Peak Oil Matters

What kind of a nation do we want to be?

This will be, if not the most important question we’ll collectively ask ourselves in the months and years to come, in the top 2 or 3.

The answers we produce—“we” being our political leaders, our business leaders, the media, and perhaps most importantly: each and every one of us—will obviously determine the strategies we adopt and the successes and prosperity which (we hope) will remain available to us. In this new series, I’d like to offer my two cents’ worth and provide some talking points to help us sort things out.

If we are not standing at the most critical crossroad of our industrial and economic history, the signs on the side of the road are letting us know it is coming up soon.

We face some challenges. The headlines tell us all we need to know about employment and economic woes, the increasingly disheartening hypocrisy and gamesmanship that continue to define politics here in America, and a growing unease about the direction of our country. I begin writing this post only 24 hours after the tragic, senseless, idiotic massacre in Arizona that nearly claimed the life of a by-all-accounts well-respected Congresswoman, and did in fact kill several other just-as-innocent bystanders. (A nine-year-old girl? Really? How is that justified under even the most insane of insane defenses?)

Climate change evidence continues its daily march into reality—the inability of deniers to grasp simple truths notwithstanding. And atop and amid all of these lovely and encouraging challenges, we have some fossil fuel resource problems knocking on our door.

Let’s hope that the convergence of these issues sparks a different level and quality of public discourse. Most would be hard-pressed to think that that would not be a good thing….

As I and others have taken great pains to explain, if we have not yet reached the point where we have extracted and sent to market the highest level of oil production we’ll ever attain (I think we have, as does the International Energy Agency, among others much more in the know than me), we’re pretty damn close. And as I and those same others have taken other great pains to explain, we’re not on the verge of imminent collapse, either. The process of ever-declining oil production, and thus ever-declining amounts of oil available to us, will unfold over a fairly lengthy period of time. I have no plans for a Chicken-Little-Sky-Is-Falling party anytime soon. Despite the efforts of peak oil deniers to attribute this false claim to us, we are not running out of oil—at least not for many decades.

That does not mean we are problem-free for years or decades to come, however. We need to shine some light on that distinction while starting the very lengthy and complex process of transitioning our everything away from never-ending reliance on fossil fuels … oil, specifically.

There are still many billions of barrels of conventional oil still buried underground, and perhaps many more billions—hundreds, perhaps—of unconventional supplies buried as well. If that’s where the discussion could end, then Peak Oil would indeed be the rantings of another group of paranoid conspirators rightfully ignored as should be those who continue to think President Obama was born on Mars or wherever.

But it’s a wee bit more complicated than that.

The fact that we may have enormous quantities of unconventional reserves/resources underground isn’t the be-all and end-all of the are-we-or-aren’t-we-running-out-of-oil discussion. What must be understood more clearly is that having those presumed resources in the ground is one thing and all fine and well as a starting point. But getting unconventional resources (by fact and definition available only with considerable extra effort, time, and cost) out of the ground and into the marketplace at reasonable costs and in reasonable time frames while conventional supplies continue to decline is a very, very different thing. They are called “unconventional” for a number of reasons, after all!

If it costs more (and let’s not even discuss the environmental degradation and water resource consumption issues that are part and parcel of unconventional oil extraction and production), takes more time to get to the market, is of lesser quality, and clearly much more difficult to extract, the math doesn’t work. Unconventional resources aren’t the answer … not even close. (Tighter supplies of the conventional fossil fuels our engines are designed to burn means higher costs at your local gas station, for one thing. Anyone experiencing anything like that nowadays?)

Demand worldwide is increasing, regardless of where the charts suggest U.S. demand might be right now. As much as we like to admire our exceptionalism and burnish our lofty perch as the One and Only, we’re not alone on the planet, and what we want isn’t the beginning and the end of discussions about resource consumption and supply.

There are many billions of people on this planet who do not now enjoy and have never enjoyed the levels of growth and prosperity this nation has been blessed with, and there are very few among those billions who would not like their own chance at their own version of the American Dream—tarnished and bruised though it may be. We—they—are confronted with a pretty simple yet very powerful obstacle, however.

Finite resources are … finite. Not infinite. Not not finite. Whatever spin one may wish to employ to make the problem go away, the math is what it is. It takes some impressive contortions to suggest that the increasing demand clashing with declining supplies shouldn’t concern any of us. In one sense, those deniers are correct on the “any of us” scale … it concerns all of us.

Production is declining, however slowly that may be; unconventional resources are not making up the difference; alternative energy supplies are many, many years away from supplanting the fossil fuels we’ve depended on for the last 150 years or so, more people are asking for more of this declining resource, we don’t have an infrastructure in place to accommodate the requirements of non-fossil fuel resources, and there is no magic out there which will enable the increasing demand to be satisfied in full, at acceptable prices, quality, or timeliness. That is not going to change, and not going to get better. A month bump-up in production here and there sounds wonderful, but long term, it means next to nothing.

Facts are indeed annoying as hell. But the sooner more of us take the time to understand and appreciate what we must deal with, the sooner we can devise and then employ the strategies we’ll need, and the sooner we unleash the still-awesome capabilities of this nation and its remarkable citizenry to create a future that may just turn out okay despite our seemingly-best efforts to keep screwing it up.

I am by temperament a very optimistic person, and it is that attitude that will guide my efforts in this humble little blog to get us thinking and being and doing differently. Not easy? Check. Highly idealistic at the moment? Double check. Not enough to dissuade me? Triple check.

We need to take a look at where we are and what we are doing in a world now filled with relentless and great change, complexity on levels never before imagined, and widespread hopes for progress intersecting on the back side of a nearly-overwhelming global financial crisis. At the same time, these circumstances demand that we come to some better understandings and decisions about what we are doing to both adapt to energy and environmental concerns as well as participate in that adaptation if we continue to hold on to hope.

That’s the hyper-broad overview….

Recognition that change is taking place is the first step to then embracing it and participating in its evolution. Opportunity, or crises?

I’m no historian, but my vague recollections of American History suggest that “difficult” has never been the one insurmountable obstacle that has kept us from achievement. No reason to change that now.

I’m going with “Opportunity”, and will devote most of my posts in these next few months to exploring what that means and what we might do to seize the moments that now present themselves. Hope you’ll stay tuned.

To be continued next week….

“We are trapped in a very complex civilization that is rapidly losing the sources of energy and numerous other raw materials that built and maintained it….
“If current trends continue, somewhere in the next five years a critical mass of us will realize that new foundations for civilization, and new ways of life must be found and implemented if we are going to survive with a modicum of comfort, economic, and political stability. Until then there will be many false prophets calling for a return to a civilization which is no longer possible.” [1]

A stubborn insistence that we’re just going to ignore the facts about global warming and the arrival of a peak in worldwide oil production—paying no attention to a rather large body of quite convincing evidence in the process—and instead plow ahead with public investments and plans that will in due course prove to be nothing more than monumental wastes of time (and incredibly short-sighted to boot), ought to be revisited.

We cannot afford to continue to design and then implement plans based only on what seems feasible now, or much worse, because it’s what we’ve always done, or it’s what an uninformed electorate would prefer. The first task, as I’ve mentioned in my recent posts, is that we all need to make a commitment to learning more and understanding the facts. In doing so, we need to find and rely upon the resources where the truth is the only option.

Allowing current business and political leaders to decide what will need to be done based on what has been done before is not the solution. There is no clearer indication of that than the continued resistance to spending money and investing in alternative forms of transportation.

“[N]ewly elected Republicans soon to enter gubernatorial offices have promised to shut down their local federally funded intercity rail corridors that they fear will overwhelm them with future operating expenses. Of course, those complaints are patently absurd when put in context of each state’s respective overall transportation budget. Wisconsin, for instance, spends more than a billion dollars on roadway construction annually and would have been asked to contribute a mere $7.5 million to train operations. Is such a small contribution really such a huge price to pay for a transportation alternative?” [2]

A worthwhile question that demands a much better response than what we’re seeing.

To be fair, there’s no question that making these kinds of investment decisions and committing even more funds from a limited supply is under no one’s definition an easy, simple or—at first—an obvious solution. There are indeed many legitimate arguments against such a commitment. I’m firmly in the camp that believes high speed rail is a necessity, but I’m just as clear that we need to think through the strategies more than we have to date. High-speed rail aside, I’m more convinced by the day that a great deal more reliance on public transportation will be mandatory.

A fear of deficits and increased public spending are going to have to give way to a longer term vision for the kind of nation we choose to be and the levels of growth and prosperity we at least hope to attain in a world no longer able to rely on fossil fuels. That vision and the corresponding plans of necessity must include a greater commitment to public transit. The choice to devote our limited transportation capital funds on the more familiar roadwork projects makes perfectly good sense in a vacuum where growth is expected to return to “normal” soon enough. The harsh truth is that it will not because it cannot. There will be new definitions of “normal” in the years to come.

I don’t like it any more than anyone else, but we create only more difficulties for ourselves by denying the facts and delaying our efforts to create an industrial economy that no longer depends on fossil fuels. It’s a monumental undertaking to be sure, and is not one we should expect to complete for at least a couple of decades. But oil supplies have reached their peak and it is soon enough all downhill from there, so we’re confronted with the dual challenge of re-creating the way our economy functions while utilizing declining supplies of oil in the process, and simultaneously trying to keep our heads above water under current conditions, dependent on that exact same declining supply. All the creativity and spin in the world cannot make that math come out in our favor. Change is a-comin’.

The bottom line is that for all the arguments favoring more expenditures on road construction at the expense of public transportation, the same end result would be arrived at with far less effort if we simply burn piles of money on the steps of Capitol Hill. Appreciating the challenges and implications of having now arrived at the peak of oil production does lead to the obvious conclusion (political ideologies in opposition notwithstanding) that we are going to have to move away from an automobile-centric society.

In the years to come, we simply will not have enough oil/gasoline to power the number of automobiles we own in this country under similar or growing levels of usage when we add to that astounding number the many millions more new automobiles that will be added to the roadways of other nations. We could meet that demand, of course. We’d simply have to do away with a great many other necessities and products (see my last post for a brief list) dependent on oil, since there won’t be enough fossil fuels to go around to meet all the demand everywhere all the time for everyone. That’s Peak Oil!

As I’ve taken great pains to emphasize, we’re not running out of oil any time soon. But depletion and an inexorable decline in production which no alternative or unconventional resources can make up for means there’s going to be less available for everyone and everything. Those dominoes will continue to tumble until one day, likely several decades into the future, it will no longer be feasible to continue extracting oil or using. Too much effort and too much expense for too little reward is what we face. Start planning now is the smart choice, because once we’ve solicited all the input available—no easy or quick task in itself—we’re going to have a lot of work ahead of us putting those plans into action, with the myriad modifications and adaptations that will surely be needed.

We’ll need to be smarter about the new choices we make, too. Reliance on (or hope that) the electric vehicle is the answer to the transportation aspect of Peak Oil’s impact is all fine and well in the abstract. But as has been pointed out by others (here and here), if we’re just expecting that fancy new electric Mercedes and BMWs and Ford pick-up trucks and Honda SUVs and Chevy Volts will just simply replace the ones we drive now, we’re in for another rude awakening. An enormous conversion of infrastructure will be required, for one thing. And for another (topics for upcoming posts here), if the strategies we design to cope with fossil fuel depletion do not also include plans for where and how we live, we’re just digging another deep hole for ourselves.

