Tough sledding on other side of peak oil
Toolbox
Carl Etnier - Published: January 20, 2008
Mark Twain famously said, "There are three types of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics." He's right to be skeptical of statistics, which can easily be abused to "demonstrate" things that just aren't true. Yet statistics also can show truths that can be observed no other way. That's a problem when major decisions need to be made on the basis of the numbers.
Take global warming, for example. The scientific consensus that global warming is happening and is caused by human activities emerges from statistical summaries of billions of data points. Reporter Kevin O'Connor's series in this paper over the last year has shown many concrete effects of global warming in Vermont, such as longer growing seasons, northward migration of species and difficult weather for maple sugaring. But it takes statistics to separate out the anecdotes that could be explained by normal variation from long-term trends. Without solid statistics showing, for example, that nine of the 10 warmest years ever recorded are in the previous decade, it's possible to worry a lot about global warming during last year's non-winter through mid-January but to be lulled into believing that it's a non-issue by the cold weather and massive snowstorms that followed.
Even when statistics are used to demonstrate something that can really be known no other way, it is often the supporting story that sticks in people's minds. The movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" was chock-full of statistics about global warming. If you have seen the movie, can you remember a single statistic from it? I suspect most people cannot. How about the animation of the polar bear that drowns because it can't find solid ice? I bet a lot more people remember that story.
Peak oil is similarly hard to grasp without statistics, and that's probably one reason people have had a hard time accepting that the oil we use to run our cars and trucks and to heat our buildings is soon to become increasingly scarce. In some ways, peak oil is hard to grasp even with statistics. When world oil production reaches its peak and begins declining permanently, no statistics can confirm it until a few years after it's happened. Right now, oil analysts examining the same numbers debate whether the plateau in world oil production since 2005 represents a rounded peak before a permanent decline or a "false summit" that precedes another rise in production.
Peak oil is even more challenging to observe with the senses than climate change. Climate change is tied to dramatic natural phenomena: the heat wave in Europe a few summers ago that killed tens of thousands of people, droughts so severe that they would normally be expected every thousand years, warm Novembers in Vermont, or dropping water levels of the Great Lakes.
Peak oil is tied to high prices at the gas pumps or increasing fuel oil bills, but even high prices are abstractions compared to drought or heat waves. At least until the prices become so painfully high that a family cannot afford enough oil to heat the house, or it has to choose between heat and adequate food, as too many Vermont families are doing this winter.
Oil shortages are no abstraction, when they lead to rationing and blocks-long gas lines, or simply to "out of gas" signs at filling stations. Those of us who lived through the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s saw the effects of those shortages. Yet without statistics, it's impossible to see peak oil in shortages. The shortages of the 1970s were caused by political decisions; future shortages caused by exhausting the world's finds of easily produced oil will look pretty similar.
Here are some key statistics about oil production and Vermont's vulnerability to drops in world oil production:
u In oil-producing countries, peak production commonly occurs 25 to 40 years after the peak in discoveries. For example, in the United States, peak discoveries occurred around 1930 and peak production in 1970.
u World oil discoveries peaked in the 1960s. Forty years after the 1960s is, well, right about now.
u Every year but one since the mid 1980s, the world has used more oil than has been discovered. In recent years, over three barrels of oil have been consumed for every new barrel discovered.
u Oil companies doubled the amount they spent on exploration and development from 2004 to 2006, yet 2006 discoveries were at their second-lowest level in 20 years.
u Oil prices are nine times higher now than they were 10 years ago.
u Oil fuels almost all transportation in the United States, and 60 percent of Vermont homes are heated with oil.
u The United States has 2 percent of world oil reserves and consumes 25 percent of the world's oil.
Taken together, these statistics tell me that the world is facing declining oil availability soon. Without abundant oil, I don't see how we in Vermont can continue to keep driving, flying, importing food and dry goods from around the world, and heating our homes in the same way we do now.
We are taking steps towards reducing oil usage, but they are baby steps compared to what is needed to thrive when only half — or a quarter, or a 10th — as much oil is available to us. Will we keep on the oil-dependent path we're on until actual spot shortages occur here, and gas or oil cannot be had in parts of the state at any price? Will the increasing number of families faced with going without food or going without heat or gasoline tell their stories and prompt action?
Maybe stories of current crises in other countries will spur action here. Say, of Nepal, which was crippled by shortages of gas and diesel last summer when the state-owned petroleum importer and distributor stopped supplying gas stations. Or Sri Lanka, where severe shortages of fuel led the UN last year to warn that it may not be able to continue providing humanitarian aid, and construction activity in the some regions ground to a halt. Or Burma, where the unrest that became the aborted "Saffron Revolution" last fall was spurred when the government doubled the price of diesel and quintupled the price of natural gas in August, literally overnight.
It would be great if political leaders, community leaders, business people, and average citizens would simply look at the statistics about oil production and reduce their oil use now, before shortages force reductions. But I think we need more stories. How do oil and gas prices affect you? What are you doing to reduce your vulnerability to high oil prices and reduced availability? Please tell your stories in letters to the editor, calls to local talk radio shows, and at gatherings of your friends, co-workers or family. Or send them to me, and I'll publish some of them in a future column.
Carl Etnier, director of Peak Oil Awareness, blogs at vtcommons.org/blog and hosts the weekly radio show Relocalizing Vermont on WGDR, 91.1 FM Plainfield. He can be reached at EnergyMattersVermont(at)yahoo.com.
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