusions of old-style energy are needed to extract this new energy, huge forest tracts would have to be cleared, and vast quantities of water used for the steam necessary to dislodge the buried goo (just as the equivalent of "peak water" may be arriving).
What this means is that the accelerated production of oil sands is sure to be linked to environmental despoliation, pollution, and global warming. There is considerable doubt that Canadian officials and the general public will, in the end, be willing to pay the economic and environmental price involved. In other words, whatever the IEA may project now, no one can know whether synfuels will really be available in the necessary quantities 15 or 20 years down the road.
Venezuela has long been an important source of crude oil for the United States, generating much of the revenue used by President Hugo Ch�vez to sustain his social experiments at home and an ambitious anti-American political agenda abroad. In the coming years, however, its production of conventional petroleum is expected to fall, leaving the country increasingly reliant on the exploitation of large deposits of bitumen in the eastern Orinoco River basin. Just to develop these "extra-heavy oil" deposits will require significant financial and energy investments and, as with Canadian oil sands, the environmental impact could be devastating. Nevertheless, successful development of these deposits could prove an economic bonanza for Venezuela.
The big winner in these grim energy sweepstakes, however, is likely to be Brazil. Already a major producer of ethanol, it is expected to see a huge increase in unconventional oil output once its new ultra-deep fields in the "subsalt" Campos and Santos basins come on-line. These are massive offshore oil deposits buried beneath thick layers of salt some 100 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and several miles beneath the ocean's surface.
When the substantial technical challenges to exploiting these undersea fields are overcome, Brazil's output could soar by as much as three million barrels per day. By 2030, Brazil should be a major player in the world energy equation, having succeeded Venezuela as South America's leading petroleum producer.
New Powers, New Problems
The IEO report hints at other geopolitical changes occurring in the global energy landscape, especially an expected stunning increase in the share of the global energy supply consumed in Asia and a corresponding decline by the United States, Japan, and other "First World" powers. In 1990, the developing nations of Asia and the Middle East accounted for only 17% of world energy consumption; by 2030, that number, the report suggests, should reach 41%, matching that of the major First World powers.
All recent editions of the report have predicted that China would eventually overtake the United States as number one energy consumer. What's notable is how quickly the 2009 edition expects that to happen. The 2006 report had China assuming the leadership position in a 2026-2030 timeframe; in 2007, it was 2021-2024; in 2008, it was 2016-2020. This year, the EIA is projecting that China will overtake the United States between 2010 and 2014.
It's easy enough to overlook these shifting estimates, since the reports don't emphasize how they have changed from year to year. What they suggest, however, is that the United States will face ever fiercer competition from China in the global struggle to secure adequate supplies of energy to meet national needs.
Given what we have learned about the dwindling prospects for adequate future oil supplies, we are sure to face increased geopolitical competition and strife between the two countries in those few areas that are capable of producing additional quantities of oil (and undoubtedly genuine desperation among many other countries with far less resources and power).
And much else follows: As the world's leading energy consumer, Beijing will undoubtedly play a far more critical role in setting international energy policies and prices, undercutting the pivotal role long played by Washington. It is not hard to imagine, then, that major oil producers in the Middle East and Africa will see it as in their interest to deepen political and economic ties with China at the expense of the United States. China can also be expected to maintain close ties with oil providers like Iran and Sudan, no matter how this clashes with American foreign policy objectives.
At first glance, the International Energy Outlook for 2009 hardly looks different from previous editions: a tedious compendium of tables and text on global energy trends. Looked at another way, however, it trumpets the headlines of the future -- and their news is not comforting.
The global energy equation is changing rapidly, and with it is likely to come great power competition, economic peril, rising starvation, growing unrest, environmental disaster, and shrinking energy supplies, no matter what steps are taken. No doubt the 2010 edition of the report and those that follow will reveal far more, but the new trends in energy on the planet are already increasingly evident -- and unsettling.
Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Henry Holt). A DVD of the documentary film based on his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available by clicking here.
Copyright 2009 Michael T. Klare
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175082/michael_klare_goodbye_to_cheap_oil
Why a Car-Free Suburbia May Become a Reality
By Lisa Selin Davis, Grist.org
Posted on June 23, 2009, Printed on June 24, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140822/
For more environmental news and humor, sign up for Grist's e-mail list.
California's East Bay -- the collection of towns, cities, and suburbs across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco -- has a lot to boast about. There's the perpetually great weather, enlightened inhabitants, and a halfway decent, if in my opinion overpriced, public transit system in the form of BART. Yet despite BART's 43 stations spanning 95 miles, most folks in the area find they need a car, too.
But one man thinks his town, Hayward -- or at least a part of it -- can make the leap to automobile-free. "I want to live a lifestyle that's less dependent on cars," says Sherman Lewis, a retired poli-sci professor at Cal State East Bay and president of the Hayward Area Planning Association since 1978. But, he admits, he's chosen a relatively difficult way to achieve it, "by trying find 950 other families who want to live the same way."
Lewis has developed plans for Quarry Village, a 1,000-unit development about a mile from the Hayward BART station and a short skip from the Cal State campus and downtown Hayward. It includes townhouses, condos, walking paths, shuttle buses to the rail ... and no garages. It would fill 22 acres on a former rock quarry (hence the name) currently owned by Caltrans, the California DOT; the land is not yet for sale, but Lewis says the agency is supportive of his redevelopment vision. The residences will be officially affordable, at least by Hayward's definition: studios to six-bedrooms between $250,000 and $650,000. Lewis believes the larger units will appeal to telecommuters, who can use the extra bedrooms as offices.
Inside the development, residents would be able to walk to basic amenities -- a restaurant or two, a well-stocked grocery store. For other needs, they could take an on-site shuttle to BART, use the shared or rental car services that would be available, or, if they really want, rent one of the 100 or so parking spots along the perimeter of the neighborhood. Those spots would be auctioned off, starting at perhaps $125 a month, to help subsidize the shuttle service. No one need fear being judged for not giving up his or her car, Lewis assures. "They're going to be congratulated, " he says," because their money will go to pay for everyone else's bus."
The Quarry Village vision is inspired in part by the Vauban development in Freiburg, Germany, a 6,000-resident suburb where parking is limited to the perimeter and a space goes for $40,000. Some seventy percent of Vauban-ers don't own a car, and by all accounts they seem to have adjusted quite easily.
But that's Europe. Are Americans -- some of whom say their car represents them more than their friends of clothes -- ready for the car-free experience?
Well, maybe. Car-sharing, it was reported last week, is on the rise, with city policies and real estate developments encouraging the practice. (I find ZipCar, at $120 per weekend day here in New York, to be prohibitively expensive, but perhaps I'm spoiled by my bicycle and my $2 subway). Quebec-based CommunAuto asserts that every shared car knocks eight off the road -- that's about 1,800 fewer miles driven per person each year.
So the political climate is ripe for Quarry Village, and perhaps the mindset of many Americans, still stinging from our brief foray into $4 per gallon gas, has properly adjusted. "We have more than 100 people [ready] to sign up to buy these units when they become available," says Lewis.
But when will that be? At the end of May, the Hayward Planning Commission gave the thumbs up to new zoning, permitting higher density and less parking, and Lewis expects the city council to overwhelmingly approve SMU zoning -- sustainable mixed-use -- at the end of June, which Lewis says was created with Quarry Village in mind.
"The city council is unanimously supportive, but all of us are concerned about getting investors and selling units fast enough," says Lewis. That's right, they're still lacking one key component: the money to actually create the neighborhood, despite plenty of interest and excitement. The tagline displayed prominently on the Quarry Village website sums up the current state of the project: "If you'll come, we can build it."
