Peak Oil Matters

Last month, I came across a interesting article showing the production breakdown of a barrel (approximately 45 gallons) of oil.

I found it a bit surprising that only 4 gallons, or approximately 11 %, from every barrel of oil is typically produced as aviation fuel.

As Dave Jackson noted in another recent article:

“A-1 jet fuel, a high grade, moisture free kerosene, competes directly with the production of diesel. A refiner has a certain amount of leeway when extracting fuels from each barrel of crude oil. By and large, however, a choice must be made between kerosene or diesel.”

Jackson then asked pretty much the same question I have: What happens when there isn’t enough crude oil to satisfy the full demands of freight transportation and the airline industry? Can’t satisfy them both once oil production begins its continual decline, so what happens? As it stands now and if my math is correct, airlines use somewhere in the neighborhood of two billion barrels of oil each year. That cannot continue in the face of Peak Oil.

What decisions are the various transportation industries—freight and aviation in particular—going to be faced with when the worldwide supply of oil cannot ever match demand again? Who decides which of those two will have priority? It’s unlikely that only one industry will have all of its demand met, so that means both industries will suffer reductions in what is available to them. Then what?

As other writers have duly noted, once Peak Oil’s impact is being felt immediately and daily by the transportation industry, the foods and goods and services we’ve grown accustomed to having on hand 24/7/365 … won’t be. We’re going to have to start making do without some of those products and services we like to enjoy or use whenever the mood strikes, and if we’re being deprived, somewhere along the supply and distribution chain there will be employment and production cutbacks. We all now know what happens when people start losing their jobs and industries stop making or supplying goods and services.

A broader question as it affects aviation: what happens to air travel in general? Once Peak Oil is in full swing, we clearly cannot assume that that same eleven percent of each barrel of oil will still be devoted to producing aviation fuel. What then?

One obvious outcome is that the then more restricted air travel will become more expensive. I’m no economics whiz, but when supply decreases and demand remains steady, prices increase. So get ready for more expensive air travel as well as higher crude oil prices. For many, that means no more air travel. Then what? I’m fairly confident that airlines aren’t going to survive if their increasing costs for fuel lead to fewer passengers (who are obliged to pay much higher fares), and on and on the dominoes tumble.

When the price of a barrel of oil shot up to nearly $150.00 two short years ago, Brad Plumer—in a terrific New Republic article well worth reading—noted that nearly 25 airlines bit the dust just in 2008, almost four times the average. Should we expect anything different the next go-‘round?

On a more personal note, what will families do? As the parent of two daughters currently in college, I recognize first-hand the concerns any parent has when their graduating children decide to take jobs far from home. The emotional pull of wanting the best for your child while nonetheless wanting them close by has a powerful influence on our well-being. What happens if my daughter accepts a job in Portland, Oregon and in the not-too-distant future, the several dozen reasonably priced daily flights currently available out of Boston’s Logan Airport are reduced to just a handful, and the acceptable $550 flight through Dallas suddenly become a $1700 flight with multiple connecting stops en route, and an 8 hour trip is suddenly a two day adventure?

I am well aware that my daughter’s employment and location choices won’t depend one iota on what dear-old-Dad would prefer, but if my daughter does make the choice to live in a locale that is now an airplane ride away and a few years down the road I no longer have that as a feasible option to see her, dear-old-Dad is not going to be a happy camper. (I will let my daughter speak for herself on this subject!)

What happens to business meetings, to governmental business, to international negotiations, to sports travel, to family visits, and a host of other lifestyle and industry needs when we have less aviation fuel competing for our business and personal demands? What happens then?

Who decides which of the limited and now much more expensive flights have priority? Are your business meetings in Chicago more important than the Boston Red Sox seven-game road trip, or a fact-finding mission by several U.S. Congressional leaders, or seeing your parents? We cannot possibly hope to sustain the same level of air service when aviation fuel has doubled or tripled in price, and when perhaps only 4% or 5% of each barrel of a smaller supply of oil is now produced as aviation fuel because somewhere along the line, someone will have decreed that that is the most we can expect from each barrel because of countless other priorities.

To its great credit, Britain recently turned down construction of a 3rd runway at Heathrow Airport in favor of committing that same amount of funding to high speed rail, as noted here. Perhaps more insightful than most, the decision-makers likely recognized the pointlessness of committing billions to a service that will likely exist in a greatly-diminished capacity a few short years from now.

As Brad Plumer also noted in his 2008 essay:

“Small towns will be especially vulnerable to losing scheduled air service. That’s already happened to nearly 30 U.S. cities in the past year, from Wilmington, Delaware (population 72,000) to Boulder City, Nevada (14,000). Hagerstown, Maryland, lost all commercial air service recently, rendering its new $61.8 million, 7,000-foot runway useless.”

It won’t end there. What are the ripple effects to communities and regions when airports shut down, or flights are offered on a greatly restricted or reduced basis? What of the people accustomed to relying on those services? What happens then?

Technology is not close to finding adequate alternatives sufficient to meet current and projected demand increases, so what happens? And biofuels, for all their promise, are not close to being deemed an appropriate substitute.

So we can either start making plans, considering alternative forms of transportation, making a greater commitment to seeking alternative sources of energy, or try to come up with last-minute solutions to deal with the problems Peak Oil is going to force upon us.

Hint: That strategy is not likely to work

Last week I had occasion to visit with my father at my parents’ property in the lovely Berkshire Mountains region of New England. They live elsewhere in western Massachusetts, but have owned this 30 acre parcel in a very rural community since I was very young. It’s not especially well-developed … there is no running water and thus no usable bathroom (unless trees and bushes count), but it is a peaceful and lovely plot of nature I’ve always enjoyed. For Dad, it’s heaven here on Earth; Mom, not so much, but she deals with it.

