Why the Scarlet Alert?

I am married to a peak-oiler.

As a result, I am exposed on a daily basis to a range of facts, figures, predictions, concerns that some days I simply have to block out-- I can't take it any more! And other days, this information moves me to action.

One of the things that moved me to action was Richard Heinberg's article about the threats of peak oil to our global food supply. I found this particularly disturbing and felt moved to inform my parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews (the latter group ranging in age from 18 to 36, two of them already raising children).

I summarized Heinberg's article, making clear (I thought) why this issue was important to my family members and what they should be paying attention to. (Lesson #1: never use "should" with any family member-- perhaps with anyone!)

While only two of my 25 relatives responded, the response of my 30-year-old niece -- a highly intelligent, educated mother-- flattened me cold, and I realized I had to return to the drawing table in order to figure out how to engage my friends and family members more effectively about the issue of peak oil and its ramifications. Basically, she told me that my rantings reminded her of Gone With the Wind's Scarlett O'Hara digging bare-handed through Tara's soil for potatoes that she tried to eat raw in her hunger, only to vomit immediately: "I'll never be hungry again!"

Thank God I've got some humility and humor (and love) in my life; instead of being offended or defensive, I decided to embrace the Scarlett role and that I would preface any future peak oil-related communications with "Scarlet Alert" (extra "t" intentionally dropped).

Having recently attended a powerful conference on the subject of peak oil, I knew it was time for such an alert, and having recently entered the blogosphere, I figured, well, let's make it a blog.

So here I am... yours truly,

There are no dilithium crystals..

One of the main arguments I hear against worrying so much about peak oil is that we will find or develop technological solutions to make up for our current dependency on oil. My niece has not been the only person to tell me she wanted to hear about solutions, not problems. And I can certainly empathize. In addition to having faith in humanity's ability to innovate, especially in a pinch, I'm also one of those people who gets really annoyed at the person in the staff meeting who bitches about what's not working without suggesting ways for improvement.

And my nephew responded to my initial email with quite a long, thoughful review of many alternatives that should not only give us hope, but whose existence really should set aside one's concern about peak oil.

But there's this "little problem" with pretty much every solution proposed. NONE of them will come close, in the right amount of time, to serving as an alternative for our dependency on oil.

At the Peak Oil & Community Solutions conference Sept 23-25, Steve Andrews (one of the people creating the new ASPO-USA), suggested these questions to ask of any alternatives:

• How much transportation can be supplied by the alternative fuel? [70% of US oil consumption goes to transportation.]
  
• What is the projected timetable for the arrival of the supply? Will it be available when we need it?
  
• What is the NET ENERGY contribution of any new option? (i.e., what is the benefit of the energy MINUS the cost of getting at it?)
  
• What are the political, economic, environmental and technological barriers to the alternative fuel's arrival in the speculated quantities?
  

With these questions in mind, here's what Andrews had to say about the most popularly suggested alternatives:

• "Unconventional oils" (Canadian tar sands, Venezuelan heavy oil, Colorado shale) require enormous amounts of high quality energy to get the oil out, and will only slow but not reverse the rate of decline after oil peaks. (Great quote attributed to Randy Udall: "Why would a person feed their dog steak in order to eat Alpo?")
  
• While increasing vehicle efficiency is a "slam-dunk mitigating action," replacing the existing auto fleet (235 million in the U.S. alone) would be excrutiatingly slow. Currently hybrid cars in the U.S. make up for only 0.1% (that's one-tenth of one percent) of US cars. While hybrid sales may increase 1% this year, it's not fast enough.
  
• Ethanol from corn has too low of an energy-return-on-energy-investment (1:1.35 to 1:1.6). Switchgrass and other cellulose-based biofuels offers a substantially higher return, but even these would only provide X-thousand barrels/day at full tilt. (The U.S. uses 21 MILLION barrels per day.)
  