As objectionable as this will be to many, “smart growth” and “sustainable living” practices are going to warrant much greater levels of attention than they have to date. If ideological principles cause one to blanche at the thought of our federal government “dictating” how and where people live by controlling urban sprawl, the message is a simple one: Get used to it. This is not about a desire of the government to impose its will or make choices for others. It will instead be another courageous recognition that great changes will and must take place, and that there must be a national mechanism for guiding the choices and actions of local governments and private industry to address those looming realities.

Given that certain segments of the media (and the political and social groups that align themselves with that media’s particular ideology) seem convinced that President Obama does not believe we’re an “exceptional” nation (the convenient omission of facts and context debunking that meme are neatly summed up here and here), here’s our chance to prove him “wrong.” Let’s do so by leading the charge into the 21st century with a new vision about how prosperous and successful nations adjust to the new realities about energy supply and usage. It will take one hell of a village to make this happen in any event.

Why not us?

Sources:

[1] http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/7980-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-future-of-government.html; The Peak Oil Crisis: The Future of Government By Tom Whipple
[2] http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/12/01/growing-conservative-strength-puts-transit-improvements-in-doubt/; Growing Conservative Strength Puts Transit Improvements in Doubt by Yonah Freemark

In a number of prior posts, including my post from earlier this week, I have tried to impress upon readers of this blog the urgent need for planning. In a future world that was once created, maintained, and enhanced by fossil fuel resources at every step, we’re going to have to devise means and methods to achieve many of the same functions without oil to sustain the efforts. That is no easy task.

Certainly we will help the cause by paying attention to our energy usage and by finding ways to conserve, starting right now. Every measure will help. If we don’t have the basic energy resource (oil) available to us to power our industrial economy in all its facets, then obviously “alternative” energy resources will have to step in as substitutes.

There’s one serious problem: we don’t have alternative energy resources anywhere near the quality, quantity, or scale to serve as an appropriate substitute. That’s Gigantic Hurdle Number One, and we’re not going to clear that bar any time soon absent a legitimately miraculous discovery in the near term; or a massive, nation-wide commitment to make the transition away from our oil-powered economy—with all the research, design, testing, implementation, and sacrifice that entails. The latter is very likely the one we’ll have to depend on, sooner or later. Sooner is the better option.

As mentioned in my last post, as have others, the Hirsch Report was quite clear that mitigation efforts designed to transition away from oil as the foundation of economic growth and industrial production required an all-hands-on-deck twenty year process. With Peak Oil now, apparently, a few years past already, we’ve got a calendar problem. Those mitigation efforts would have had to begin about a quarter of a century ago. Turning back the clock has never been an option, and it’s not available now, either.

“Achieving any really significant percentage of renewable energy contribution to current consumption levels appears to be next to impossible. Current efforts to try and achieve this impossible target require ever more massive and complex machinery and higher and higher inputs of, increasingly scarcer materials and fossil energy to achieve.
“The point is very simply that an enormous amount of fossil energy is required to manufacture, install and operate all forms of renewable energy systems. Without the input of fossil fuel the existing renewable energy projects could never have been built and could not be maintained in operation.” [1]

Worldwide discovery of oil peaked more than three decades ago. Every year since, we have been using a lot more oil than we’re finding. Spin that any way you’d like, it’s still bad math. Approximately two-thirds of the countries producing oil (including the U.S.) have now—or long ago—reached peak production. That math doesn’t work any better.

As the remaining major oil producers continue to expand their own economies and serve their citizenry, the amount of oil they will have left over to only then export to countries like our own will decline. Whatever sense of entitlement we might insist upon won’t be worth much when that reality intrudes. That’s a grand social psychology problem we’re not close to recognizing. We’ve always gotten whatever we need … sometimes just because we wanted “it.” There will be a lot of whining and complaining in the years to come when the realization dawns on us that “just because” is no longer good enough. The citizens of the world have every reason to expect or desire growth and prosperity for themselves. And I don’t foresee the peoples of developing nations deciding en masse to forestall progress so that Americans can continue to gorge themselves at the world’s expense. That may not be a happy message to receive, but it’s an honest one.

And let’s not forget that finding and producing the same quality and quantities of oil that has sustained us to this point is only going to be more difficult; which of course also means more expensive. Oil producers won’t be absorbing those higher costs out of the goodness of their hearts, either. We’ll be paying for that.

But so far we have no strategies to address these real-life consequences of peak oil production. The ones we are employing (because we have no alternatives), make less sense as time passes.

“What is crazy and wasteful is that the U.S. and other countries are still building car assembly plants, roads, highways, parking lots, suburban housing developments, and airplanes as though cheap oil will last forever (Brown 2009). We continue to make investments in an infrastructure that will be superfluous shortly after we build it. This is an example of a market that is failing because it does not anticipate even short-term changes.” [2]

What’s a better approach, as we continue to seek ways to pull ourselves out from the depths and burdens of this ongoing Great Recession (and no, tax cuts for the wealthiest few hundred among us really is not the solution)? Perhaps our national leaders might consider the opportunities to redress the myriad infrastructure repair and maintenance issues with an intense focus on adapting that infrastructure to a world where fossil fuels are no longer available to power or sustain it—and us. Relying on the normal resources is painfully short-sighted now. Certainly a reliance on hands-off government for an undertaking this complex is pointless to argue or consider. An unfettered corporate world cannot begin to handle the myriad aspects of this nearly-incomprehensible conversion.

More planning might be a good idea right about now, before we throw money and fossil fuel resources at problems that desperately require our attention.

Other nations, notably China, seem much more capable and willing to prepare themselves for a new energy culture than we are. That’s a problem now, and it’s going to become an even greater and more pervasive problem for us down the road unless we start getting our national act together. But no one wants to take that first giant step to explain to Americans that we’ve got a brewing challenge ahead, one that will too quickly morph into a crisis unless we start doing things differently … now.

“‘China right now is preparing to roll out electric cars, lithium ion batteries, solar cells, cellulosic ethanol. This is where the future of energy is. We’ve a finite resource in oil, just like we had a finite resource in whale oil, and we made a transition,’ said [Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.)]. ‘And we have to really focus our national energies in a bipartisan way, I would hope, on finding our way to compete with China to really build new energy sources of the future.’”

“President Obama has made a similar case repeatedly in recent years, stressing the fact that countries like China and India ‘aren’t playing for second place.’ There’s a gut-level appeal to messages like these, at least there might be, targeting a certain nationalistic impulse — advancing America’s interests isn’t just about a debate over the size of government, it’s also about positioning the United States as a world leader in a competitive landscape.” [3]

The opportunities are still there, daunting though they may be. But unless and until we come to some national recognition about what the real world is going to be like for all us—Republicans, Democrats, You-Name-Its—we cannot hope to prepare ourselves for the massive changes that will confront us in the years ahead. Can we still lead? Will we?

The song remains the same: crisis, or opportunity?

Sources:

[1] http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-25/how-sustainable-renewable-energy; How sustainable is renewable energy? by Roger Adair
[2] http://sustainability-ayersj.blogspot.com/2010/11/peak-oil-3-national-and-global.html; Peak Oil 3: National and Global Production Peaks of Oil and Other Resources by John Ayers
[3] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026813.php; THE GLOBAL-COMPETITION ARGUMENT by Steve Benen

As has been reported on a number of other Peak Oil-related websites, the International Energy Agency, in its World Energy Outlook 2010, has finally come around to admitting what many have been stating for some time: Peak Oil is no longer a challenge to be faced in the distant (or even not-so-distant) future. The IEA has now gone on record as stating that world conventional oil production will never match or exceed the approximately 70 million barrels per day produced back in 2006.

Uh-oh!

So while that reality hits us, let’s consider another of those damned facts about oil production and usage:

“If you sort all of the countries by per capita daily oil consumption and start from the lowest consuming countries, you need to sum up the consumption of nearly 100 countries to match the daily oil consumption in the U.S. Among these countries are China and India.
“Altogether the citizens of the U.S. consume the same amount of oil as 4.8 billion people elsewhere.” [1]

Houston, we have a problem. Notwithstanding any sense of entitlement, or the false bravado of assured technological solutions just in the nick of time, our use of oil and its innumerable by-products (forget for a moment—but only for a moment—the demand and usage of every other nation) is going to smack head-first into a wall of declining supply and/or more expensive but still-declining supply. And it’s not going to get any better.

I don’t like it; I assume readers here do not like it; and I’m fairly certain that few individual or business consumers will appreciate or enjoy learning this. There’s no place to look around for any immediate solutions because there aren’t any! Changes won’t necessarily occur tomorrow or next week or next month, but the painful and unpleasant truth is that we’re not going to have available to us the same amounts of readily-available oil supplies at the same relatively low prices we’ve enjoyed for decades. Not gonna happen. That means adaptations, adjustments, and yes, even sacrifices beginning soon enough, with no end in sight. That’s a problem we’re almost completely unprepared to deal with or correct.

We’re all in this together, and we’re going to have to put our thinking caps on and start figuring out what we’ll need to do individually and as a nation to transition away from oil. The optimist in me still thinks opportunities abound, but the clock is definitely ticking.

We’ll still have a number of decades to make a complete transition away from oil as the power source. But the problem is that we’ll be making this monumental transition away from oil at a time when the supply is diminishing, world-wide demand is increasing, costs are on the rise, production and refining become more difficult (and of course more expensive), and it’s going to take much longer to bring that fossil fuel resource to market. That’s just for starters.

We use oil for just about everything produced, transported, and consumed. We’re now going to have to start figuring out many new ways to try and maintain some semblance of a “normal” industrial economy as well as a personal lifestyle using new forms of energy to power just about everything we rely on oil to do for us now. That’s also not gonna happen … certainly not to the extent, with the ease, at the low costs, or with the same quality and quantity we’ve come to expect.

Plans are in order—lots of plans. This is no quick-fix modern day dilemma, and it is most definitely not a challenge that we can rely on the “market” to solve on its own. What remains just as doubtful is the ability of our national government to lead the way, and that’s a problem. I’m not sure right now that Congress could easily, quickly, or even by majority vote declare December 25 as Christmas Day. Certainly they couldn’t do so if President Obama offered that up. This is not encouraging, and it’s even less so when we have a more-than-insignificant number of “leaders” who cannot seem to accept anything that even remotely resembles scientific fact.

We’re going to need a national government with national leaders who can … you know, lead; people who actually understand what is at stake, have some kind of vision for what we need to do now and going forward, are willing to articulate that to the citizenry, can explain what we all have to contribute, and are willing to make the tough choices devoid of ideology. Declining oil production has absolutely nothing to do with conservative or liberal philosophies of governance.

We’ve got an entire industrial and commercial infrastructure that is going to have to be modified, re-built, or in many cases created anew to allow us to move forward with something other than oil to power it. There’s no pretending otherwise, and waiting is simply not an option any more—not that it has been. The Hirsch Report which issued several years ago was quite clear that 20 years of full-out national effort would be needed to effect an orderly and hopefully pain-free transition away from fossil fuels in order to continue to power our economy and support our lifestyles.