As I was making the 135-mile pilgrimage from my home outside of Boston and across the state, contemplating once or twice how much gas my SUV was sucking down and wondering more how families will arrange to visit when the price of gasoline—or its unavailability—make these kind of treks prohibitive, I found myself thinking more and more about all the people who live in the small, out-of-the-way towns at the opposite end of Massachusetts.

What are they going to do?

After I exited the highways just north of Springfield (the largest city in western Massachusetts) and began traveling the sparsely populated back roads and on through occasional farmland—dotted only very rarely by anything that resembled a commercial establishment and miles and miles from any malls or shopping centers of note—I kept wondering: how difficult must it be for them now to just get around and run the types of errands that you and I do rather effortlessly?

What are they going to do?

How are these people going to make do tending to their most basic of everyday needs when gas prices are off the charts, when ownership of autos is prohibitively expensive, and when basic transportation becomes an issue of monumental complexity because we no longer have the readily available supplies of gasoline we’ve been accustomed to for decades? How can we expect public transit to help people when they live miles from anything even resembling a sizeable city?

How will they deal with the loss of the modern, daily conveniences those of us in and near big cities routinely take for granted, conveniences which they even now surely labor to enjoy? From my home in a quaint Boston suburb, I can walk to my bank, my dry cleaners, my wife’s office, the grocery store, several convenience stores and restaurants, the pharmacy, the post office, and scores of different retail establishments. At the bottom of the very steep hill we live on I can grab a bus which takes me to the subway which takes me to the Amtrak station or the MBTA commuter rail system or Logan Airport, and from there, the world.

And these rural townspeople far removed from city life: What are they going to do? Most, living in these hilly towns with neighbors often several acres away at the very least, cannot walk to … anywhere. There is no close-by there, there. Getting there requires a car, even for the simplest of errands (biking up and down some of those hilly stretches is a job best left to Lance Armstrong). I can get a gallon of milk 200 yards from my home. People in these rural communities can get that same gallon of milk three or four or eight miles away right now.

I don’t know if bus service of any kind runs out there (doubtful), but if it does, I’m sure it’s a once a day event for most. “Big city” Springfield is 40 + miles away from my parents’ property; not-quite-so-big-Pittsfield is about 15, tucked in the northwest corner of Massachusetts. While Pittsfield will never be mistaken for a big city, it certainly has most of the modern amenities anyone would need: malls, banks, restaurants, retail establishment, car dealerships, and all the rest. Still … can’t get there from rural here without a car.

Median income is about $45,000 in the town where my parents own their land; population is about 1000. Not a big demand in places like that for malls, stand-alone retail stores, convenience stores, grocery stores, or public transit. Hell, it shares its post office with another town! They do have a fire department and police force, but no one will mistake the size of those forces with what we’re accustomed to in cities or towns of 20,000 or 50,000 or 300,000.

I may be mistaken, but I sense that these people are much more what we recognize as salt-of-the-earth folks: hard-working, straightforward citizens content with many of life’s simpler pleasures (obviously, and to their everlasting credit), living most likely from paycheck to paycheck. I doubt many of them are wealthy progeny of big industry titans, or live on these outskirts thanks to endless piles of family money. They are thus likely to feel a fair amount of pain and stress when fuel prices increase and travel becomes more difficult every day. They are going to suffer more than their fair share.

How do they plan and execute their frequent trips to the market, or to stores to purchase family necessities, or get medical care, or entertain and visit with family members and friends, when they live so far from … well, everything? Right now I imagine it’s a bit of a convoluted process to try and get all of those things done. Surely some careful planning is required, whereas for me, I can just hop in the car any old time and complete my local errands in fifteen minutes. “Local” has a different meaning in the rural Berkshire communities.

What are they going to do?

It’s not just the inhabitants of these pleasant and placid towns that will suffer. What happens when we simply do not have enough oil and gas to meet our own demands—however sourced—and we have to endure restrictions of one kind or another that are much too painful to consider right now? How will those residents—so far removed from our easily accessible every day creature comforts and amenities in big cities as it is—manage when they simply can’t get anywhere?

What are they going to do?

Peak Oil is not just about big city residents suddenly being forced to rely on public transportation more than they care to. Peak Oil is about lots of people in lots of places who are not going to have the resources and conveniences and comforts they need as and when they need them.

What are we all going to do?

Michael Lind is the Policy Director of New America’s Economic Growth Program and a frequent contributor to Salon.com—a publication (and writer) whose perspectives I usually agree with. The new America website is quite good.

However, Mr. Lind recently published an article at Salon regarding the future of transportation—fixed/high-speed rail, specifically—that I take issue with. I do so not so much because his information might be incorrect (and I don’t dispute his knowledge and information on the subject), but I disagree because he offers up an attitude regarding our approach to transportation and automobiles that can only cause us more problems as we confront Peak Oil. It’s an all-too-familiar refrain Peak Oil proponents encounter, and is one we find especially distressing in light of the challenges Peak Oil is going to impose upon all of us.

Lind begins his article advocating more government spending on infrastructure—a position with which I wholeheartedly agree. (Readers familiar with Bob Herbert’s op-eds in the New York Times—which I’ve referenced in several posts—will recall that Mr. Herbert is likewise a passionate advocate of our need to repair, maintain, and enhance infrastructure spending for a host of sound, well-considered reasons.) Enough studies are out there demonstrating the many positive benefits and effects those spending priorities have on our economy and employment numbers.