• Coal is the ultimate climate-change bad actor, and while more plentiful than oil, is non-renewable.
  
• Nuclear's lethal byproducts last many thousands of years. [And while not discussed at this conference, I've also heard that some insanely high # of new plants would need to be built per year in order to compensate for our current energy use.]
  
• Wind and solar are renewable, although intermittent (on nature's schedule, not ours); they work well today, but utility companies are kicking and screaming down this path; change is slow.
  
• Hydrogen (an energy carrier, not a fuel itself) has a negative return on investment and enormous technical barriers to make it a viable alternative by 2020.
  

In light of these considerations, you can see how it's difficult to be gung ho about alternative sources of energy...

Now what?!

Okay... so all the various alternative solutions to our appetite to energy seem abysmal. What now?

What other types of solutions or priorities should we be looking at to address the impact of peak oil? I compiled these from notes I took at a number of sessions at the Peak Oil & Community Solutions conference. Communities could (note I don't use "should") become increasingly self-sufficient by taking the following actions:

• secure local food, water and energy sources, with a particular emphasis on ensuring and purifying water;
  
• reduce the need for transportation (97% of transportation is still fueled by oil);
  
• foster local manufacturing of essential goods;
  
• plan for long-term emergency services (we can learn alot from the recent hurricanes);
  
• assess the community's needs and vulnerabilities and create a step-by-step plan for filling the gaps. (Sebastapol, CA and Wilmington, IN are two places that are doing something like this.)
  
• Consider "fee-bates," a concept supposedly introduced by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute that would offer rebates to those car-owners whose vehicles achieve greater than 40 mpg.
  

We can also learn from two countries whose oil was effectively cut off due to the end of the Soviet Union:

• We could learn from Cuba's experience: they had contingency plans, they learned to trade with others, they developed alternatives that now work for them;
  
• Or we could learn from North Korea which experienced immense suffering because they could not produce enough food for their people; millions died. Their woes were exacerbated by floods and droughts.
  

Another solution being proposed by Richard Heinberg is an Oil Depletion Protocol that calls for oil importing nations to reduce their imports by an agreed-upon yearly percentage (the World Oil Depletion Rate), while exporting countries would agree to reduce their rate of exports by their national Depletion Rate.

Heinberg is hopeful that even oil companies could get behind such a proposal. Boom and bust is not good for companies, and there is plenty of precedence for modifying production to maintain stability.

And then, of course, there are the solutions that no on really wants to talk about:

• radically reduce our current use of energy
  
• limit our numbers; reduce our population
  
• distribute resources more equitably, globally
  

Just the facts, ma'am...

The Peak Oil & Community Solutions conference inundated us with facts and figures. But these seemed to be the key ones to pay attention to:

1. The world currently consumes 84 million barrels of petroleum PER DAY. Of this the U.S. consumes 21 million barrels -- 25 percent. SOURCE
   
2. One gallon of gas is the equivalent of a physically fit male human pushing an automobile 20 miles. More info on energy equivalents of gas/oil.
   
3. Discovery of new oil fields has declined, which automatically is followed by declines in production. Today, we find only one-third as much new oil as we consume each year. REPEAT: we are going through oil 3x faster than we are finding it!
   
4. While human population more than doubled between 1950 and 2005 (SOURCE), the population of automobiles increased ten-fold! There are 800 million autos worldwide (Automotive Digest claims about 600mil); 235 million of them are in the U.S. As of July 2005, SUV sales were 59% of all U.S. car sales.
   
5. Transportation accounts for about 70% of all U.S. oil consumption. 97% of all U.S. transportation is fueled by oil.
   
6. The average piece of food travels 1500-2500 miles between where it's grown/produced to our dinner tables. SOURCE
   
7. While the U.S. (with the largest consumption of oil) increased its consumption only 2.8% in the last year, China's oil consumption (in 2nd place) increased almost 16% in the last year.
   