If the IEA is finally admitting that peak conventional production happened four year ago, simple math tells us we’re a wee bit late on maximizing opportunities from that 20-year window. Uh-oh, again!

Just to keep things interesting, the transition from an oil-based industrial economy to Whatever-Plan-B-Will-Be will have to be achieved using that same declining measure of supply to design and construct and transport and put into place the infrastructure we’ll need to support and maintain this as yet unidentified and not-planned- for-yet Plan B. We’re talking about using a lot of declining energy supplies that’s a lot more expensive, over the course of a lot of years to put into operation a lot of new industrial and economic and civic foundations to (we hope) enable us to maintain some semblance of growth and prosperity—all while using new energy resources that simply will not be as efficient or inexpensive or dependable as oil has been.

And who does without or with less in order to achieve all of this? “Someone else, of course” is not the answer. We’re all “someone else” now. (As a bonus, extracting this now-more-difficult-to-come-by resource will create even more environmental and other resource-supply difficulties.)

So far, this is not encouraging. Where are the plans? Do our leaders have any courage at all to start dealing with the difficult truths all of us are now going to have to contend with? “Drill, baby, drill” was a poor solution when it was first suggested. Now, it’s just a fantasy. We’re going to need something a bit more intelligent as a solution.

The IEA’s 2010 Outlook states that more than three-quarters of the 2035 production amounts are going to originate from either oil fields that so far have not been developed (including the more costly, less efficient, and less reliable unconventional resources such as the Canadian tar sands), or from fields that haven’t even been discovered yet! Hello! There are a lot of unspoken hopes and wishes and finger-crossings being counted upon. And another bonus: all of this is going to be even more expensive.

What’s even more startling is that the IEA is projecting that by 2035, the conventional oil production we’ve relied on for decades will have decreased from the 2006 peak of 70 million barrels per day to less than 20 million barrels per day. According to my calculations, 20 million is a lot less than 70 million. That is not good math.

These are just some of the facts we have no choice but to deal with. This is not an ideal set of circumstances for us to confront in the midst of our continuing economic woes. But we play the hand we’re dealt, or we fold. Our choice.

First, we need to come to terms with these facts, and that means at a minimum the partisan, fact-free or manufactured-out-of-thin-air political nonsense must end immediately.

From there, we move toward plans and actions. None of the options will be simple, fast, or cheap. Are we willing to bet on human ingenuity and human capital? It won’t be the first time, and there’s no rule that even suggests that change won’t be better for all of us. I’m not willing to relinquish my hold on optimism (though I find myself having to grip a bit harder these days).

The game is different now, the rules are different, and if there is to be any “winning”, it’s going to have to come about with different strategies and lot more playing partners than some would like. But that’s the reality.

“Peak oil and the events associated with it will be an unprecedented discontinuity in human and geologic history. Peak oil crises will soon confront societies with the opportunity to recreate themselves based on their respective needs, culture, resources, and governance responses. Peak oil will require a change of economic and social systems, and will result in a new world order. The sooner people prepare for peak oil and a post-peak oil life, the more they will be able to influence the direction of their opportunities. Nevertheless, there are probably no solutions that do not involve at the very least some major changes in lifestyles. Consequently, peak oil will probably result in some catastrophic upheavals. Peak oil will also present opportunities to address many underlying societal, economic, and environmental problems.” [2]

I’ve ended more than one post to date with this question, and it’s just as vital today as it always has been:

Crisis, or opportunity?

Sources:

[1] http://seekingalpha.com/article/231957-the-end-of-oil-s-golden-age; King Oil – posted Oct 25, 2010
[2] http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-21/collapse-nov-21 and http://www.global.ucsb.edu/climateproject/papers/index.html; Peak Energy, Climate Change, and the Collapse of Global Civilization: The Current Peak Oil Crisis by Tariel Mórrígan; Global Climate Change, Human Security & Democracy, Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

“I don’t think people quite understand how fundamental transportation is to the economy and their standard of living.” [1]

“Some might also wonder why a shortage of oil should automatically trigger a collapse. It turns out that, in an industrialized economy, a drop in oil consumption precipitates a proportional drop in overall economic activity. Oil is the feedstock used to make the vast majority of transportation fuels—which are used to move products and deliver services throughout the economy. In the US in particular, there is a very strong correlation between GDP and motor vehicle miles traveled. Thus, the US economy can be said to run on oil, in a rather direct and immediate way: less oil implies a smaller economy. At what point does the economy shrink so much that it can no longer meet its own maintenance requirements? In order to continue functioning, all sorts of infrastructure, plant and equipment must be maintained and replaced in a timely manner, or it stops functioning. Once that point is reached, economic activity becomes constrained not just by the availability of transportation fuels, but also by the availability of serviceable equipment.” [2]

“The United States is saddled with a rapidly decaying and woefully underfunded transportation system that will undermine its status in the global economy unless Congress and the public embrace innovative reforms, a bipartisan panel of experts concludes in a report released [several weeks ago].
“U.S. investment in preservation and development of transportation infrastructure lags so far behind that of China, Russia and European nations that it will lead to ‘a steady erosion of the social and economic foundations for American prosperity in the long run.” [3]

This is real life; this is what happens when you put on blinders and decide that a political ideology already proven not to work will nonetheless work magic this time. If they do what they’ve always done, we’ll get more of what we’ve already gotten … hello!

Spending the kinds of money being tossed about for transportation infrastructure modernization is mind-boggling. As one recent report suggests, an additional $134 billion to $262 billion must be spent per year through 2035 to rebuild and improve roads, rail and air transportation systems. [4] Coupled with even larger investments needed to modernize our entire infrastructure, and it becomes terrifying. Talk about bad options or bad options! There are few short-term upsides to the choices we’re confronted with, but that’s the key issue: this is not about what’s best for us only right now. Difficult decisions or difficult decisions are the choices on the table.

But what is the option? Where do we wind up ten, twenty, fifty years down the road? Do we leave our children and grandchildren with potentially burdensome debt but in an economic environment that meets their needs and gives them hope and chance for an even better future, or do we send them into the world relatively debt-free but confronted with decay and decline and little hope as far as the eye can see?

“The United States can’t compete successfully in the 21st century with a 20th century transportation infrastructure—especially when its chief trading partners, including not only the advanced economies of Western Europe and Southeast Asia but also rapidly developing countries like China, are making significant investments in cutting-edge transportation technologies and systems. Transportation efficiency has a direct impact on Americans’ standard of living and on the cost of goods and services delivered by U.S. firms and businesses.” [5]

The knee-jerk reaction to raising any fees, notably the 18.4 cent (per gallon) federal gas tax, which has not been raised since 1993, hamstrings any efforts to legitimately address these challenges. A sense of entitlement—that we shouldn’t have to pay for public services—is rapidly becoming not just an enormous impediment to resolving our difficulties. We also run the risk that our fears of national decline will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and with no one to blame but ourselves.

“We would also note that while other nations are effectively rebuilding and improving transportation infrastructure (think China, France, India and other competitors), we are consumed with debates about the proper role of our national government, all the while avoiding the tough decisions that would give us the resources to do the same. [6]

You don’t have to be a math whiz to understand that inflation and increased fuel mileage over the years (and thus less spending at the pump) have dramatically reduced the sufficiency of the gas tax as a source for highway construction and maintenance funds. The sad truth is that Americans don’t want to pay for much, and that’s a sure recipe for all kinds of disasters, but our attention span is short and our memories about other consequences are just as short.

One proposal repeatedly floated about only to be instantly shot down is a one or two cent (cent, as in penny!) increase in that per gallon gas tax. Two or three cents would be fabulous, but we can’t get Congressional leaders to even consider a one freaking penny increase to help pay for road maintenance and repair … one penny per gallon! Let’s take a look at how this breaks down in the real world of facts:

Estimated miles traveled per year by the average driver is 15,000

Average miles per gallon is 15 – 20 miles per gallon. Let’s lowball and say it’s only 15 mpg

15,000 miles per year divided by 52 weeks = 290 miles; let’s say 300 miles per week

300 miles per week divided by 15 miles per gallon = 20 gallons of gas used per week, or about $60.00 per week at current prices, or about $3000.00 per year

20 gallons of gas per week with a one freaking cent gas tax increase = 20 cents per week, times 52 weeks means that the average driver paying $10.40 more per year to help alleviate an urgent need … ten freaking dollars per year!

And we have leaders and organizations and media personalities telling us that raising this tax is as calamitous as anything we’ve ever seen. This begs the obvious and unfortunate question:

How irresponsible, clueless, and short-sighted is this?

“The fact is that failure to adequately maintain and invest in our transportation systems means not only gridlocked roads and deteriorating bridges in the near term, but a steady erosion of the social and economic foundations for American prosperity in the long run. Avoiding this outcome means government, and ultimately taxpayers, need to be willing to invest more in transportation, not just for one year or a few, but on a sustained basis over time….Policymakers and the public will need to understand that investments in transportation infrastructure—provided these investments are wisely chosen and effectively implemented—will have long-term benefits that more than justify their near-term costs.” [7]

“[O]ur transportation infrastructure also is the foundation upon which virtually every major industry sector depends. Many industries could not exist without the wise infrastructure investments our nation has made in the past. These industries include tourism, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, agriculture and forestry, mining, retailing, wholesaling and many others that are essential to our economic vitality and quality of life. Dependent industries provide more than 78.6 million American jobs with a total payroll in excess of $2.8 trillion, illustrating just how much we have at stake when we underfund our transportation efforts.” [8]

As my favorite political blogger, Steve Benen, so dryly noted: “We are, by the way, talking about projects that create jobs, spur economic development, relieve traffic congestion, and help the environment, all while offering the promise of transforming American transportation in the 21st century.” [9]

Not that that matters….

Whether or not we manage to restore some semblance of prosperity in the near (or even not-so-near) future will depend in no small part on the courage and wisdom we ask our leaders to demonstrate—with our support—in making wise investment decisions with an eye to the future, difficult as those choices may be. Not making those decisions has the potential to be catastrophic.

We have to encourage and even insist on a vision for our future that takes into account legitimate concerns on both sides of these investment issues but also moves beyond them in recognition of the fact that in a near-future powered by less fossil fuel resources, changes will have to be made in how we address these challenges. Throwing more money at public roads is not the sole option, nor can it be.

“Name one attribute America’s most successful cities have in common. The ‘it’ factor often overlooked – but necessary for success – is transit. Successful cities all across the nation have made the choice to make public transit a priority – and that decision pays off.
“According to the American Public Transit Association, for every $1 cities invest in public transportation, they generate $4 in economic returns. Economically viable cities make funding transit a priority because they can generate multiple, positive economic outcomes with a single investment:
“Developers are attracted to transit areas. If a city wants to revitalize a blighted area or dictate where high-density growth and expansion occur, one of the smartest things it can do is invest in transit.” [10]

For all the (many of which are legitimate) arguments against investing in high speed rail, the reality that almost none of those opponents bother to consider is that in a world with ever-declining oil production, increasing world-wide demand, and more complex geopolitical and geological challenges, our insistence on remaining an automobile-based nation evidencing our greatness and independence is at best extremely foolish. We are simply not going to have same level of fossil fuels we now depend on for transportation. That’s just the reality, and we ignore it or stubbornly insist otherwise at our peril. Alternative forms of transit—expensive or not—are going to play a critical role for us in the future, both personally and commercially. Stomping our feet and demanding otherwise is nice, but not going to get you much.