Despite his advocacy for this essential governmental strategy, Lind criticizes support for high speed rail. In doing so, he raises common objections to funding and planning for alternative forms of transportation. While factually there may be merit to his arguments, the problem is that despite the rhetoric, the reality of Peak Oil is going to make the stated objections entirely irrelevant.

There is little chance that we’re going to devise a perfect public transportation solution, but to dismiss the approach outright because we’re too spoiled to recognize the need for change is at best foolish. We’re in need of some serious attitude adjustments, and transportation woes are another consequence of Peak Oil that we can either prepare for voluntarily, or have imposed upon us. Something is going to have be done. We can either throw our hands up and keep hoping, or start taking steps to figure out the solutions that just might work. It seems quite obvious that public transportation is going to have to be part of that mix.

Lind observes that “As nations grow more affluent, their people prefer the convenience of personal automobile transportation to the inflexibility of mass transit.” Of course they do! I much prefer jumping in one of our cars to run errands or to go to our beach house or do any number of other things when I feel like doing so rather than walking up and down my lengthy and very steep hill and then figuring out how many different modes of public transit I might need to get where I want to go. Millions and millions of other car owners harbor their own legitimate reasons why they favor the comfort and convenience of their own autos.

If fossil-fuel supplies were unlimited, inexpensive, and always-at-the-ready, we would not be having these discussions. But facts are annoying—especially the true ones!

All of the factors this blog and other writers have set forth regarding the imminence of Peak Oil tell us that unlimited, inexpensive, and always-at-the-ready oil is not going to be an option for much longer—some reports suggest in as few as a couple of years. Many writers have already noted one of Peak Oil’s many obvious warning signs: we’re drilling thousands of feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere because “cheap” and easy-to-find oil no longer exists. It’s just one sign among many. “Affluence” isn’t going to buy anyone bonus points when it comes to oil supply and demand … the transportation needs of the rich won’t stave off Peak Oil.

So when the ever-diminishing supply of unlimited, inexpensive, and always-at-the-ready oil is a factor with which we are all contending every day, preferring “the convenience of personal automobile transportation to the inflexibility of mass transit” won’t be worth the paper that comment is printed on. Peak Oil doesn’t much care about our “preferences,” or whether long-distance air or passenger car travel is “more practical,” as Lind also argued.

That’s simply not going to matter … not a little, not a lot, not at all. It’s nice to discuss preferences and wishes and hopes and all the rest, but geology and reality are what they are, and soon enough we are not going to have anywhere near the amounts of inexpensive oil readily available to each of us so that we can drive wherever and whenever we want. That’s a fact. Wishing it away is a nice sentiment but utterly meaningless. Peak Oil doesn’t much care for wishes and prayers, either.

So objections notwithstanding, we need to be thinking about, planning for, and finding ways to fund, create, and construct the types of public transportation we’re all going to need in the decades to come. It’s painful, but it’s that simple.

It’s no doubt true that implementing passenger rail and other forms of alternative transportation (and sources of energy, which Lind also criticizes) on a scale even remotely approaching the levels we’ll need in the decades to come is a jaw-dropping, almost unfathomably expensive proposition … until you realize we will have no rational alternatives other than to truly shrink our growth and become a nation of many local economies.

There is going to be a lengthy list of items and services and needs that are going to have to continue to be fulfilled by an ever-declining amount of crude oil, and I daresay that your and my carefree choices to run a couple of errands on a near-daily basis or visit with friends on the weekend aren’t going to have much priority on that list of who gets what, when, and how much.

Those who are waiting for a low-cost, ideal alternative to our current forms of personal transportation are in for a very rude awakening somewhere down the road.

Likewise, Lind’s urging that we devote more financial resources to enhance freight transportation on our roadways is just as misguided. Truckers won’t be exempt from Peak Oil’s impact … no one will. He is unfairly and inaccurately dismissive in suggesting that all of our urgings to provide more funding for high-speed rail and the like is so that we can “cut five minutes off the daily commutes of office workers in New York and New Jersey.” Enough high speed rail proposals have been put forth, and the Obama Administration has at least opened the door to enough other high-speed rail projects, to dismiss Lind’s snarky contentions outright. That’s something I’d expect to hear from someone on the Right, for whom facts are all-too-often useless and/or irrelevant when choosing to perpetuate narrow-minded ideology instead.

“Focusing on freight infrastructure improvements means that, among other things, we need to build more highway lanes and in some cases new highways for the trucks that will continue to carry most freight.” I’m hard-pressed to understand how that could possibly be a legitimate solution. Not only will not be able to afford that; higher gas prices and declining supply will leave less cars and trucks on the road. What a waste of limited resources!

And despite Lind’s claims about asphalt as some kind of magic solution, the truth is that asphalt is one of the countless products derived from crude oil, or from the energy-intensive and more expensive extraction process of the tar sands. (See this Oil Drum post for a discussion of asphalt.) Less crude oil equals less asphalt—as some cities have already witnessed first-hand.

Thinking that the enormous population increases expected in the coming decades is going to be properly addressed by building more roads and creating more suburban sprawl where owners are going to be left entirely dependent on automobiles they won’t be able to regularly or readily fuel seems ass-backwards at the very least. Asphalt is not nearly the savior Lind asserts it to be.

