Peak Everything

Forget Peak Oil, We're At Peak Everything

The idea that we're running out of oil may have faded slightly from the list of concerns, but that's just one of any number of precious natural resources we're using up far too quickly.

By Terry Tamminen

Scientific American,

8 March, 2013

The idea that we're running out of oil may have faded slightly from the list of concerns, but that's just one of any number of precious natural resources we're using up far too quickly.

Peak oil is the concept that new discoveries of commercially exploitable oil resources do not keep pace with growing demand. By extrapolating the data, you can estimate when we will run out of it for all practical purposes. There are a lot of disagreements about whether we have reached peak oil or when the downhill slope will hit a point that brings a significant percentage of our vehicles to a grinding halt, but the concept has made scientists and policy makers ask the question: What other critical resources may be peaking?

Asia Pulp & Paper Company, one of the world's largest, announced last month that it will no longer use wood from natural forests for any of its $4 billion per year worth of products. Why? Because APP's customers realized we are running out of natural forests from which to harvest lumber and have demanded suppliers to develop sustainable sources. The Walt Disney Company, Mattel, and Harper Collins are among many corporations setting sustainability standards for things like paper and packaging.

These threats are real and they do raise serious national security concerns.

Water is another resource that may not be as mobile as wood or oil, but which has certainly reached its peak in many places. Last year, a report from the U.S. Office of National Intelligence predicted increasing global conflicts by 2030 as demand for water surpasses sustainable supplies by 40%. Nearly a billion people lack safe, sustainable water supplies already and, according to the UN and the OECD, almost half of the world's population will live in areas of serious "water stress" by 2030.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed these findings on "peak water" saying, "These threats are real and they do raise serious national security concerns." And just where might peak water create such threats first? A 2011 report from the U.S. Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations may have an answer in its title: "Avoiding Water Wars: Water Scarcity and Central Asia's Growing Importance for Stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan." Considering the price in human lives and taxpayer dollars for "peace" in that region already, we might want to help Afghans make water more plentiful even as our military tries to make things like guns and ammunition more scarce.

Another essential commodity that may soon hit its peak is food. Last year, more than half of the world's seafood was farmed instead of wild caught, because we have long passed "peak fish" in the ocean. This was the last global food product where humans were mostly hunter-gatherers and we have now industrialized its production, however our fish farming methods are crude compared to the ways we grow row crops, grains, and other forms of protein, meaning that shortages and higher prices for many seafood items are already resulting from certain species peaking. In another example, the conversion of corn to ethanol has been well documented for several years as a contributor to shortages and price spikes for that staple in many parts of the globe.

These peak trends have motivated retailers like Walmart, Tesco, and Target to set standards for suppliers around sustainable sourcing, because executives I have spoken with are concerned their shelves will one day be empty or prices will exceed their customers' budgets, which in turn impacts corporate bottom lines. Make no mistake, peak anything is a warning signal that smart consumers will increasingly use to make more sustainable choices and to plan for a resource-constrained future. And that should peak the interest of any business person or politician.

The energy crunch in China

China's Coming Energy Crisis

Oil Price,,

8 November, 2012

China is now the world’s largest energy producer, generating 90 percent of energy it consumes. But a white paper released by China’s State Council, which outlines the country’s energy development plans, acknowledges key issues that need to be resolved.

Last year, China’s primary energy production reached 3.18 billion tons of coal, ranking first worldwide. Raw coal reached 3.52 billion tons, crude oil, 200 million tons; and refined oil products, 270 million tons.

The installed electricity generating capacity achieved 1.06 billion kilowatts, while the annual output of electricity was 4.7 trillion kilowatt-hours.

The gap between the overall energy consumption of China's high energy-consuming products and that of advanced international regions is said to be narrowing.

From 1981 to 2011, the country’s energy consumption surged by 5.82 percent every year, representing the 10 percent annual growth of the national economy. Meanwhile, from 2006 to 2011, energy consumption for every 10,000 yuan ($1,585) of gross domestic product declined by 20.7 percent, which saved an energy equivalent to 710 million tons of standard coal.

In China’s view, these make significant contributions to the long-term, steady and rapid growth of the national economy and the improvement of living standards.

But while China has been working to be a self-sufficient nation capable of meeting its own energy demands, development has to overcome many challenges.

First, its per capita average of energy resources is low compared with global standards despite rapid growth seen over the past few years. The same goes with its per capita shares of coal, petroleum and natural gas, which account for 67 percent, 5.4 percent and 7.5 percent of the world’s averages, respectively.