“In the United States, high-speed rail remains roadkill for Republicans who, in playing to anti-big-government voters, reflexively say states cannot afford it rather than reflect on how mass transit and speedy corridor trains will wean us off oil and improve quality of life for generations to come.” [11]

We, and our leaders, need to be wiser and far less shortsighted than we tend to be.

Sources:

[1] http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/10/22/new-report-shows-states-want-to-cut-infrastructure-spending/; New Report Shows States Want to Cut Infrastructure Spending by Eric Jaffe (quoting Byron Schlomach, director of the Center for Economic Prosperity at the Goldwater Institute in Arizona)

[2] http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/11/peak-oil-is-history.html; Peak Oil is History

[3]http://millercenter.org/policy/transportation [link to PDF]; Report from the Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virgina: Well Within Reach – America’s New Transportation Agenda – David R. Goode National Transportation Policy Conference (Norman Y. Mineta and Samuel K. Skinner, Conference Co-Chairs, Jeffrey N. Shane, Conference Director) issued October, 2010

[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/04/AR2010100402269.html; Failing U.S. transportation system will imperil prosperity, report finds By Ashley Halsey III

[5] Miller Center Report (above) p.26

[6] http://www.amconmag.com/cpt/2010/10/19/how-to-finance-the-next-six-year-transportation-authorization-a-taxing-issue/; How to Finance the Next Six-Year Transportation Authorization: A Taxing Issue – October 19, 2010 by Glen Bottoms

[7] Miller Center Report (above) p. 27

[8] http://www.hntb.com/point-of-view/think5-investing-in-our-economic-future; Investing in our economic future

[9] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_11/026518.php; SO MUCH FOR HIGH-SPEED RAIL…..

[10] http://transportation.nationaljournal.com/2010/10/talkin-about-a-railvolution.php; Talkin’ About A Rail-Volution? By Fawn Johnson; (Response by Tom Madigan: The ‘It’ Factor Of Successful Cities)

[11] http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/10/30/us_needs_to_get_on_track_for_high_speed_rail/; US needs to get on track for high-speed rail By Derrick Z. Jackson

“America’s infrastructure needs are dauntingly large, complex and urgent. Ultimately, if we are to regain not only economic stability but also prosperity, if we are to remain a creative and competitive nation, we will need to demonstrate the capacity for holistic thinking and integrative action.” [1]

“What this election suggests to me is that the United States may have finally lost its ability to adapt politically to the systemic crises that it has periodically faced….

“The American people, mired in debt, with one in six lacking full-time employment, are not spending; and businesses, uncertain of demand for their products, are not investing no matter how low interest rates fall. With the Fed virtually powerless, the only way to stimulate private demand and investment is through public spending.” [2]

“What’s the right tool? The cure for the Great Depression was World War II — a massive fiscal and technological stimulus. Annual wartime deficits peaked at about 28 percent of Gross Domestic Product. The government went on a hiring binge, both for war production and via the military draft. The economy blasted out of depression.

“Today, however, both parties are wringing their hands over much smaller deficits, projected this year at about 9 percent of GDP. Republicans just took back the House with a campaign against big government.

“So there is no political appetite for the civilian equivalent of World War II — a public campaign to rebuild rotting bridges, roads, ports, water and sewer systems, and to invest in 21st century infrastructure such as a smart electric grid and clean energy technology that would make the economy more productive as well as creating millions of jobs.

“The Republicans do speak of ‘fiscal stimulus,’ but they mean tax cuts. However, a recent report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concludes that tax cuts are a far less efficient use of deficits than direct public investment.” [3]

“Improving water systems — and infrastructure generally, if properly done — would go a long way toward improving the nation’s dismal economic outlook. According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, every dollar invested in water and sewer improvements has the potential to increase the long-term gross domestic product by more than six dollars. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created if the nation were serious about repairing and upgrading water mains, crumbling pipes, water treatment plants, dams, levees and so on.

“Millions of jobs would be created if we could bring ourselves to stop fighting mindless wars and use some of those squandered billions to bring the nation’s infrastructure in the broadest sense up to 21st-century standards.

“The need is tremendous. The nation’s network of water systems was right at the bottom of the latest infrastructure grades handed out by the American Society of Civil Engineers, receiving a D-minus.” [4]

In my last post, I asked what our vision was for our future. Where we’re going as a nation obviously carries significant import for where we go as individuals: can we expect prosperity and growth, or will the decline feared by many prove to be to our destiny? That’s not a pleasant option to contemplate under any circumstances.

But now, when the energy resources we might otherwise count on to boost us back to customary levels of prosperity (and beyond) will not be available to us in the same measures in the immediate years to come (and beyond), we have even more daunting challenges. Even acknowledging them is extremely painful and discouraging. Contemplating what has to be done is paralyzing to most of us.

So what do we do?

Let’s say that during last evening’s rain storm you discovered a small hole in your roof. You have some options this morning. Ignoring the problem completely is one choice. Painting over it is another. Calling a repairman is a third choice. Safe to say that most homeowners would choose from those three options, and perhaps the majority would choose the third option right away.

Make no mistake, this is definitely not an expense you want to deal with. But what’s the thought process if you don’t fix it now? It would probably go something like this:

“Well, I’m pretty certain this is not going to get any worse. No need to check to be certain, I just believe it won’t get worse. Actually, I’d rather not find out, to be honest, so I’m just going to ignore it. Heck, I’ll stay out of the room entirely!”

Or you have this conversation with yourself: “Not a big leak right now, and I am pretty certain that this is only going to get a bit worse and no more than that. No need to check. I’ll grab some towels, put down a couple of buckets, figure it’s not going to rain or snow much, and I think we’ll be okay for a few more years.”

Or perhaps you have this conversation: “This is probably going to get a lot worse if I don’t do anything soon, but I’m pretty certain that nothing really bad will happen. I’ll just move the furniture for now. I’m also pretty certain that if I do have to spend money to fix this in a couple of years, it’s probably going to cost even less than it would to fix the little problem now. Yeah, I think that sounds about right. But I think I’ll just tell the kids to stay away from the upper floors. That should cover it.”

Anyone want to float those options by your significant other and expect agreement? But that’s pretty much what we’re proposing by declining to spend money now on our infrastructure. (And yes, finding the money is a huge problem, to say nothing of convincing those ideologically bound to even less spending to turn around and agree to more … a lot more. Spending/borrowing the hundreds of billions of dollars we need to get our infrastructure back in shape, in this economy, has a whole suitcase full of reasons why that makes no sense. I acknowledge that.) But….

“First Britain, and now the United States, are responding to the worst economic contraction in 75 years by contracting government, despite the fact that the world’s best economists are screaming that it’s exactly the wrong thing to do….

“From China to India to Brazil, hundreds of millions of people are rising economically in ways their parents could scarcely have imagined, in part because their governments are investing in infrastructure in the way the United States did in the late nineteenth century. The American dream of upward mobility is alive and well, just not in America.” [5]

There’s little reason why we cannot be the world’s most successful or prosperous nation as those attributes are commonly measured. But we will not do so by relying on business as usual, demonstrably failed policies of the past, or levels of vitriol that are almost laughably inane. These are not the paths to restore our nation to that lofty place. (Waiting for tax cuts to the wealthiest one per cent of Americans as one strategy to help all of us guarantees one thing and one thing only: one hell of a long wait.)

Is this the best we can do? Are we going to permit justifiable anxieties and fears and doubts cloud our vision as to the choices we need to make (fraught with their own set of less-than-ideal policy considerations and consequences). This is a crisis. There is no getting around it. It was a long time in the making, and it will not be “fixed” anywhere near as quickly as we would wish. Perfect solutions are nowhere to be found, and every choice has ardent supporters and detractors. Economic challenges atop and surrounded by looming energy and climate challenges most are ill-informed about at best only add to the dimension of what we will have to contend with. We need broad-based plans now, and under the worst possible conditions.

But as I have suggested often, this is also about opportunity. Our future prosperity will be measured in large part by the vision we develop right now about how economic growth will be produced and sustained in a world with a very different base of energy resources. We cannot continue to rely on unlimited amounts of inexpensive and energy-dense fossil fuels to sustain us at the same levels as in the past, let alone support our hopes for greater levels of growth and economic prosperity in the years to come. We need to accept that. Then our work and innovation can begin in earnest.

Oil production has not increased in nearly five years, and with demand on the upswing and a host of economic and geological challenges confronting prospects for producing more, we need to come to terms with the fact that we need to redefine growth and create new means and methods of production in a once-again growing economy. Less government is the exact opposite of what we need. Less ideology runs hand-in-hand with this approach.

We’re not going to suddenly discover magical amounts of fossil fuel reserves though magical technologies because the Republican Party now controls the House. Energy resources don’t concern themselves so much with political ideology. What’s left (and there are still massive amounts left) is going to be harder to find, extract, and pay for. The quality and quantity will simply not be there in the manner we’ve come to expect. That’s the reality, and those are the facts. This means we’re going to have to make do with less just when we need it all more than ever, and just when millions more have asserted at this same time their needs and demands for the same finite amounts. Party affiliations shouldn’t be expected to change any of that.

But buried as we are under the weight of this Great Recession, it is even more frightening to contemplate that we may not get back to our expected levels of growth soon, if ever. That fear and anxiety—stoked by too many for whom integrity is an entirely foreign concept (if you have to resort to disingenuous misrepresentations to further your aims, what does that say about the message, and the messenger?)—clearly played itself out in the elections held last week.

I get the sense that what this most recent election was about was not a rejection of the President’s agenda and legislative successes as much as it was a frustration and anger (buttressed by much legitimate anxiety) that things are not better already, and too many of us thought that it would be. Feeling largely powerless, the majority of voters opted to check off the box marked “Someone Else” as their way of contributing to problem-solving. “Someone has to do something to get us some results right now” was the basic message … not entirely dissimilar to 2008’s message. We’ve proven once again that we’re an impatient and forgetful nation.

“Someone else” is a familiar electoral option, but at times one of questionable logic and wisdom. The delusion about quick and inexpensive solutions (and amnesia about the severity and breadth of problems that escorted President Obama into the White House)—notions or hopes that this could all be fixed with a couple of waves of his magic wand—collided quickly with the reality of the depth of fundamental problems which ushered in the Great Recession. Choosing Someone Else is no guarantee that the nearly insurmountable economic, industrial, and employment problems are going to be alleviated any quicker, if at all. And with one party committed to spending even less on crucial needs, we’ve got our work cut out for us just to stay afloat, let alone move ahead.

We need to be educated about the truths, painful as they are. There are no golden options, no guaranteed measures to restore us back to the “normal” we took for granted. Yes, deficit spending is no panacea. Debt passed on to future generations is not anyone’s first choice under ideal or even less-than-ideal circumstances. No one wants to pay more taxes for anything! But that’s the deal we strike with this form of governance. Less means less. More doesn’t always mean better, but more is more, and we need more of the more than we need the less.