Two items of note on this subject from an extremely informative 2009 article by Phillip Longman (a Lind colleague) in The Washington Monthly [1]:

“The Environmental Protection Agency calculates that for distances of more than 1,000 miles, a system in which trucks haul containers only as far as the nearest railhead and then transfer them to a train produces a 65 percent reduction in both fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. As the volume of freight is expected to increase by 57 percent between 2000 and 2020, the potential economic and environmental benefits of such an intermodal system will go higher and higher. Railroads are also potentially very labor efficient. Even in the days of the object-lesson train, when brakes had to be set manually and firemen were needed to stoke steam engines, a five-man crew could easily handle a fifty-car freight train, doing the work of ten times as many modern long-haul truckers.”

and

“Failing to rebuild rail infrastructure will simply further move the burden of ever-increasing shipping demands onto the highways, the expansion and maintenance of which does not come free. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (hardly a shill for the rail industry) estimates that without public investment in rail capacity 450 million tons of freight will shift to highways, costing shippers $162 billion and highway users $238 billion (in travel time, operating, and accident costs), and adding $10 billion to highway costs over the next twenty years. ‘Inclusion of costs for bridges, interchanges, etc., could double this estimate,’ their report adds.”

And Lind wants to increase freight transportation on our roads?

As for his urging that we build more airports … seriously? In a few short decades—as things stand now and for the foreseeable future—we’ll be lucky to have one-third the number of airports now existing. It’s also quite likely that only a very small percentage of the population anywhere will be able to afford air travel in any event—assuming jet fuel remains available in any semblance of reasonable supply. How is that a solution?! Ignoring the effects of Peak Oil isn’t going to get us much except more difficulties.

Lind urges us to consider a “harsh reality” that makes no sense in light of Peak Oil: “The greatest economic crisis since the Depression shows no signs of ending soon. A major, long-term program of public investment is needed more than ever. But the public investments must pass the reality test. And the harsh reality is this: There isn’t going to be a significant high-speed rail system in the U.S. in the near- or medium-term future. There isn’t going to be a continental electric grid permitting solar panels on condo buildings in Berkeley, Calif., to power heirloom-poultry farms in Maine. Most Americans are not going to sell their cars and move back from the suburbs to the cities in order to live in tiny apartments or condos and ride the rails to work. These are romantic daydreams that Democrats could afford to indulge only as long as they were out of office and were not responsible for results.”

So how does he reconcile those statements with the fact that majority of the world’s population already lives in cities, with estimates suggesting that as much as 75% of the world’s population will reside in cities by 2050? [2] Hate to say it, but “romantic daydreams” or some reasonable approximations may very well be our only options in the not-too-distant future. That is the very harsh reality we will have to contend with in the face of Peak Oil. The fossil fuel choices he seems to think we’re going to endlessly possess are simply not going to be available to us. Ignoring that truth is an option … just not a very good one.

Lind is absolutely correct that we need a massive commitment to our woefully ill-maintained infrastructure. (See this and the referenced links therein.) But his assertions that we need to rely on more roadways and more fossil-fuel-consuming trucks is not a solution. We will cater to consumer demands or for more suburban sprawl at our collective peril. We won’t have those options once Peak Oil is upon us, either.

Again I’ll emphasize how critical it is that we begin considering alternatives to transportation, the nature of our infrastructure, and our sources of energy. The dislocations will be challenging enough; let’s not make them worse by waiting for some “better” day to get started. (And let’s not forget that putting into place the infrastructure and technologies needed to make the transitions a reality are themselves going to require a lot of fossil fuel. We’re simply not going to have enough to do all of that and still maintain our lifestyles and industries as we do now. Something is going to have to give.)

While Lind is correct that “There is no public support in the U.S. or any other industrial democracy for the combination of self-imposed austerity and massive subsidies that would be necessary to create an economy based on renewable energy,” that is likewise not going to matter. Who among us wants to sacrifice the lifestyles we’ve come to insist upon?! The real issue is that when Peak Oil is here, lack of public support (predicated on selfishness and an unwillingness/inability to make sacrifices voluntarily) won’t matter either. We either suffer from the harsh impact of Peak Oil by choosing to do nothing, or start working on the next best options, whatever they may be (while understanding those undefined options are no guarantee of harsh-free changes).

I fully recognize that the energy, affordability, and efficiencies derived from fossil fuels/crude oil are as yet unmatched by any forms of alternative or renewable sources of energy. That’s a major part of the challenge of Peak Oil: there will be no seamless transitions to something else to keep life going as it does now because we don’t have that option. Changes—perhaps even drastic ones—are looming.

So do we wait until we’re really battered and beleaguered by Peak Oil, or do we make a national commitment (and act upon it) to finding some reasonable means of supplanting fossil fuel usage—especially for transportation, given that it’s going to take us many years (decades is more likely) to effectively and permanently transition away from oil? We’re already too far behind, and we have no guarantees of finding a successful solution in any event. Is waiting and doing nothing the better option? Is that our legacy?

There are no easy fixes. There are no inexpensive fixes. There are no quick fixes, either. But we clearly can no longer rely on what got us here.

The sooner we all understand that and begin acting on that knowing, the sooner we can begin digging our way out of a mess our own successes and innovations have created.

Sources:

[1] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0901.longman.html – Back on Tracks: A nineteenth-century technology could be the solution to our twenty-first-century problems by Phillip Longman

[2] http://www.slate.com/id/2256666/- Nimble Cities: Help Slate make transportation in and between cities more efficient, safe, and pleasant by Tom Vanderbilt

One of the main themes that I will return to repeatedly as this blog progresses is that of transportation.

I’ll permit others more technically savvy, experienced, and knowledgeable to address the issue of automobile usage and our eventual conversion of internal combustion engines to those that either run on alternative fuel/energy sources, or electric cars. (I have discussed automobiles in several prior posts such as this one.) My focus will be on the broader theme of how much we depend upon all forms of transportation in our day-to-day lives.