8. Three nations dominate oil production, pumping out 1/3 of the world's daily total. Once they peak, the world peaks. Keep your eye on Saudi Arabia. [Gee, I'm sorry.... why? are we in Iraq again??]
   

But truly, this is humbling stuff, folks...

We Are Where We Eat

When I initially was moved to communicate with my family members about peak oil, it was the issue of food that shook me up. Heinberg's article was a "thunk" on my head as he described in painful detail how dependent we are on the availability of cheap fuel (oil) to get the food on our table. If the average piece of food travels 1500 miles to get to us, and if the price of oil impacts the transportation industry, then how are we going to get food when the price of oil gets too high? (Just the other morning, I heard on the news that two commercial airlines are cancelling a number of their regular flights due to the price of fuel.)

That seemed to me to be the biggie-- the one place where darn it we better do something or at least pay attention. But Heinberg (who I see as one of the least of the doom-and-gloomers) was too doom and gloom for my niece. So if she won't listen to Heinberg, who might she listen to?

One of my favorite presenters at the conference was Oklahoma-based Robert Waldrop who created a state-wide food coop of locally grown/produced food (meat as well as vegetables). I also loved him because of his jovial Santa-like presence and the fact that he didn't use PowerPoint.

Waldrop had lots of advice about addressing the food situation. Some of it easier than others to implement.

He recommends starting with your own kitchen, your own diet. Pay attention. Do you know where your food comes from? Start to notice where your favorite apples are from, where your chicken or beef is shipped from, etc... Just notice. That in and of itself can be a major eye-opener and start to change (a little) what you buy.

Do you know what food is available to you, locally? (Try Local Harvest.) Waldrop also recommended staying out of supermarkets as much as possible. Buy from local farmers markets and coops. Look into Community Supported Agriculture options in your community (CSAs).

While not discussed by Waldrop, check out the folks in Canada who are trying out the 100-mile "diet". Another group in California, the Locavores is doing something similar in the SF Bay Area.

Waldrop also discussed what macrobiotic dieters have known for years: eat with the season. Not only does it support your local economy (and reduce oppression of third world farmers), it's also healthier and tastes better. Paraphrasing Waldrop:

We all bemoan the fact that grocery store tomatoes taste like crap; well there's a good reason why. They're not grown for taste. They're bred and grown for shipping long distances, still green at the time they're harvested, and then they're GASSED in order to turn red.

If you eat meat, poultry and fish, he says, never buy from confined animal feeding operations. This means most chicken sold in supermarkets. Look for meats that are 100% forage fed and free ranging. Buy organic.

Grow at least some of your own food. It's possible to grow a lot of food in a small space. Join a community garden. Use containers if you have no access to open plots of soil. (Waldrop is growing potatoes in buckets.)

A big challenge for me personally is Waldrop's recommendation that instead of thinking "what will we have for dinner tonight?" think about what will we eat THIS SEASON. With Safeway only a block from my house, I had been feeling so good that I could WALK to and from the store with my canvas or string bags, even! And I do this every time it's my turn to cook, figuring out what I'm going to make at pretty much the last minute. The idea of prepping for a week, much less a SEASON, is really going to require some major mind shifting...

Does this seem like too much? Consider these additional options from the Locavores...

Katrina as a Metaphor for Peak OilH

Offered for consideration by Richard Heinberg at the Peak Oil & Community Solutions Conference, September 23-25, Yellow Springs, OH:

Katrina is a metaphor for how peak oil will play out...

1. We had plenty of warning...
   
2. There was a shameful lack of response...
   
3. Communities were overwhelmed...
   
4. The most effective were the smaller groups who did their own coordinating
   

Well, at least there's an up-note at the end there...

Heinberg went on to say that Hurrican Katrina also served as a teaching opportunity. Higher gas prices will bring on stress that will hopefully raise the general understanding of our dependence on oil, encouraging people to become more informed and make better choices and decisions about how they live their lives.