The harsh reality is that we are in a far different set of circumstances than most of us have ever faced. Coupled with the equally harsh truth that we are going to have to fashion new measures and definitions of growth and prosperity (if that’s even possible, hate to say), and will have to achieve much of it in the years to come under a different set of rules and with different energy resources (many not yet in place), we have some serious, deep-seated, and long-lasting problems to address. The time to plan and prepare so as to ensure a seamless transition to new standards of industrial and economic production has passed. It’s not too late, but it is getting very late in the game. Adapting to means of production and supporting our vital infrastructure with different sources of energy will take extraordinary vision, planning, innovation, and implementation … and that will all be years in the making.

We’ve kicked enough cans down the road as it is. This is one more we cannot afford to pass on to the future.

These challenges need to be addressed not just by others. As I have taken pains to stress in numerous posts, we all have a stake in what happens to us and to our nation, and we all bear responsibility for helping to fashion solutions. Voting is one contribution to be sure, but let’s make certain that it is an informed choice and not solely a lashing out in impatient frustration. I’ve been on the unemployment lines, too. I understand and remember the anguish and the soul-sucking stress that governs every waking moment. Tomorrow is too long a time to wait.

In these circumstances, voting cannot be our only contribution, however. Ideology won’t create a better climate, or produce more fossil fuels from ever-declining reserves. Technology and innovation and inventions will help, but there are no plans for them to all show up early in December. We’re going to have to recognize—on top of all of our other economic challenges—that we’re going to have to make do with less of the fossil fuel-based means of producing goods and services which have long sustained our ways of living. Conserving, like it or not, is going to be a standard M.O. for us.

And to think that we can achieve any semblance of prosperity again under a political agenda that suggests we’ll spend less—less on education, less on research, less on training, less on our children, less on programs to help the many disenfranchised, less on vital infrastructure, less on necessary federal programs and departments that safeguard our citizens in a variety of ways—is to compound the delusions. The truth is that the only place where these magical economy-strengthening spending cuts will come from will be on programs that aid or benefit the vast majority of the not-wealthy Americans—ones that offer us the potential for future prosperity or serve as lifelines now. Do we really want to define our nation’s character by the philosophy of “every man, woman, or child is on their own ‘cuz I got mine.”?

By all means let’s be certain that we cut back even more programs to help the distressed, and compound the neglect to our vast infrastructure needs to insure that the wealthy have enough money to buy a seventh or eighth home. That money is gonna trickle down one of these days to us, I just know it!

“If there’s any lesson that Republicans are going to take away from this election it is that vitriol and intransigence and total unwillingness to cooperate work — politically, at least, if not in terms of getting anything done that meaningfully improves the welfare of Americans.” [6]

This is a good thing? This is what we cast votes for? This is who we are?

Are the hundreds of millions of not-wealthy Americans really content with the nonsensical explanations that the few wealthy and the major corporations need more tax cuts at their expense, while asking those same hundreds of millions of not-wealthies to sacrifice even more? Now, under these dire economic conditions?!

An ill-informed electorate that too often allows others it only thinks have more knowledge and information to lead the debate and frame the issues is every bit as damaging as abuses of power or media manipulations. The reality is that Republican Party officials’ statements about creating jobs by reducing the deficit through spending reductions and tax cuts are economic nonsense and nothing more. Analysts much more intelligent than I am have demonstrated that not one of the policy plans the Republicans produced would reduce the deficit by so much as a nickel, and prominent among those misrepresentations is their proposal to reduce taxes on the wealthiest one per cent of Americans (oh the horror that that may not come to pass!) as a means of jump-starting us back to prosperity. That alone is going to add $700 billion to the deficit! Hello?

We have to be better than that, and we have to be smarter.

The Republican agenda favors business and the wealthy. It’s not any more complicated than that. That is their history over these past few decades. If you are comfortable with that ideology, if you think that that approach is going to somehow help you and your community; or enhance and support your personal values; if you think that you can obtain the same breadth and depth of government services (most of which we completely take for granted) by giving government less funding; that spending less money on the fundamental and badly in need of repair and maintenance and revitalization infrastructure (which enables us to have industrial and economic success in the first place) is the path for future economic and industrial growth; and/or that these and similar approaches will somehow help restore this nation to levels of progress and growth and prosperity and innovation that have long been the envy of the world, then keep leaning right. It’s a free country.

“I don’t get what they think they’re doing to stimulate the economy right now,” said [Bill] Gale [a senior fellow in economics studies at the Brookings Institution]. “I can understand that people are angry or upset about the economy. But I can’t understand how that anger and anxiety has turned into this set of legislative proposals [tax cuts for the wealthy, less regulation, massive spending cuts].” [7]

We have to be better than that, and we have to be smarter. We cannot afford otherwise.

Our rage and frustration and animus that things are not better by last month at the latest has blinded and is blinding us to the future we do face: one where the rules will change of necessity, and one where the energy foundation of all of our progress and prosperity in the past century and a half will not be available to us as it has been. It’s not pleasant to accept that, but accept it we must, for if we do not understand what is at stake, what kind of changes need to be made, and how much we need to act in concert—political ideologies notwithstanding—then any hopes we have for pulling ourselves out of this dire set of economic challenges are a collective waste of time. (And yes, deficit spending by our government cannot and must not continue indefinitely, I get that part. We’re talking about spending a lot of money. That’s not nearly as simple a proposition as one would like to think.)

We have too much to do and design and innovate and implement and repair and maintain and support and provide to rely solely on the market place. Borrowing costs are ridiculously low; there’s an urgent need to repair and modernize our transit systems and bridges, schools, power grids, water and sewer facilities and all the other elements of our vast infrastructure; there are millions looking for work whose income earned will in turn be spent in the marketplace, and thousands of companies and millions of their employees who will benefit from the spending accompanying this work.

“The American Society of Civil Engineers calculates that the U.S. would need to spend an additional $1.1 trillion over the next five years to restore roads, bridges, dams, levees and other infrastructure to good condition. In its latest report card, the engineering society gave the nation’s public works a ‘D’ grade.” [8]

“For years, we have deferred tough decisions, and today, our aging system of highways and byways, air routes and rail lines hinder our economic growth.”  – President Obama

Seems simple enough.

We need a national vision with courageous, honest national leadership (Democrats and Republicans) unconcerned with narrow-minded and short-term ideological nonsense. This is about so much more than partisan principles. It’s about what is best for us as a nation now, next week, next year, and for the rest of this century at the very least. No easy, simple, or inexpensive and consequence-free decisions are on the horizon.

What will we choose for our future? What answers—and opportunities—will we be able to provide for our children and grandchildren?

Sources:

[1] http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-11-02/infrastructural-ecologies-principles-post-industrial-public-works; Infrastructural Ecologies: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works by Hillary Brown

[2] http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/78890/a-lost-generation?utm_source=ESP+Integrated+List&utm_campaign=3b5b04383f-TNR_Daily_110310&utm_medium=email; A Lost Generation: Obama deserved to lose—but the country doesn’t deserve the consequences by John B. Judis

[3] http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/11/05/cheap_money_wont_fix_this_economy/; Cheap money won’t fix this economy By Robert Kuttner

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1&hp; The Corrosion of America By BOB HERBERT

[5] http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-03/how-the-gop-will-help-get-obama-re-elected-in-2012/; Election Night’s Big Loser by Peter Beinart

[6] http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/11/03/what_next_for_the_economy/index.html; After the GOP deluge, what next for the economy? By Andrew Leonard

[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/05/AR2010110507092.html?hpid=topnews; Republicans map out their agenda of less By Lori Montgomery

[8] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_will_to_build; US shuns some big public works projects By David Porter And Michael Rubinkam, Associated Press

“I think we’ve lost sight of the fact that there should be a vision of what America can be, what our states can contribute to America, that quality of life is all part of people having jobs and maybe paying a little bit of those taxes out of the jobs to create a general public contribution to a quality of infrastructure. I think part of the problem is that too many other things are put on the table at the same time and they’re put on in a confusing way. Should we pay for health care? What about the war? What about gay marriage? All these things that a number of us think are sideshows and that deviate from the fact that Americans have to invest in the quality of life in their own country.
“I think the real problem is that we’ve not been able to come together and put together a true vision, and not a plan, of what we can be with the next generation of infrastructure: a country filled with jobs and opportunities and new businesses and ways of getting kids to school. People are worried about that.” [1]

“The United States is not just losing its capacity to do great things. It’s losing its soul. It’s speeding down an increasingly rubble-strewn path to a region where being second rate is good enough.” [2]

“I find it kind of frightening this trend toward criticizing the government and blaming someone else when we’re the problem. Government is good at technical problems, fixing roads and dams, but government can’t fix human behavior,” she says. “Folks aren’t willing to get involved, and they need to.” [3]

“It’s so easy to get on the bandwagon: lower my taxes, smaller and more efficient government, don’t touch my liberties, throw the bums out, etc. But what if that bandwagon has to cross a bridge? And what if that bridge hasn’t been maintained in years?” [4]

The election results have sent a message. That’s the prevailing wisdom, and any number of opinions from both sides of the partisan divide will tell us everything we need to know and then some as to what that message might be.

But is it the right message … whatever that political message might be? Given that we have an electorate that seems both woefully uninformed (see here, here, and here, for example) about basic facts regarding the legislation passed for their benefit in the past two years, and decidedly short of memory as to the events that lead to our current—and deep—economic and employment woes (and yes, as ardent a supporter as I am of this Administration, they bear some share of blame), how much should anyone rely on whatever the political message might be?

Is it right for us as a nation to rely on those who may not have (or have no interest in) relevant facts, and/or who are instead lashing out in justifiable and understandable frustration at their predicaments and apparent powerlessness over circumstances? The economic grievances are legitimate, but are decisions predicated in no small part on blind frustration an appropriate gauge for our elected leaders to base their decisions (particularly when some have an agenda that is only marginally related to what the majority in fact seem to desire—or need)?

I raise this clearly political issue because our current economic woes may very well turn out to be nothing but gathering clouds on the horizon—clouds that will usher in far more lasting consequences—when we’re required to confront our industrial and economic challenges in a world with less and less oil available to us each day. Our nation’s ability to right itself is already under siege. Limiting our options might not be the best Step One.

Tea Partiers, left wing radicals, wingnuts on the far right, and everyone in between are all in due time going to be obliged to personally deal with and endure the challenges brought on by an ever-declining amount of readily available fossil fuels. The evidence is in, and while we are just as free to ignore the facts and reality of declining oil production just as we do with clear evidence about global warming and its consequences, we do so at our own peril.

Progress as we’ve come to expect is going to take a sharp turn off its familiar path long before we’ve all given ourselves the full range of opportunities to prepare. Our current strategy of avoiding and denying has immediate psychological merit (perhaps), but it is clearly remains just about the worst option.

Strong opinions are now being cast about arguing in favor of smaller government, less expenditures, and belt-tightening. Noble sentiments; and not without their economic merit. But in the midst of this Great Recession with its high unemployment, considerable uncertainty, and the fears this all spawns; and according to some knowledgeable estimates more than $2 trillion worth of repairs, upgrades, and maintenance needed to bring our infrastructure (e.g. roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, electrical and other power grids, rail, seaport, and airport systems) to proper levels of function and utility, is less spending and less government really the most intelligent approach?

How do we remain competitive with an international body of nations looking to match us? Falling behind on purpose is a curious strategy.