The sooner we can begin having “Oh, I didn’t think of that…” moments, the sooner we can begin effectively dealing with, planning for, and transitioning to ways of living and producing that are no longer dependent on fossil fuels as the energy source needed. We’re all in this together….

My hope is that these types of post will inspire more and more frequent “I didn’t think of that” moments for everyone.

Fairly self-evident, but true: It’s only when we start asking questions that we’ll begin seeking answers. As long as we ignore issues or simply take things for granted, we have zero incentive to make changes. Changes imposed upon us are much less pleasant than those in which we have a say ahead of time.

Everything we do that requires transportation via automobile, either of necessity or of convenience, is going to be affected when the ready supply of relatively inexpensive and always available gasoline from our local service station is no longer relatively inexpensive and always available. We may not have in place formal rationing once the steady decline of gasoline is upon us, but we will experience de facto rationing.

The effect is going to be the same: we are not going to be able to just hop into our cars for a fill-up whenever we need it. Somewhere along the line, limited allocations are going to be imposed upon our lifestyles. It will happen voluntarily and with careful planning, or it will indeed be imposed upon all of us, protests notwithstanding. Which would you prefer?

With that significant change will come all kinds of changes and adaptations in what we do day-to-day. How we live our everyday lives, what we need to do or should do or prefer to do are all going to be impacted in one way or another when that trip to the local gas station is no longer an immediate option for us.

So let’s consider one of those every day common events and how this, too, will be impacted by Peak Oil: the appointment with our dentist/doctor.

How many of us regularly schedule appointments with our family MD or dentist? How many trips on average do we/our family make to see them during the course of a year? Two? Five? Twelve? How many of us walk to those appointments? How many of us have accessible and convenient public transportation enabling us to go with minimal difficulties?

I’m going to guess that the percentage is probably less than fifty—perhaps much less. Certainly those who live in major cities and whose medical providers likewise have practices in the “downtown” areas likely take advantage of public transportation, but most of us either don’t have that option, or for any number of other reasons choose to drive.

It’s quite likely that we combine trips around those appointments: perhaps some grocery shopping after the dentist appointment, or we’ll run over to our children’s school and pick them up after class, or we have to take the kids to practice on our way to the doctor, or we just decide to stop off at a couple of places along the way. There are any number of possibilities that strike us all as perfectly normal and routine events.

Peak Oil is going to change “normal” and “routine.”

So what happens when gasoline has become prohibitively expensive? How many of these combination trips suddenly require much more planning? How many of these trips even become possible? What sort of juggling are we all going to have to do to figure out how to accomplish these routine tasks when it’s either costing us small fortunes to fill up our gas tanks, or when we only have the option of doing so under guidelines that are completely foreign to us today?

If our dentist or MD has an office too far to walk to, too far from public transportation stops (or we have no public transportation options), what are we going to do? For that matter, what are those medical service providers and their staffs going to do when confronted with the exact same issues? How are they going to get to their offices?

Right now I have the option, inconvenient though it may be, of getting to my doctor’s office via two separate modes of public transportation and a half mile walk. But I know that my primary care physician (25 years and counting) lives nowhere near his office, and there is no public transportation that will get him from his home to his medical practice in any manner that might be considered convenient. What’s he going to do? What am I going to do when he can’t get to his office any longer?

My family dentist’s office is about 15 miles from our home. What is plan B for us? For he and his extensive staff? There is a subway stop about half a mile from his office, so once again I have the option of getting there via three separate modes of public transportation), but how convenient is that in comparison to just hopping into my car and shooting down interstate 95?

The solutions for me are not impossible, and indeed for a sizeable percentage of us, that may be true as well. But when a single twenty-five minute trip to our medical care provider—at our convenience (ignoring the countless other routine trips we take each week)—suddenly requires coordinating walking to and from public transportation (hoping that the weather cooperates, by the way), and then having to take into consideration multiple forms of public transportation with the time factors doubling or tripling or worse (all the while ignoring the types of routine errands we now tack on to these trips without a second thought), what are we all going to do?

As I mentioned when this most recent series of posts began last week, my intention is to explore in non-technical terms Peak Oil’s impact in our lives. I want to provide readers with some concise, easy-to-read general themes/ideas/food for thought, without getting bogged down in technical details about manufacturing and the like. Some discussions (such as today’s on plastic) will likely pop up in several different posts. All are primarily designed to do one thing: help you to understand how Peak Oil will impact each and every one us in our day-to-day lives.

So let’s talk a bit about plastic. It is estimated that more than 200 billion pounds of it are manufactured each year. Thousands of products (including the computer you are likely using right now to read this) include plastic as a component. We don’t have plastic without a lot of crude oil first….

With that in mind, today I’m going to begin a discussion of this amazing creation by considering a ubiquitous off-shoot: water bottles. (I’ll avoid that part of the discussion where it’s clear that bottled water—minimally regulated as it is—is clearly no more pure than the vastly-more regulated and safe tap water; that it costs us hundreds of times more for bottled water than it does for tap water; or the fact that in “[a]ddition to the millions of gallons of water used in the plastic-making process, two gallons of water are wasted in the purification process for every gallon that goes into the bottles.” [1] There’s some food for thought! Good thing water resources are infinite, right? Right?)

In that just-referenced 2007 article by the Union of Concerned Scientists, it was stated that “[a]pproximately 1.5 million barrels of oil—enough to run 100,000 cars for a whole year—are used to make plastic water bottles….”

