The scary thing about an oil/fuel crunch is the impact it would have on *all* aspects of our culture and civilization. I've heard people talk about it only in terms of transportation or industry, but it has consequences on every aspect of our daily lives.
Food? Requires fuel for planting and harvesting. When crude oil prices go up, or supplies go down, so do the associated nitrogen fertilizers. Without adequate fertilizer, we cannot produce the yields that the world has come to rely on.
Clean water? Requires fuel for pumping, cleaning, transporting.
Health care? Needs energy to sustain standards of care.
We can't cook, clean, bathe, or travel without energy. Our society has become totally dependent on it. And although alternative fuels may help alleviate some of the burden, they are not a perfect solution. Look at corn prices this year. Even with record yields in many places, the price remains near record highs because consumption is higher than it's ever been. Ethanol eats grain stores that may be needed to feed the world, especially if the current areas of drought expand. And ethanol plants require vast quantities of water for production - water that is also becoming a resource in short supply.
I agree - our world is in for a nasty wake-up call.
It goes deeper than that even- plastics, medicines, pretty much the entire field of Organic Chemistry is derived from petrochemicals. And plant oils are a horribly inefficient source of energy, by comparison, not to mention the other outcomes of fossil fuel (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/). Interesting statistic from that article: Every year we burn an amount of fossil fuel that took 400 years to form. Entropy is just so powerful that we are going to get ourselves very seriously stuck here.
The other problem is that there comes a point (and it may be a point that is already gone) beyond which there isn't enough cheap oil left to turn ourselves away from using oil exclusively, where the amount of energy needed to change to new forms of energy is greater than the amount of energy available from cheap oil. If we hit that point there is going to be one heck of a hangover.
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Date: 12 Oct 2007 16:24 (UTC)The scary thing about an oil/fuel crunch is the impact it would have on *all* aspects of our culture and civilization. I've heard people talk about it only in terms of transportation or industry, but it has consequences on every aspect of our daily lives.
Food? Requires fuel for planting and harvesting. When crude oil prices go up, or supplies go down, so do the associated nitrogen fertilizers. Without adequate fertilizer, we cannot produce the yields that the world has come to rely on.
Clean water? Requires fuel for pumping, cleaning, transporting.
Health care? Needs energy to sustain standards of care.
We can't cook, clean, bathe, or travel without energy. Our society has become totally dependent on it. And although alternative fuels may help alleviate some of the burden, they are not a perfect solution. Look at corn prices this year. Even with record yields in many places, the price remains near record highs because consumption is higher than it's ever been. Ethanol eats grain stores that may be needed to feed the world, especially if the current areas of drought expand. And ethanol plants require vast quantities of water for production - water that is also becoming a resource in short supply.
I agree - our world is in for a nasty wake-up call.
no subject
Date: 12 Oct 2007 16:49 (UTC)The other problem is that there comes a point (and it may be a point that is already gone) beyond which there isn't enough cheap oil left to turn ourselves away from using oil exclusively, where the amount of energy needed to change to new forms of energy is greater than the amount of energy available from cheap oil. If we hit that point there is going to be one heck of a hangover.
no subject
Date: 12 Oct 2007 17:26 (UTC)Hmm, good point. And scary thought.