China is also low in terms of energy efficiency. Energy consumption per unit of G.D.P. is notably higher than those of developed countries and some newly industrialized countries. The fraction of energy consumption by the secondary industries, particularly the energy-intensive industrial sectors, is too high in the country's total.

To cope with its challenges, it is being suggested that China strengthen research and development of energy technologies; encourage further advancement of energy equipment technology; initiate major technological demonstration projects; and introduce better innovation to energy technology.

The Chinese government said it has implemented a series of energy-saving renovations, such as boilers, electric machinery, buildings and installations of green lighting products, as part of the efforts to match the rising demand of the world’s most populous nation.

China seeks to boost energy development in rural areas, which usually experience energy shortage. Over the next three years, the country aims to create a total of 200 “green energy counties” and 1,000 villages with solar power as demonstrations.

Renewable energy development

Concerning the development of its renewable energy resources, in 2011 the installed capacity of traditional hydropower reached 230 million kilowatt-hours, the first in the world.

But China also leads the global wind power industry with an installed capacity of 47 million kilowatt-hours. Meanwhile, solar power generation has witnessed swift growth as it reached three million kilowatt-hours.

The country is also undertaking actions to accelerate the use of biogas, geothermal energy, tidal energy and other forms of clean power, the document asserts.

So far, non-fossil energy resources comprise eight percent of China’s overall primary energy consumption, equivalent to eliminating over 600 million tons of carbon emissions per year.

“For a long time to come, fossil energy will continue to dominate the energy consumption mix, posing a growing challenge for protecting the environment and countering climate change. A more environment-friendly energy mix is urgently needed,” China’s State Council acknowledged.

Under the 12th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development, China aims to raise its renewable energy output to 11.4 percent by 2015. In addition, it also intends to cut its energy consumption by 16 percent per unit of G.D.P. and carbon emissions by 17 percent per unit of G.D.P. both from 2010 levels.

The Chinese government has also committed that by 2020 renewable energy will account for 15 percent of its overall primary energy use, while emissions per unit of G.D.P. will be between 40 percent to 45 percent lower than the 2005 baseline.

“For some time to come, China's industrialization and urbanization will continue to accelerate, and the demand for energy will go on increasing, and so its energy supply will confront increasingly tougher challenges,” the document emphasized.

By. Catherine Dominguez

Richard Heinberg in Australia

The End of Economic Growth - Richard Heinberg in Australia

Journalist and author Richard Heinberg has dedicated his life to understanding the notion of 'The End of Economic Growth', why it is upon us and how humanity should best prepare and recalibrate itself for life in world beyond peak oil. Richard gave this fascinating in-depth public lecture at the University of South Australia while promoting his book 'The End of Growth' on September 25th, 2012. It was co-presented by Sustainable Population Australia and several other dedicated South Australian grassroots social and political action groups. https://www.population.org.au

in this one hour presentation, Richard Heinberg explains the close link between the resource/environment and the social/economic components of the present disintegration. As a journalist with a keen understanding of science and maths he does it better, more comprehensively and more clearly than most others. While the conventional wisdom is that we must get 'the economy' growing again, Heinberg shows that not only is this the wrong strategy, it is actually making the situation worse and more intractable.

Richard is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost Peak Oil educators. Richard's latest book The End of Growth follows a number of others that deal with declining resources, particularly oil. His books have been translated into eight languages. Since 2002, Richard has given over four hundred lectures on oil depletion to a wide variety of audiences. He is a recipient of the M. King Hubbert Award for Excellence in Energy Education (2006). He has appeared in a number of documentaries, the most recent being Earth 2100 ABC (US) television, 2009).

Continuous growth of either population or GDP is impossible in a finite world. Both these drivers of unsustainability have now run up against Nature's biophysical limits. Nature is now forcing humanity to a transition.

Dr. William Rees - originator of the "ecological footprint"

Why We're in Denial

Dr. William Rees is a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia and former director of the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP). He is the originator of the "ecological footprint" concept and co-developer of the method. In this interview he speaks with us about why we're in denial about the failure of the human enterprise. We ask Bill about the reasons we're in denial and how we could start adapting to our ecological challenges through a new cultural narrative

[ Bill Rees // Why We're in Denial ] from Extraenvironmentalist on Vimeo.