The Pacific Institute has estimated that more than seventeen million barrels of oil are used in the manufacture, transportation, and storage of those water bottles. “The amount of oil used for each plastic bottle would equal driving only half a mile. Producing one bottle requires 3 oz of crude oil, and if you fill a bottle 1/3 with oil that’s how much is used in just shipping requirements.” [2]

Estimates also suggest that almost 90 percent of the 50 billion bottles of water purchased in just this country each year wind up in landfills—that’s tens of millions of single-serve non-returnable containers each and every day. If it decomposes at all, that plastic will be there for thousands of years first. This is what we do this planet every day. As I quoted in a recent post: “When are we going to stop behaving so stupidly?”

I’m as guilty as anyone of this shopping foolishness, although in my defense I have now switched to eco-friendly reusable containers, to my children’s likely annoyance. (Just add it to this list, kids.)

In truth, our wild over-consumption of bottled water may be one of advertising’s great successes and a testament to our never-ending search for Damn-The-Costs-And-Consequences convenience, but Peak Oil is sure to have an impact on this lifestyle choice as it will with most other similar choices.

As I and many others have discussed ad nauseum, those who scoff at Peak Oil and cite their chapter and verse about all the fossil fuel resources yet to be produced (and the magic “undiscovered” resources), consistently and conveniently neglect to mention the costs, risks (hello Deepwater Horizon!), energy expenditures, and time delays in obtaining those no-longer-easy-to-find-and-produce resources (assuming they are correct about the size of the resources and the inherent obstacles are surmountable … big question marks.)

What that means in practical terms is that as demand continues to increase (think China and India, among others), supplies simply will not match that pace, and things are going to change. This will be a very long, drawn-out process, despite the false attributions of deniers who claim we believe we’re suddenly going to just run out of oil. But the harsh truth is that as increasing demand collides with decreasing availability, allocations and sacrifices are going to have to be made—sooner than we are likely to be prepared for.

Can we be so foolish as to think that items of convenience such as bottled water will continue to have priority among the thousands of products and transportation services currently utilizing oil/fossil fuels? I’m fairly confident that we can probably find at least a few items that will likely have spots higher up on the rungs of importance.

In practical terms, perhaps manufacturers will continue to provide water in plastic bottles, but surely not on their current scale and just as surely in more costly fashion. The “convenience factor” will certainly take a hit. Less production and more production costs mean less demand, which leads to less production, which costs jobs, and the dominoes in that industry will begin to tumble too. Up and down that supply, manufacturing, advertising, and transportation chain, the decline in demand will be felt. (Again: not an overnight phenomenon, but the decline will begin and it won’t stop.)

Soon enough, we’ll all be “inconvenienced” in one way or another at least several billion times a year because at least several billion bottles of water will no longer be either available or worth purchasing. Fifty billion produced bottles will eventually become … forty billion? Twenty billion? Five billion? More changes, more impact, more people and industries affected. What happens to all those employed in some capacity along that chain?

And we’re just talking bottled water….

Sources:

[1] http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/07/reasons_to_ditch_bottled_water.php: A World of Reasons to Ditch Bottled Water by Union of Concerned Scientists – July 9, 2007

[2] http://greenanswers.com/q/69378/products-shopping/manufacturing-materials/how-much-oil-used-make-one-pla

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/watershed-art-installation.php: The US Consumes 1500 Plastic Water Bottles Every Second, a fact by Watershed by Petz Scholtus, 10.15.09

In my last post, I took a first look at a “big ticket” item that will clearly suffer from the effects of Peak Oil: sports.

I touched on just a few aspects among many (travel, revenue) that will be adversely affected by the onset of Peak Oil and the challenges that will have to be confronted once relatively inexpensive fossil fuel is no longer available to support the myriad organizational components of athletic competition. Of course, not every adverse affect on products or industries will be irreconcilable or as potentially dramatic in its scope as I suggested in that essay.

The history of our industrial success has in no small part been a result of our capacity to improve upon that which came before. There’s no question that perfectly acceptable substitutes may already exist for many products, or can be fashioned with a relatively small amount of effort. (Per my last post, I’m not inclined to believe that once the manufacturing of basketballs and footballs declines, we’ll never find appropriate and suitable replacements—but it will surely be much more difficult to maintain supply and meet demand with the same efficiencies.)

The challenge will be not just to find those replacements, with the time and effort and testing and marketing required of any new product, but more importantly, doing so with less fossil fuel energy to support that entire process. That’s where the real challenge comes: having systems/infrastructure already in place (and we’re not even close) that will allow for product alternatives and the processes by which they are designed, created, tested, marketed, transported, and successfully utilized—and accomplishing all of this with much less fossil fuel available from start to finish.

As I have alluded to previously, when worldwide demand exceeds the oil industry’s capacity to effectively and feasibly produce enough oil at acceptable prices—as Peak Oil assures us it will, if it isn’t doing so already—sacrifices at all levels, in all nations, for all citizens, and in all industries will be the end result. The way we’re heading right now, most of those sacrifices will fall on the involuntary side of the ledger. No one will be pleased with that.

You and I may insist that we be allowed to run all the errands we want each and every day, or travel to this place or another, or buy this or that product as and when desired, but when demand is regularly exceeding supply, changes and sacrifices are going to happen no matter how strenuous you or I insist to the contrary. (If it’s a choice between my local fire department having ready and immediate access to fuel for their vehicles and putting gas in one of my family’s four vehicles, it’s pretty clear to me who “loses”.) That means more changes in how we live our daily lives.

Shouldn’t we start thinking about this now, while it’s only a bit too late to be doing so?

And at the micro level, our day-to-day lives are going to change measurably. In many instances the changes will just be changes. Different certainly, but not necessarily better, and not necessarily worse. It won’t all happen overnight, of course, but change is assured.

Let’s take a much more mundane example than major sporting events and the relevant organizations: let’s consider toothpaste and toothpaste tubes. These items are among the thousands of products utilizing fossil fuels/crude oil in the course of their manufacturing processes. (When you get right down to it, if it’s a product being transported in the marketplace, it uses fossil fuels, so that doesn’t leave out too many items!)

Is it likely that we’ll still be able to brush our teeth every day even if crude oil is no longer part of the manufacturing mix? I’d hazard a safe guess and suggest that yes, we probably will. The packaging may have to be different, there may be some aspects of the texture or quality of toothpaste that changes, but for you and me, as long as we can go to the local store and get the tube (or vat or container or bottle or whatever will “house” the new toothpaste), we may not notice much difference if it tastes pretty much the same and does the job about as well as does our current brand.

But how many steps in the process leading to the placement of that product on the local store shelf are going to change because toothpaste producers and toothpaste tube manufacturers have to re-design or re-formulate or re-process those products—or the means by which they are transported in the marketplace? For a “simple” product such as toothpaste, it may not be such a big deal, and perhaps we won’t even notice the cost difference—or indeed any difference at all.

Can we expect that to be the case in all instances, for all products? Even fools twice over would have trouble believing that.

This is where Peak Oil’s impact becomes formidable. I can’t say that I’ll care a whole lot if ingredient XYZ becomes necessary in the manufacturing of my favorite toothpaste in place of whatever element of crude oil is now used. But I will care more if transporting my favorite tube becomes prohibitively expensive because Crest or Tom’s of Maine or Colgate can no longer afford necessary components in the processing and (especially) the delivery of that product, leaving me with the choice of chewing gum or relying on the one or two local merchants manufacturing their best attempt at a suitable substitute (and who do so with far less resources than the major manufacturers).

This likely manufacturing and delivery conversion is not going to just affect toothpaste….A small day-to-day inconvenience on that front, perhaps, but it isn’t going to begin and end there.

What happens then?

When I first began this blog, my intention was to first (I hope) educate readers about the main issues of Peak Oil, offer commentary when necessary, and then devote most of my time exploring in non-technical terms Peak Oil’s impact in our lives. It’s time to begin doing that.

(And let me preface this entire series by declaring that I’m not a technical guy: how much crude oil is needed to manufacture all of these items, what the process is, whether substitutes might be available, etc., are all beyond my interest and expertise. I want to keep this simple, for me as much as anyone! I have no plans to get up to anyone’s eyeballs in manufacturing or processing details. I want to provide readers with some general themes and ideas … some food for thought. Fill in the details as much, or as little, as you wish on any of the scores of topics I’ll now be covering. Some discussions will span several posts; others will offer up a nugget or two for consideration before I move on to another topic. All of these posts are designed to do one thing above all else: get you to understand that Peak Oil is not an abstract concept. It is real, it will affect each and every one of us, and it will keep affecting each and every one of us from soon until forever….)

I have discussed in several posts already the issues of transportation and infrastructure as they relate to Peak Oil, and the urgent need for all of us to reflect on all that must—and will—change when Peak Oil is fully upon us. Without an established infrastructure designed to support commerce and our ways of life without fossil fuels as the driving source of energy, any hopes we have for continued growth (not that that’s a guarantee even with an appropriate infrastructure) are by the boards.

Peak Oil isn’t going to just affect some of us some of the time in some ways. Peak Oil is going to impact all of us—substantially—and irrevocably. Life will be different, and that won’t change. The good ‘ole days will remain the good ‘ole days. There will be no going back.

There is no special place where this must begin. So let’s jump in with a topic of interest to many of us. Let’s talk sports. (This is one of those topics much too broad to cover in just one post, so I’ll just begin with a few general ideas and considerations, and will return to this subject in future posts.)

It’s easy enough to mention the fact that footballs, and helmets, and cleats, and basketballs and what have you are all made with crude oil as an essential component. It’s also safe to assume that once we begin dealing with curtailed availability of fossil fuels, some needs will have lower priority than others. Ambulances will probably have access to fossil fuel-based crude oil (gasoline) before Spalding or Wilson get the fossil fuel-based crude oil they need to make basketballs and footballs. Obviously there will be ripple effects across the industry when this happens, and the end users (from the junior leaguers and the neighborhood kids all the way up to the professionals) will also have some problems to contend with: either the products will become less available, or they will become prohibitively expensive for many along the chain of users. What happens?

Ever try dribbling a basketball that no longer bounces? How easy and inexpensive will it be to replace that? What happens when high school sports programs with limited funds as it is have to replace cleats and helmets and other accessories and their prices have doubled, or tripled, or the helmets and cleats are simply not being manufactured any longer on a scale sufficient enough to meet demand? What happens then?

Let’s also take a broader view. How do teams (high school, college, the pros) deal with travel issues and schedules when gas is much too expensive to enable teams to transport their players even short distances, or when air travel is severely curtailed and wildly expensive because not enough jet fuel is being processed to meet demand (and airports are shuttered because air travel has diminished markedly*), or when the fans cannot afford to put the gasoline in their vehicles that in the past allowed them to attend the games without a second thought?

What happens when half, or a third, or one-tenth the number of fans can afford to attend games because budgeting all that money to drive to an in- or out-of-state stadium no longer makes financial sense? Pure supply and demand: when demand continues and supply is reduced, prices go up. Decisions are then made about where to allocate funds. Does a trip across the state to attend a Red Sox game make more sense than paying for your children’s basic needs for the next few months?

Where will the revenue to pay players come from when the majority of fans are no longer traveling to see the games either because limited gas supplies are now being allocated or it’s simply become too expensive for “frivolous” trips? How do owners continue to fund their vast operations (office staff, marketing, scouting staffs, minor leagues, utility services for the stadiums and training facilities, and on and on it goes)? What happens to the vendors and other suppliers when the majority of fans just stop attending … permanently?

For all their current revenue, what happens to the Red Sox or Yankees when they are scheduled to travel to Tampa Bay, or Texas, or to the West Coast, and it costs a small fortune in fuel costs alone for charter planes? What rail services currently exist that offer a practical alternative? Exactly how far out does the ripple effect extend?

No organization, no group of individuals no matter what their financial status, and no industry that currently utilizes fossil fuels to any extent will escape the effects of Peak Oil. For all the magic and excitement and joy of athletic events, sports will suffer the impact of Peak Oil every bit as much (if not more) than many or most other industries.

What happens then?

* See, for example: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/3018604/aviation_after_peak_oil_is_there_a.html?cat=15

It’s been almost a week since my last post … much less frequent than has been the case over these first few months.

Just a note to let you know that I am planning an extensive series of related posts in the next few months, and will also be concentrating a bit more on the issues of infrastructure and transportation. I just concluded two separate series on those two topics, and will be returning to them fairly regularly.

I’ll continue to drop in some observations and links to articles of note over the course of these next few weeks (as I have been from time to time), but I will be devoting most of that time to research.

What it means right now is that the more extensive series of posts I’ve been writing over these past few months will be delayed for a few weeks. That’s not to say I won’t be offering commentary on essential points during that time (I will! Peak Oil isn’t going away.)

I’m simply taking needed time to organize the next batch of 30 – 40 posts before I jump back in with multiple postings each week.

But I’ll be taking all of next week off, visiting my lovely daughter in New Orleans during her spring break.

Keep checking back!

Thanks

I’m still planning my next series of posts, which I don’t expect to begin until sometime next week, but two more articles of note crossed my desk in the last day or two, and are worth passing along if for no other reason than the fact that it clearly appears that other nations “get it” when it comes to the importance of high-speed rail and investing in transportation infrastructure.

 “Two years ago, nearly 90 percent of the six million people traveling between Madrid and Barcelona went by air. But early this  year the number of train travelers on the route surpassed fliers. The trajectory is ever upward.”

Like their counterparts in Germany and France, travelers in Spain are discovering the values inherent in high-speed rail travel, as this recent New York Times article makes clear.

And no nation seems more prepared and willing to devote the financial resources to this than China, as is evidenced here.

As that article notes, China is planning to connect its high speed rail line through 17 other countries in Asia and Eastern Europe, with additional plans to build in Southeast Asia and Russia. That is not an insignificant project, and if successful will clearly help position them as a solid economic leader for decades to come. That level of infrastructure and transportation commitment, as I have stressed frequently in recent posts, is absolutely vital to economic prosperity. Notwithstanding President Obama’s solid leadership, vision, and understanding of this, we fall woefully short in measuring up against China’s progress in these areas.

Our recent $8 billion down payment on high-speed rail transit, important as it is, doesn’t quite cut it when you consider that (as the New York Times articles noted) by 2020, half of Spain’s $160 billion transportation will be devoted to rail travel.

If we don’t figure it out that we have to join the high-speed rail game soon, we’ll pay a hefty price for a long time. As I keep insisting, short-term thinking and planning cannot be our strategy for economic revival and sustained growth. Transportation and infrastructure investments are of critical importance, and we ignore this at our peril.

More choices … and more opportunities

Before I get started on my next series of posts beginning either later this week or early next week, I came across a couple of posts related to my recent series on Transportation that are worth noting today.

First up is another informative piece by Chris Nelder (here) in the form of an open letter to Congress. It contains some very straightforward information about the state of our energy future, and as I discussed in my last post also, he calls on our leaders to begin thinking long term, and to make rail transit a fundamental part of our economic revitalization. (Growth of rail transit infrastructure = jobs.) Of necessity, he is blunt in warning Congress not to make decisions that are only “politically expedient.” That approach, the one Congress is far more comfortable in adopting, simply won’t get it done.

The process of transforming our infrastructure will take decades, and as I continue to insist, waiting to formulate the plans we’ll need to guide us is sure to make things worse.

Just as important, Nelder makes it clear that all Americans need to understand what is at stake here, as I and others continue to urge as often as we can. We’re all in this together, much as we may think—or wish—that the solutions are in the hands of “others.”

It’s well worth the read.

This weekend, I also came across this terrific article from early in 2009. Anyone looking for a solid primer on the basics and importance of high-speed rail can’t do much better than this one.

The author also makes clear the challenges faced by rail proponents (including, shocking as it may be, shortsighted Congressional opposition). Understanding those issues moves us many steps closer to finding solutions and overcoming obstacles that simply should not be factors at all. Narrow-mindedness usually doesn’t get you very far, and so education remains a vital component in the process of economic renewal and future prosperity.

The vital message in author Craig Canine’s article on the critical importance of high-speed rail is this:

“…countries that aspire to participate fully in the twenty-first-century economy are coming to see that a high-speed rail network is as essential as a robust Internet or mobile-phone infrastructure.”

No one is saying any of this will be easy, or quick. But if we truly want this country to return to solid economic footing so as remain a world leader, the re-building of our infrastructure, with rail transit as one of its most essential components, is simply not negotiable. We need to understand this yesterday, and start working on making this happen today.