“What has always struck me about this issue is that there is a desperate need to improve the nation’s infrastructure and a desperate need for the jobs and enhanced economic activity that would come from sustained, long-term infrastructure investment. But somehow the leadership and the will to move forward on the scale that is needed are missing.” [5]

To be sure, there are great arguments to be made pro and con, so it’s inappropriate of me to be completely dismissive. But what kind of a nation do we want to be ten, twenty, fifty years from now?

“Earlier this month the White House released a report stating that most Americans—84 percent, in fact—are perfectly happy to spend money on the country’s broken infrastructure. But a new study also released this month suggests that such approval exists only in the abstract. It turns out that when people are asked which specific parts of their state’s budget should get cut, they choose infrastructure over all else.” [6]

Hello!

Decisions we make now about these long-term investments will most certainly affect us for those many decades and beyond. Should we really be worrying about the deficit when so much is needed to help us regain our footing, and when other nations (think China) are spending massive amounts of money to position themselves to be economically competitive for the remainder of this century? Without a properly functioning and up-to-date infrastructure (one adapted to an environment that can no longer rely on the same levels of fossil fuels to sustain it), any hope we harbor about maintaining a position of prominence in the world order will indeed remain just that: a hope, and one that fades farther into the distance every day.

If we’re spending less owing to our own personal circumstances, and we’re now asking the Spender of Last Resort to tighten its belt to appease the narrow-minded, short-term focused, and ill-informed (together with media know-nothings or worse, fabricators of alternative and fact-free realities) rather than take advantage of an incredible and incredibly important need (and in a climate of amazingly low borrowing costs), what’s left for us to do to re-energize this moribund economy? Thinking that the booster shot (the primary purpose) that was the President’s stimulus plan was instead our long-term investment strategy is to completely misunderstand what was being done! And if you’re thinking tax cuts for the wealthy are the answer, I’ll politely suggest you consider the realities here on Planet Earth first. (Hate it when facts get in the way, but sometimes you just gotta deal with ‘em!)

“America’s more serious deficit is one of inadequate social investment — in children, worker skills, basic public facilities, and the advanced infrastructure of the 21st century. The long-term health of the economy depends on these outlays. It is a mistake to view spending only as “stimulus” for the economic emergency — and then to revert to our normal underinvestment in people and social overhead once the immediate crisis ends.” [7]

How do we get Washington to think beyond next week? How do we do so, in the midst of our own burdens?

The challenges of working within the constraints of our post-easily-available-and-inexpensive-fossil fuel future is an issue that legitimately requires a commitment not just from the federal government, but from all of us. If we allow the making of these decisions to become products of pissing contests between ideological Democrats and Republicans or battles of wallets among special interests, we’ll accomplish absolutely nothing and suffer much longer than we’re prepared to. Now that’s something to look forward to!

The problems we face now and will likely face in the days to come demand more of and from out than narrow-minded partisanship. That may gain you votes and boost your war chest, but it’s not of much help to the rest of us.

We need to adopt that same longer term perspective that will be so crucial a determinant in our success and prosperity post-Peak Oil. This is not an issue of hoping Someone Else takes care of this while we roll merrily along amid our frustrations and “throw the bums out” mentality as our sole contribution. We own this problem and these challenges, too.

We’re going to have to adapt our entire infrastructure to a world where the supreme energy efficiency of oil and its by-products are available to us in ever-declining amounts. That adaptation is not going to happen quickly. Years and years is the starting point to measure that undertaking, with no guarantees we’ll get it right, or get it right in time.

Can anyone honestly believe that deferring this critical (and yes, almost unimaginably expensive) undertaking to some undetermined future date is anything other than insanity? Does anyone think it will be easier or preferable to try and cram this massive effort into existence years from now, on a shorter time scale, when the urgency will be that much greater and the ongoing neglect that much worse and more costly? Perhaps these systems so badly in need of repairs and upgrades will magically fix themselves; perhaps more neglect and increased damage won’t cost more in the future; and perhaps we’ll all have guardian angels at the ready, but I’d rather not count on that, thank you very much. Do you want to? Prefer to pass that risk on your spouse or children, instead?

Which leader urging less spending and less government is willing to send his or her child or grandchild across the next bridge an engineer certifies as sub-standard or worse? What soothing words will be offered when another collapse takes place? “We really think it’s best to wait for a better time to spend money; right now we’d like to make sure that the wealthy become wealthier at your expense” isn’t likely to cut it. But that’s a choice that’s being offered to us now.

Our citizens need to invest some time into understanding for themselves what’s at stake and what is being done now in the shadows, and not nearly enough of us have done so. I don’t pretend that’s easy to do, but since decisions being made (largely behind the scenes) affect each and every one of us, it seems to me that this awareness needs to be elevated a bit higher on the priority list, especially in view of the above-cited articles pointing out how uninformed so many of us are.

These are not easy or simple or inexpensive decisions, and while I’d like to think it’s a clear case of no-brainer, I understand the economic arguments against more spending and added debt. Having said this, this is a no-brainer! If we do not invest the money now, if we do not ask our federal officials to step in on our behalf and assume the responsibility for making the investments needed by all of us (Tea Partiers, Birthers, Truthers, Tenthers, liberals, conservatives, nitwits, socialists, media blowhards, and insert-your-belief-system-here members), then our current problems will seem like Christmas in years to come. Not the kind of happy holidays we’d wish on anyone.

When do we come to our collective senses and recognize that the ultimate bottom line right now and for the foreseeable future is not less?

What is the Vision going to be?

Sources:

[1] http://www.infrastructureusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/paaswell-robert1.pdf; Robert Paaswell, Ph.D., Executive Director, CUNY Institute for Urban Systems, speaking with Steve Anderson, Managing Director, InfrastructureUSA, 9/24/2010.

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/opinion/09herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion; Policy at Its Worst – By BOB HERBERT

[3] http://transitionvoice.com/2010/11/take-back-our-government/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TransitionVoice+%28Transition+Voice%29; Take Back Our Government by Lindsay Curren (quoting Debbie Cook, current board president of the Post Carbon Institute, and the former mayor of Huntington Beach, California)

[4] http://www.infrastructureusa.org/gridlock-sam-the-tea-party%E2%80%99s-bridge-to-beyond-nowhere/; Gridlock Sam: The Tea Party’s Bridge to Beyond Nowhere – From The No. 13 Line, a monthly blog by Samuel I. Schwartz and Ana Maria Lima

[5] http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/10/22/new-report-shows-states-want-to-cut-infrastructure-spending/; New Report Shows States Want to Cut Infrastructure Spending by Eric Jaffe

[6] http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_debate_we_should_be_having; The Debate We Should Be Having by Robert Kuttner – October 29, 2010

[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/opinion/26herbert.html?_r=1&hp; The Corrosion of America By BOB HERBERT

Ray LaHood, the Secretary for the Department of Transportation, recently noted on his own blog that in the course of his meetings with city officials at last week’s U.S. Conference of Mayors, their primary concern was about transportation (and infrastructure).

These are the elected men and women closest to everyday life for Americans and the ones most directly responsible for ensuring our citizens and industries are properly provided for. They recognize that the only way for this nation to remain competitive—thus helping to ensure a decent standard of living for all us us—is to focus attention, resources, and money on improving the quality (and modes) of transportation while maintaining a solid infrastructure. They also are quite clear in recognizing that guidance, support, and planning must originate at a higher level than city or town government.

Perhaps it’s time we all recognize what they clearly already know: we don’t have valid or viable options other than to spend more money on the fundamentals of our industrialized society. Howl all you want about debt and deficits and all the rest—however legitimate those concerns may be in their own right—we’ll put people back to work and chart a better course for our future in a world of declining fossil fuel resources not by cutting back or doing as little as possible.

Hypocritical “Pledges” that a third grade math student can see mean nothing and an uninvolved federal government are definitely not the solutions. There are no easy or inexpensive or quick fixes, and the sooner this is understood and accepted, the sooner we all begin the heavy lifting needed to deal with the challenges of a post-peak oil world and an infrastructure desperately in need of revitalization.

It’s time to stop pretending that we don’t still have fundamental problems requiring long-term national commitments and efforts. We might also consider suggesting to our political “leaders” as well that they—and we—could profit from perspective and understanding that extends beyond later next week. We’re past the point of tolerating the idiotic political sound bite that appeases only the uninformed. Our leaders need to lead. Pandering cannot continue to be a strategy, although I hold out little hope that that will change any time soon.

“Whether it is massive investment in new fuels or massive investment in redesigning cities, it is likely that governments will need to take a role in preparing for peak oil if they wish to avoid major economic dislocations.” [1]

“The nation’s ports, inland waterways, drinking water and wastewater systems — you name it — are hurting to one degree or another.
“Ignoring these problems imperils public safety, diminishes our economic competitiveness, is penny-wise and pound-foolish, and results in tremendous missed opportunities to create new jobs on a vast scale. [2]

And with the onset of Peak Oil, the need to revitalize the framework from which our production arises is all the more critical, especially when we come to recognize that in a future with limited fossil fuel availability, a repaired and/or revised infrastructure not dependent on fossil fuel resources for maintenance will be a key determinant in measuring progress and success—as will a transportation system not as utterly dependent on fossil fuels as what we now utilize. The time to develop the infrastructure and upgrade the modes of transportation we’ll need in a post-peak oil economy is now.

As it is, we’re looking at years (decades) of effort and expenditures. Compressing all of those responsibilities and requirements into a much shorter time frame resulting from a legitimate supply and demand crisis some years down the road is insane and quite likely impossible. We can’t afford to wait for that moment.

“Tomorrow’s energy contracts won’t be won by the country with yesterday’s energy grid.” [3]

“Other nations around the globe have continued to act on the calculus that state-of-the art transportation infrastructure — the connective tissue of a nation — is critical to moving goods, ideas and workers quickly and efficiently. In the United States, however, we seem to have forgotten.” [4]

We need to start remembering what those other nations already know.

Sources:

[1] https://www.tai.org.au/index.php?q=node%2F19&pubid=788&act=display – Running on empty? The peak oil debate; Policy Brief No.16, September 2010 by Dr David Ingles and Dr Richard Denniss

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/opinion/16herbert.html?ref=opinion February 16, 2010, What’s Wrong With Us? By BOB HERBERT

[3] http://www.newsweek.com/2010/10/02/klein-the-case-for-investing-in-infrastructure.html – If You Build It … Now’s the time to invest in infrastructure by Ezra Klein

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/opinion/17herbert.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&ref=opinion&adxnnlx=1258455637-lZ9f+84UVVV0xzhkak7qzg – What the Future May Hold By BOB HERBERT

It’s difficult to ignore the insane workings of Washington these days, or the nearly-incomprehensible levels of narrow-mindedness and outright stupidity exhibited by some political “leaders” and pseudo-political celebrities. Have we all become that gullible and apathetic that the nonsense routinely spouted by these same public figures really doesn’t matter (or worse, that we actually find their hypocrisy acceptable)? Some of the positions taken are beyond shameful, but the prevailing actions and beliefs suggest that as long as you can get away with it, keep doing it.