Decline in rare earth reserves

China warns decline of its rare earth reserves is ‘accelerating’

_{China has warned that the decline in its rare earth reserves in major mining areas is "accelerating", as most of the original resources are depleted.}

Desdemona Despair,

20 June, 2012

In a policy paper, China's cabinet blamed excessive exploitation and illegal mining for the decline.

China accounts for more than 90% of the world's rare earth supplies, but has just 23% of global reserves.

It has urged those with reserves to boost production of the elements, which are used to make electrical goods.

"After more than 50 years of excessive mining, China's rare earth reserves have kept declining and the years of guaranteed rare earth supply have been reducing," China's cabinet said in the paper on the rare earth industry published by the official Xinhua news agency. […]

But China has imposed export quotas on these elements. It says it has done so to prevent excessive mining of these elements, which also causes damage to the environment.

The US, Japan, and the European Union have called the quotas illegal and dragged Beijing to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the matter. […]

China warns its rare earth reserves are declining via The Oil Drum speech in Dushanbe, capital of the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan

Charles Hugh Smith

PEAK EVERYTHING: THE ‘SOLUTION’ IS COLLAPSE

So the root problem is the system, human nature, blah blah blah. There are no “solutions” that can fix those defaults. Thus the “solution” is collapse.

Dangerous Minds,

8 June, 2012

Policies create incentives and disincentives. Some are intended, some fall into the category of unintended consequences. Regardless of their intention, policies that create windfalls (“easy money”) or open spigots of “free money” (or what is perceived as free money by the recipient) quickly gather the allegiance of everyone reaping the windfall or collecting the free money.

This allegiance is soon tempered into political steel by self-justification: humans excel at rationalizing their self-interest. Thus my share of the swag is soon “absolutely essential.”

Humans don’t need much incentive to pursue windfalls or free money—seeking windfalls in the here and now is our default setting. Taking the pulpit to denounce humanity’s innate greed, avarice and selfishness doesn’t change this, as seeking short-term windfalls has offered enormous selective advantages for hundreds of thousands of years.

That which is painful to those collecting free money will be avoided, and that which is easy will be pursued until it’s painful. Borrowing $1.5 trillion a year from toddlers and the unborn taxpayers of the future is easy and painless, as toddlers have no political power. So we will borrow from the powerless to fund our free money spigots until it becomes painful.

It won’t become painful to borrow from our grandkids for quite some time, and it will probably not become progressively painful, either, because we will suppress the pain with superlow interest rates and other trickery. The pain will more likely be of the sudden, unexpected, “this can’t be happening to me” heart-attack sort: the free-money machine will unexpectedly grind to a halt in some sort of easily predictable but always-in-the-future crisis.

“Solutions” that turn off the free money spigots are non-starters, not just from self-interest but from ideology. Any attempt to tighten the spigots steps on ideological toes, as each spigot is ideologically sacred to one political camp or another.

Liberals don’t want to hear about scamming of their sacred “we must help everyone in need” welfare programs, and conservatives don’t want to hear about cartel looting of their sacred “free enterprise” system.

And so we have gridlock, what I call profound political disunity. Everybody at each trough of free money fights tooth and nail to keep their spigot wide open, and so the “solution” is to borrow 10% of the nation’s output in “free money” every year until the free-money machine breaks down.

Each ideology worships their own version of cargo-cult economics: if we wave the dead chicken over the enchanted rocks while dancing the humba-humba, prosperity and abundance will magically return and we can “grow our way out of debt.”

We’re like a sprawling family bickering over the inheritance: we’ll keep arguing over who deserves what until the inheritance is gone. That will trigger one final outburst of finger-pointing, resentment and betrayal, and then we’ll go do something else to get by.

The “solution” is thus collapse. This model has been very effectively explored in The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon. The basic idea is that when the carrying costs of the society exceed its output, the whole contraption collapses.

The political adjunct to this systemic implosion is that the productive people just stop supporting the Status Quo because it’s become too burdensome. The calculus of self-interest shifts from supporting the bloated, marginal-return Status Quo to abandoning it.

So the root problem is the system, human nature, blah blah blah. There are no “solutions” that can fix those defaults. The “solution” is collapse, as only collapse will force everyone to go do something more sustainable to get by.

Until then, arguing about “solutions” is a sport to be enjoyed sparingly
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Here’s my latest YouTube presentation with Gordon T. Long on “Peak Everything.” Lots of interesting charts: