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| DownUnder | June 2004 |
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Looking Beyond High Petrol Prices by Ian McPherson
Beyond the pump Most people think that the price of oil only impacts their personal transport. Nothing could be further from the truth. Oil is widely used in agriculture, medicine, the home and technology. Look beyond this text to your monitor and computer, and all the external cabling that enables it. The plastics that make these technological marvels possible also spring from oil. In your home Look around the house (or your office). Here is a small list of the items that rely upon oil, that I can see as I write this. A plastic fish tank. Two plastic lamps. Plastic rulers. Plastic DVD cases. Plastic CD cases. The telephone. My keyboard, computer and monitor. The radio on the phone answering system. A calculator. A cell phone. A cellotape dispenser. The cellotape itself. Power leads. Speakers. Multi-plug extension leads. Telephone cabling and extension leads. Parts of the TV, stereo and cable TV systems. The plastic bins. Scissor handles. Pens. The power outlets in the wall. The router. The hub. The ethernet cabling. Even parts of the outdoor furniture and barbeque I can see in the yard. The lids and nozzles on the cans of spray adhesive. Parts of the office chairs. The list goes on and on. Now consider your kitchen. Agri-business is absolutely dependent upon machinery, fertilisers and pesticides in order to grow, harvest, and transport the enormous quantities of grain, fruit and vegetables we enjoy. The feed we grow for cattle, chickens and pigs is also absolutely dependent on the same fertilisers and pesticides. Now look at the food itself. A lot of it comes packaged in plastic, and we add more plastic to the food chain, using freezer bags, garbage bags, sandwich bags, and more. Large parts of my refrigerator are plastic, as are the handles on the cutlery, the case of the microwave, even the seals on my glass jars. Now let's take a look in the laundry. Yes -- it's just the same. Plastic pipes and tubes, a plastic case on both the washing machine and dryer, plastic pegs, plus plastic fittings, seals and tap handles. There's even even a plastic coating on a metal drying rack I have, to stop it rusting. How about the bedroom and bathroom? It's the same too. Plastic clock radio. Plastic door handles. Plastic coat hangers. A plastic toilet brush with plastic bristles. Two plastic toothbrushes and handles. Plus plastic fittings, shower screen, shower and bath accessories. How about the medicine cabinet? All those plastic bottles, containers and lids. And if we really get sick, it's off to the hospital, which is totally dependent upon plastic tubes, syringes, bottles, gloves, stethoscopes, hearing aids, bandages, artificial limbs, heart valves, contact lenses and much more. Imagine a world without ... Now imagine a world without all these wonderful, useful things -- the world of 2100. Because that's exactly the world that our great-grandchildren (and some of our grandchildren) will be living in. A world that will not have all these terrific nicknacks, because there will be no oil to make them. Even the Middle East experts admit that only a trickle of oil will be available in 100 years. Forget your digital records, your CDs, your precious data. It's been predicted that it will be impossible to use any of these records at all in 100 years time, let alone restore them from their archival medium, or use them in any meaningful way. And forget about going back to vinyl records for your music; they too are based on fossil fuels. Enjoy your CD player while you can, and learn to sing (while you can still remember the words). We turn the corner in 2008 ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, recently revised its estimate of when the peak in world oil production will occur, from 2010 back to 2008. Why? According to respected oil scientist, Dr. Colin J. Campbell; "The present model departs from earlier ones in recognition that the Middle East no longer has sufficient spare capacity to discharge a swing role."  What does this mean? This means that the Middle East can no longer control the price of oil during times of international stress, and its ability to produce the oil necessary to fuel an international economy based on perpetual industrial growth is disappearing rapidly. By 2050, oil will be a rare and expensive resource indeed, and its on-going depletion will mark the end of the industrial age. As Kjell Akelett points out on the ASPO website; "Cairn Energy of the UK has again struck oil in its Rajasthan block. This was the third prospect that was successful. The first find, in the Mangala field, may prove to be one of the biggest oil discoveries this year. If we add the oil in place for the three discoveries we get between 1000 and 2000 million barrels. With a recovery factor of 40 percent the 'biggest oil discoveries this year' will give between 400 and 800 million barrels. This is between 1.5 and 3 percent of the oil the world will use in 2004. How much of the rest (97 percent) will be found?" Kjell is right to be concerned. Every year, we find less and less oil, yet consume more and more. Our governments give more and more tax breaks to the oil companies (who are currently enjoying record profits), and the oil companies plow the money back into having the same politicians re-elected. It's a case of long-term common sense falling prey to short-term profits. There is simply no reason to believe the solution will come from government or industry. Oil junkies My generation is a generation of oil junkies, totally addicted to its fix, and unable to plan a way out that does not involve war, human rights violations, shonky deals with sleazy dictators, or the destruction of the beautiful world we take for granted, with pollution and toxic emissions. We're leaving it to our children and our grandchildren to find the answer, while we enjoy (at least the well-heeled amongst us) reading the sports pages and lining our pockets with loot, on a ranch in Texas. Kurt Vonnegut, writer, artist and long-time rebel (who is now 81), recently wrote an article for "In These Times". The following is an excerpt from that article. It is somewhat reassuring that this piece is currently the "most forwarded" article by email at Common Dreams. "About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I’ve been a coward about heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to me, one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem." "I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other. But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut."  "And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels." "When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey." "Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey." A positive note I am reluctant to end on a negative note, even though all the evidence suggests that our governments are caught up in the vicious loop of the militarisation of oil, masquerading it as the "war on terror". Margo Kingston of the Sydney Morning Herald has seen the light, as has George Monbiot from The Guardian, and former UK Cabinet Minister Michael Meacher. Historians like Noam Chomsky, of course, knew it all along. According to Richard Heinberg, who has exhaustively researched what we will need to do to survive the end of oil, we must start planning and finding solutions now. Every day we leave it to government, and its Big Oil contributors, is another day we let our children, and their children, down. We all say we want to give our children the best. It's time to prove it. More reading:
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See you all in the next issue! Ian McPherson |
