View From the Peak

Dave B. here, and yeah, I know it's been a while. I decided I needed to lie low until after DNA testing established the paternity of Anna Nicole's baby's father, just in case. So I've been traveling incognito through the Orient with a ruby in my burnoose these past couple weeks. You can't be too careful these days.

But to return to weightier subjects, I consulted our old friend James Kunstler at his weekly blog Clusterfuck Nation this morning for my weekly ration of cheer re: our rapidly approaching energy catastrophe. Jim didn't disappoint, and his graceful, if not delicate stiletto dissection of the Department of Energy's fantasy-driven, rosy and sanguine views of our immediate and long-term future should be required reading.

After establishing that the EIA (Energy Information Agency) does at least attribute the current price run-up to both import and refinery production shortages, Kunstler points out the reasons for the contrast between the agency's reality-based analysis of our current predicament and its ludicrous view of our prospects:

"The EIA has to be more reality-based about current activity than their future projections, because the current import-export and refinery figures are out there for other people and other data-gathering organizations to see. The EIA's future projections are a joke. They are based on the fantasy that everything will be okay despite what we see happening now. The EIA projects that all the world's oil producers will increase their oil production hugely by 2030. They see Saudi Arabia shooting up to 17.1 million barrels a day when, in fact, Saudi production fell 7 percent just over the past year alone to 8.4 mm/b/d. They see Mexico shooting way up, despite the announcement last year by Pemex that the Cantarell field (60 percent of Mexico's total production) is crashing at a minimum rate of 15 percent a year. They see Russia zooming way up, despite the fact that Russia is probably past the 70 percent mark of its original total reserves. If you go to this EIA chart (pdf), you'll see practically everybody's production shooting way up in the decades ahead, even the US, which, in reality, has seen nothing but steady annual decline for more than thirty years (we produce half now of what we did in 1970)."

While he doesn't explain what the payoff is, i.e., what material or psychological benefits we derive out of refusing to deal with undeniable facts, Kunstler consludes that "The EIA is a perfect reflection of the public it serves. It appears to conduct daily business in a responsible way while it resolutely refuses to face the obvious realities of the future."

It's only fair to point out that some disagree with Kunstler's conclusions, primarily lunatics and economists. They'll point out that there's plenty of oil left -- approximately half the three trillion barrels of light, sweet crude we started with, plus the huge, unexploited reserves of heavy oils -- tar sands, asphalts, and shales. They usually fail to mention that getting that stuff on line as gasoline is going to be difficult and expensive, and that the problem is not that we're running out of oil, but running out of cheap oil.

The indisputable facts are that Californians are looking at gas prices close to four dollars a gallon before the end of summer. And that's only the beginning.

But in the long run, the approaching disaster is a good thing. I suppose we could find a way to mine and refine the Alberta tar sands, and the Orinoco asphalt deposits, and the Colorado oil shales, and turn them into gasoline. It's just a matter of money. But we really don't want to do that, for what should be obvious reasons. Just watch Al Gore's movie, or read goldfrog's global warming posts at the Los Angeles Free Press blog, and you'll see why the view from the peak isn't all gloom and doom, and why what bodes ill for the motoring hordes of Southern California, now trapped on a freeway from which there is no escape, is good news for Mother Earth.