Somewhere, it seems, a blood oath has been taken that if a proposed solution or policy is not absolutely perfect or risk-and harm-free for every single constituency, it will simply be shouted down, especially if it’s proposed from “the other side.” Almost no one, it seems, appears to understand that policies and proposals affect all of us well beyond the two week time frame everyone seems to labor under. It appears that Peak Oil and global warming suffer treatment no different. No one is willing to recognize the fact that whatever adaptive measures will be needed in a future with limited fossil fuel availability, those changes are going to cost us all … a lot, and they won’t be fixed or in place by early next week.

Our leaders are so afraid to upset even the smallest or weirdest constituency that they’re paralyzing the governing process. By constantly making the perfect the enemy of the good and/or practicing blatant obstructionism for the sake of blatant obstructionism, we run the real risk of making this country ungovernable in issues that matter most. (Hell of a victory!) The failure to appreciate the long-term consequences of these behaviors is just going to make things so much more difficult for all of us. Why? More importantly, why are we allowing this to happen?

The incredible short-sightedness expressed in some comments and positions staked out by leading Republican and conservative Democrat candidates and commentators, and the cowardice of far too many Democrats—specifically as they relate here to public transportation—are beyond troubling. (I could write forever about shortsightedness and insanity on matters of general politics!) It’s not the first time I’ve raised similar issues (here), but in light of upcoming elections, there is an increased sense of urgency and a need to help others think critically about the stakes involved.

Well over half of the world’s oil consumption is devoted to transportation, as is certainly the case here in the United States. What person in his or her right mind truthfully thinks that that can continue for many more years? It’s hard to fathom that these politicians and candidates simply do not get it, and thus feel no sense of responsibility to speak out about the energy challenges we will face because oil production is pretty close to (or already at) its peak.

For those of us who care deeply about our future, the futures of our children, the prospects for this wonderful country, and who understand how much change and challenge we will be facing in the near-years to come in the face of declining oil production, this lunacy is beyond frustrating. We’re bartering away our prospects for success, prosperity, and well-being in the decades to come because no one has the courage or wisdom to appreciate that a broader and bigger vision is needed apart from and beyond the politics of the day.

Almost no one seems capable of stepping back and articulating an intelligent strategy for the future that doesn’t quickly descend into lame-ass political gamesmanship. The Party of No is bound and determined to make certain that no worthwhile Democratic policy is passed for no other reason than it’s being proposed by a President they are irrationally incapable of accepting. And Democrats now appear to be afraid of their own shadows and won’t risk articulating a stand on positions unless all 300 million+ Americans are on board first. What’s going on?

This ongoing farce of “I’m always right and you’re always wrong” is why we elect politicians?! I thought the theory was that we would send to Washington men and women who were blessed with a commitment to doing what’s right for everyone, and who could step aside from the partisan short term considerations and help articulate for all of us plans to encourage our growth and well-being in the face of whatever challenges come our way. (Hard to shake the idealist in me.) Instead, I fear that we’ve become a complacent nation allowing ourselves to soon be governed by a cabal of loud, short-sighted, dim-witted, narrow-minded hypocrites whose primary function seems to be a determination to pander to the lowest common denominator of the least-intelligent citizens who elect them, with an ample supply of knucklehead candidates standing in the wings. Are we so cowardly, so timid in the face of our fears and worries and concerns, that we have abandoned all sense of responsibility or rational thought? I’m pretty sure that’s not how we’ve done things in the past.

If someone doesn’t fix the problem today or by early next week at the latest, we’ll just toss them out and try another group for a couple more weeks. Have we all lost our minds?! At what point do we decide that our understandable fears and concerns and frustrations simply do not lend themselves to easy resolution, prompt resolution, or resolution in ways we’ve all come to believe and expect will do the trick? When are the grown-ups going to show up?

Lashing out and “punishing” those who couldn’t fix everything in 24 hours may serve some visceral need, but the issues we are confronting and will be facing soon enough require a modicum of intelligent planning, mixed with a healthy recognition and respect for the fact that none of these needed changes and adaptations will be free, easy, or quick. Changes will either be forced upon us, or we can create the parameters for progress under new rules by considering the many opportunities we will have, even in the midst of this oppressive downturn.

The truth is that times have changed, and the hopes or expectations that business-as-usual is just around the corner are false ones making our tasks and challenges that much more difficult. This Great Recession and the difficulties we’ll soon be confronted with by declining fossil fuel production (and let’s not forget the climate issues) mandate that we approach these problems differently. The issues cannot be positioned as right-or left-wing matters. All of us will be affected, and obviously many already have been. Climate change, our economic woes, and diminishing oil production worry not at all about the politics of those who will be impacted.

And as for Peak Oil and its impact on business and transportation specifically:

“Intent on demonstrating their resistance to virtually all of President Obama’s policy objectives, Republicans nationwide have staked out an anti-rail position that they hope will stand out as the fiscally reasonable choice when they present themselves in this fall’s elections….

“If Republican-led state governments are unwilling to commit to spending their own dollars on these projects, they simply will not be built. Since intercity rail projects are long-term investments, even if the federal government has already agreed to sponsor some investments, the takeover of a governor’s mansion by an anti-rail Republican could mean putting a full-stop in infrastructure development. As New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s announcement last week of a work stoppage on the ARC tunnel project shows, this could affect even projects that have already entered the construction phase. [1]

How idiotic! When the time comes to deal with the myriad transportation-related problems Peak Oil will have created—when there is no other choice but for all of us to make far greater use of public transit options than we do now—we’ll be years and years behind in developing the networks and infrastructure needed. The result: even more hardship for even more citizens—with fewer financial and energy resources available to institute the vast changes which will then be required. Now there’s a sound strategy!

Notwithstanding the tin foil hat wearers who seem to think that oil bubbles up from the core of the Earth in endless quantities and supply, the hard truth is that oil production has been at a plateau for several years now, and it is not going to get better! We’re done! Yes, we will still have billions of barrels available to us for many years to come. I do not dispute that. The occasional “giant” oil field may still be found—the type of field which if produced to its maximum may buy us literally a few more months or a couple of years of oil at most—and we may develop more technologies to assist in producing oil from the shale and tar sand deposits around the world, (or to develop acceptable alternative forms of energy), but it is all and will all be: more expensive and time-consuming to extract, of poorer quality and thus more dependent on more and costlier refining, subject to more international restrictions and political complications than ever before, and quite simply much more difficult to find and access. In the end, these pursuits will change almost nothing, but they will certainly exacerbate a situation that will be more complex and disruptive than most of us can envision—a thought that provides me with absolutely no comfort.

And all the while Planet Earth’s citizens are demanding more and more oil. The math simply does not work. Put any kind of spin you want on it, cherry-pick whatever short term facts suit your fancy, but the truth is the truth, and facts are facts. Oil production is not likely to going to get much better than it is now and has been for several years, and once the decline “officially” begins, we’re all going to have to make sacrifices and change our ways of living.

“Prof. William Rees of UBC, co-inventor of the ecological footprint concept, maintains that we are, as a species, already in ‘ecological overshoot’ mode. Ecological overshoot is the point at which human activities are draining down more resources from the planet than the planet can resupply.

“In Rees’s estimation, we are ‘draining down’ the planet’s ‘capital’” now. Even more depressing, he also maintains that if every person on the planet enjoyed the same consumption levels as North Americans, it would take six planets to supply them.” [2]

These are not stats created out of thin air! The Right in particular owes it to the people of this nation to start paying attention to facts instead of the nonsense that they continue to permit their most extreme partisans to spout. The leaders and pretenders have a responsibility to educate, not pander. Denying the truth for selfish political considerations certainly won’t help them much in the future when some serious finger-pointing starts taking place. But why worry about the future, right? Something is bound to save the day. Good luck with that approach.

If we want to continue to have the freedom to travel about as we now do, if we want our industries to continue to produce as they do (or once did), if we want to maintain some semblance of the lifestyles we now live (and for all of my continuing optimism, I’m not at all optimistic that any of this will actually remain possible on the scope it now does), then our transportation options are going to change. Whether we’d prefer that or not will be irrelevant. Peak Oil simply will not care.

And as much as we Americans feel entitled to whatever quantities of fossil fuel we could possibly want or need because … well, just because we’re Americans, another hard truth is that that strategy won’t be working for us much longer. It will not matter if you like that or not; or prefer/demand it to be different; or you just hope I’m wrong. Peak Oil is Peak Oil, and the mounting evidence about diminishing long-term production capabilities is beyond rational debate. You are free to continue to listen to those who have some bizarre vested interest in skewing the truths about oil production, but do so at your own future risk. We’ll all suffer that much more. Thanks!

Are we really going to permit ourselves to remain complacent and even ignorant about the truth? Besides buying time and avoidance, what exactly is that accomplishing?

I’m already clearly on record here as stating that I’m no different than most: I do not want to give up our family’s “toys”, our luxury autos, our 50-miles-away beach home, and all the other trappings my incredible wife’s successes and skills have provided us. I can’t say I particularly enjoy contemplating these matters. Would we prefer being enlightened, involved, and at least marginally prepared, or is ignoring the problem really the best way to handle the energy challenges we’ll all soon be facing?

It’s not going to matter if you’d prefer using your car instead of public transportation, or that it’s too cold or too hot to walk to public transit, or that the bags you have to carry are too heavy, or that public transit isn’t close by or as convenient or as pleasant or any other perfectly legitimate objection. Peak Oil will not care, and your cars will sit in the garage and we’ll all be scratching our heads wondering how we get from here to there because politicians and business leaders in 2009 and 2010 were too shortsighted and narrow-minded to understand what we needed to prepare for, and because we stupidly bought what they were selling mostly because we couldn’t be bothered. We bear our fair share of responsibility for this. It’s not enough to blame others for not telling us that the math of supply and demand wasn’t going to continue working in our favor.

We love our automobiles … all (nearly) three hundred million of them. But 99% of them run on gasoline, and we’re soon going to be paying ever higher amounts for that privilege, assuming we have gas available to us as regularly and as easily as we now do (which we won’t somewhere down the line). That’s going to change … maybe not in 2010 or 2012 or 2016, but what’s most essential to understand is that it’s going to change long, long before we have taken anywhere near enough steps to figure out and implement necessary alternatives. Public transportation for the masses is inevitable, and the ardent deniers of that—those who oppose public funding for transportation initiatives—are going to be the ones primarily responsible for the difficulties we’ll be facing in the years to come. They can’t bear all responsibility, however. The facts are available to all of us, and those who prefer to remain blissfully ignorant about the challenges and consequences will have no one to blame but the face in the mirror when suddenly, or not-so-suddenly, we can’t just hop into our car and run ten errands today … either because gas is now off-the-charts expensive or because it’s not available as it used to be, and we weren’t bright enough when we had the chance to start making different commitments about our future. Those are the facts we will be facing much sooner than we’re prepared to.

It would be nice if this problem lent itself to a quick fix and at minimal cost, but the truth is that no alternatives fit that bill, and we’re already too far behind as it is in developing alternatives sources of energy and modes of transit. It’s also a hard truth that we will for the foreseeable future still need to get from here to there, and the public transportation alternatives are going to be the only viable ones—even though they will surely not serve as the ideal solution for all people in all instances. We can pout and stomp our feet and blame liberals and all the rest, but none of that will get us from here to there. Yes, it’s an expensive and long-term commitment; yes, it will be inconvenient—perhaps greatly so; yes, it will entail more changes to our ways of living and producing than we could possibly imagine tolerating. Deal with it. And while you’re at it, get used to the fact that a hands-off approach by government is not the answer. The problems will be too big and too wide-spread to leave it to “the marketplace” to fix on its own.