Lisa Selin Davis’s articles on architecture, real estate, and the environment, among other topics, have appeared in The New York Times, Salon.com, OnEarth, and many other publications. She's the author of the novel Belly and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
© 2009 Grist.org All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140822/
Posted on June 23, 2009, Printed on June 24, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140822/
For more environmental news and humor, sign up for Grist's e-mail list.
California's East Bay -- the collection of towns, cities, and suburbs across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco -- has a lot to boast about. There's the perpetually great weather, enlightened inhabitants, and a halfway decent, if in my opinion overpriced, public transit system in the form of BART. Yet despite BART's 43 stations spanning 95 miles, most folks in the area find they need a car, too.
But one man thinks his town, Hayward -- or at least a part of it -- can make the leap to automobile-free. "I want to live a lifestyle that's less dependent on cars," says Sherman Lewis, a retired poli-sci professor at Cal State East Bay and president of the Hayward Area Planning Association since 1978. But, he admits, he's chosen a relatively difficult way to achieve it, "by trying find 950 other families who want to live the same way."
Lewis has developed plans for Quarry Village, a 1,000-unit development about a mile from the Hayward BART station and a short skip from the Cal State campus and downtown Hayward. It includes townhouses, condos, walking paths, shuttle buses to the rail ... and no garages. It would fill 22 acres on a former rock quarry (hence the name) currently owned by Caltrans, the California DOT; the land is not yet for sale, but Lewis says the agency is supportive of his redevelopment vision. The residences will be officially affordable, at least by Hayward's definition: studios to six-bedrooms between $250,000 and $650,000. Lewis believes the larger units will appeal to telecommuters, who can use the extra bedrooms as offices.
Inside the development, residents would be able to walk to basic amenities -- a restaurant or two, a well-stocked grocery store. For other needs, they could take an on-site shuttle to BART, use the shared or rental car services that would be available, or, if they really want, rent one of the 100 or so parking spots along the perimeter of the neighborhood. Those spots would be auctioned off, starting at perhaps $125 a month, to help subsidize the shuttle service. No one need fear being judged for not giving up his or her car, Lewis assures. "They're going to be congratulated, " he says," because their money will go to pay for everyone else's bus."
The Quarry Village vision is inspired in part by the Vauban development in Freiburg, Germany, a 6,000-resident suburb where parking is limited to the perimeter and a space goes for $40,000. Some seventy percent of Vauban-ers don't own a car, and by all accounts they seem to have adjusted quite easily.
But that's Europe. Are Americans -- some of whom say their car represents them more than their friends of clothes -- ready for the car-free experience?
Well, maybe. Car-sharing, it was reported last week, is on the rise, with city policies and real estate developments encouraging the practice. (I find ZipCar, at $120 per weekend day here in New York, to be prohibitively expensive, but perhaps I'm spoiled by my bicycle and my $2 subway). Quebec-based CommunAuto asserts that every shared car knocks eight off the road -- that's about 1,800 fewer miles driven per person each year.
So the political climate is ripe for Quarry Village, and perhaps the mindset of many Americans, still stinging from our brief foray into $4 per gallon gas, has properly adjusted. "We have more than 100 people [ready] to sign up to buy these units when they become available," says Lewis.
But when will that be? At the end of May, the Hayward Planning Commission gave the thumbs up to new zoning, permitting higher density and less parking, and Lewis expects the city council to overwhelmingly approve SMU zoning -- sustainable mixed-use -- at the end of June, which Lewis says was created with Quarry Village in mind.
"The city council is unanimously supportive, but all of us are concerned about getting investors and selling units fast enough," says Lewis. That's right, they're still lacking one key component: the money to actually create the neighborhood, despite plenty of interest and excitement. The tagline displayed prominently on the Quarry Village website sums up the current state of the project: "If you'll come, we can build it."
Lisa Selin Davis’s articles on architecture, real estate, and the environment, among other topics, have appeared in The New York Times, Salon.com, OnEarth, and many other publications. She's the author of the novel Belly and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
© 2009 Grist.org All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140822/
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