If we fail to recognize that we will much too soon be playing by a different set of rules governing our economy, industry, and lifestyles, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves; but that’s of absolutely no solace whatsoever. We still won’t be able to get from here to there.

Peak Oil is not a great mystery. If you have a reservoir of water and 1000 people make use of it every day for all their needs, the reservoir is slowly but surely going to be depleted when only smaller bodies of water are now being found (if at all) and those finds are not matching the amount of water being used or are not nearly as plentiful as the big, easy to find and now-depleting reservoirs have been. If 2000 people are now looking to make use of that reservoir and they have even more needs, it will deplete faster. Because the other reservoirs are also suffering the same fate in varying stages, problems are inevitable. Some are going to have to do without and/or change what they need.

Why does anyone think that the applicable math for, and the rules of, fossil fuels are any different?

We’ve been using more than oil we’ve been finding for nearly 3 decades now, and hundreds of millions more people are now demanding their fair share. Whatever unconventional sources or alternatives we’re relying on technology to provide can’t keep up the pace. The math just isn’t that complicated! Is there some vast conspiracy out there where gazillions of barrels of oil are being kept hidden because … because … why?

One recent article criticized Amtrak service through rural parts of New England, complaining (legitimately, to be sure) about the infrequent and unavailable rail services where and when needed (complete with an unnecessary, snarky jab at the Kennedy family of all things—the conservative strategy in a nutshell: use emotional buzz words when you don’t really have a meaningful point to make. I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that part of the Right’s ongoing strategy is to count on its followers not appreciating or understanding the facts.)

Well … duh! That level of inefficient service is true right now! The whole point of these types of long-term (and to be sure, very costly) investments are to make a huge difference in the future when it will be almost mandatory that we use other modes of transit, but these funding delays and criticisms (again making the perfect the enemy of the good) will create even worse hardships later on, because we will not be able to make the time- and money-sucking changes on such short notice. By all means let’s continue to kick the can down the street. We’ll keep doing so until we fall off a cliff.

Fear, ignorance, or avoidance are certainly some options we have at our disposal.

How about opportunity? This is a great nation, with a great citizenry, and a history of rising to challenges that have felled lesser peoples. Peak Oil could certainly cripple us in the years to come, but another option is that we have the chance right now to collectively move ourselves forward and re-make our society and ways of living and being. It won’t happen quickly, it won’t happen easily, it won’t happen without sacrifice, it most certainly won’t be free, and it is not going to happen by washing our hands of responsibility to recognize the challenges and then fashion different solutions than the ones that used to work in the good ‘ole days. This is an “all in” proposition, and that means dealing with the facts and setting aside the bluster and nonsense of partisan stupidity.

Waiting for perfect solutions guarantees waiting for perfect solutions.

The opportunity to envision new ways of living and producing and then rising above the political nonsense that so poisons our everyday lives is one we have every reason to embrace. What rule says that a future not dependent on fossil fuels is a lesser future?

We’re damned if we spend money, and damned if we don’t. Although it’s clear that spending money has its own inherent consequences, doing nothing or less just doesn’t seem to be the wisest course of action. Standing pat isn’t a solution at all.

Choices.

Sources:

[1] http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/09/22/republican-wave-could-spell-trouble-for-high-speed-rail-projects-from-coast-to-coast/; Republican Wave Could Spell Trouble for High-Speed Rail Projects from Coast to Coast by Yonah Freemark – September 22nd, 2010

[2] http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/09/23/GetOutofCars/; How to Get People Out of Their Cars – Rule 3 for sustainable communities: Locate commercial services, frequent transit and schools within a five-minute walk. By By Patrick M. Condon, 23 September 2010.

“What is not yet widely appreciated is that rehabilitation from our oil addiction will take 50 years. That is how long past transitions to new energy sources took because that’s how long it takes to replace the infrastructure that produces and consumes energy.” [1]

Several years ago, in a seminal, well-regarded, and oft-cited project (“The Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management”—commonly cited as the Hirsch Report) sponsored by the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the Department of Energy (PDF here), energy advisor Robert L. Hirsch and his colleagues issued a challenge of sorts, after setting forth a fundamental but daunting truth at the outset:

“The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.”

“Mitigation will require an intense effort over decades. This inescapable conclusion is based on the time required to replace vast numbers of liquid fuel consuming vehicles and the time required to build a substantial number of substitute fuel production facilities. Our scenarios analysis shows:

• Waiting until world oil production peaks before taking crash program action would leave the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for more than two decades.

• Initiating a mitigation crash program 10 years before world oil peaking helps considerably but still leaves a liquid fuels shortfall roughly a decade after the time that oil would have peaked.

• Initiating a mitigation crash program 20 years before peaking appears to offer the possibility of avoiding a world liquid fuels shortfall for the forecast period.”

“The obvious conclusion from this analysis is that with adequate, timely mitigation, the economic costs to the world can be minimized. If mitigation were to be too little, too late, world supply/demand balance will be achieved through massive demand destruction (shortages), which would translate to significant economic hardship.
“There will be no quick fixes. Even crash programs will require more than a decade to yield substantial relief.”

Not exactly filled with a lot of happy talk, but matters of that (ongoing) critical importance to so many demand nothing less.

In a recent interview, Hirsch expounded on his current views of the imminence of Peak Oil, and is of the considered opinion that we’re just a handful of years away from that point. Coming on the heels of another terrific interview, this time with Charles Maxwell, a well-respected energy analyst (who at best appears only slightly more optimistic than Mr. Hirsch), it seems we have even more reason to be concerned about the onset of peak oil production and its implications. A consensus among legitimate analysts and experts suggest that we’re already at peak, or, like Maxwell and Hirsch, believe it’s only a matter of a few years at most before we simply cannot produce enough oil to meet demand, and will then never be able to do so again. Peak Oil is knocking at the door, and it’s not going away.

A more recent report, this time from the Australia Institute (link to PDF here), echoed a similar theme to that of the Hirsch report:

“As with climate change, the most cost-effective response to the inevitable but uncertain timing of peak oil is to invest in early adaptation. It will be impossible to redesign cities, switch the vehicle fleet to new forms of fuel and transform the location decisions of  producers in a timely manner after the oil supply has peaked. Early investment in adaptation measures will pay high dividends in the future, whether in response to peak oil, climate change or simply better city design and reduced congestion on roads.”

Certainly, we’re well past the 10 or 20 year timeline advisory recommended by the Hirsch Report. That’s a problem—a much bigger one than we can possibly imagine, especially if, like me, you continue to bank on the hope that we’ll find a reasonable group of at least marginally-adequate substitutes in the not-too-distant future.

Throwing a cold blanket on that notion is a report issued last year by the Post Carbon Institute, wherein the following conclusion was offered:

“Can any combination of known energy sources successfully supply society’s energy needs at least up to the year 2100?  In the end, we are left with the disturbing conclusion that all known energy sources are subject to strict limits of one kind or another.

“Conventional energy sources such as oil, gas, coal, and nuclear are either at or nearing the limits of their ability to grow in annual supply, and will dwindle as the decades proceed—but in any case they are unacceptably hazardous to the environment.

“And contrary to the hopes of many, there is no clear practical scenario by which we can replace the energy from today’s conventional sources with sufficient energy from alternative  sources to sustain industrial society at its present scale of operations. To achieve such a transition would require (1) a vast financial investment beyond society’s practical abilities, (2) a very long time—too long in practical terms—for build-out, and (3) significant sacrifices in terms of energy quality and reliability.”

In other words, “uh-oh!”

I’ve been a strong advocate throughout that we all need to come to terms with the fact that our industrial and personal lifestyles, dominated as they are by the abundant need for fossil fuels, simply cannot continue indefinitely as is. It’s been a hell of a ride, but it’s coming to an end soon. How involved more of us become and how committed we are to finding acceptable means of adaptation will determine how successful our societies will be, and what kind of prosperity we pass on to future generations. Waiting for someone else to fix this isn’t even in the ballpark of decent options available to us.

Our infrastructure, our ways of manufacturing and transporting goods and services, the manner in which we conduct our everyday lives, and indeed almost every facet of living each day in any manner is made possible only because of the ease with which we’ve been able to make use of a so-far always available supply of oil and gas.

Those days are numbered. When that exact point in time might be when we reach Peak Oil (if not already) is irrelevant. If it did not happen in the past few years as many far more knowledgeable than me suggest, then it’s just a few more years down the road at most. The year that happens—2012, 2017, 2020—isn’t nearly as important as the fact that we’re already “too late” by the measures set forth in the Hirsch Report.

And every day that we ignore the problem, or listen to hope-filled invocations from those who insist that the magic of the marketplace and technology will come to the rescue (or worse, the claims of real oddballs who cannot seem to grasp the simple truth that oil is indeed a finite resource) is another day that we lose in our efforts to achieve some semblance of minimally disruptive transitions away from our incredibly expensive and damaging reliance on fossil fuel. That we may technically have several more decades of proven reserves of the stuff isn’t enough of a solution, not when we start considering how truly dependent we are for fossil fuels in every facet of our live. Individuals, neighborhoods, communities, cities and towns, state and national governments, small businesses, big businesses, international businesses—every single one of them is dependent in no small measure on having oil at the ready to function and grow.

Seems to me we have some big problems … and very little in the way of solutions; certainly none that will come to the fore in any semblance of reasonable time. We have too many leaders with their heads buried deep in the sands who fail to understand what is at stake and what types of investments will be needed (Great Recession notwithstanding); we have others who lack the courage (understandable, quite frankly) to explain to us what energy problems we’re about to face, and too few others willing to speak unvarnished truths about the challenges of Peak Oil. That’s not helpful.

I hate doom and gloom! Those who know me best will assure you that I am by and large an extremely optimistic person, and remain so (not without struggle) as I delve into the peak oil challenge more and more.

But there is no getting around the fact that we face monumental challenges in the years to come, challenges that no measure of denial, or pretending otherwise, or issuing pronouncements of dubious validity and reason, or ignorance can overcome. Facts are facts, and the fact is that we’re not producing any longer nearly enough oil to keep pace with what we’ll continue to need in the future, and what the hundreds of millions worldwide desire in order to improve their own lives. At some point in time, wishful thinking and denying the truth won’t prevent the pool from being drained, and our pool of readily available fossil fuel supplies is soon enough going to reach that point as well. There simply won’t be enough at acceptable prices in acceptable production periods with acceptable efforts and in acceptable supply to meet all our needs all the time.

What happens then?

And if any sentient being is expecting that we’ll just simply move on to the next source of energy in a week or two once that moment arrives, then they are in the grips of delusions far too deep for me to appreciate.

We’re either in this together—leading the search for and determining the changes needed—or we’ll be the unfortunate victims of changes imposed.

We need to start having serious discussions about obvious truths. Peak Oil is about as obvious as it gets.

Sources:

[1] BEWILDERED BY PEAK OIL ECONOMICS By W. Jackson Davis; Denver Post OpEd, 10/16/2008