Confound the doomers. Let’s hear it for life after oil.
This post is in response to an earlier post by Cherenkov who accused me of “Engineer Tunnel Vision”, or ETV for showing dangerous signs of techo-optimism. I know he loves to dismiss the engineers view about future energy with a TLA but at least the engineers are trying to come up with solutions for peak oil. The alternative is to throw your hands in the air and say we are all going to die (true but so what?).
I totally agree with him that the gap between what can be done physically and what is likely to be done may be unbridgeable. Public life is innumerate. Most politicians are lawyers and want proof which can only come post peak. Most voters haven’t a clue about the size or scale of things. Both groups see the world in terms of human interactions rather than the physical interactions with nature that make life possible. Both groups will look for someone to blame and grab what they can for themselves rather than engage in a common effort to overcome difficulties.
Delusions aside, the engineers’ case for life after oil is based on four things - sufficient alterative energy supply, greatly increased energy efficiency, the realisation that everything must change, and the need for much reduced CO2 emissions. The following points give a taste as to why one engineer at least thinks there are solutions with sufficient scale to allow us to leave the oil age in an orderly fashion. All numbers are approximate but it’s the scale I’m trying to convey.
There is enough energy
This was Euan’s point when he stepped us through the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces of nature. Incoming solar energy to the flat deserts and the rooftops of the world is orders of magnitude greater than total human energy usage. Add wind and tidal power to that. STAR reactors* (Sub-Critical Thorium Accelerated Reactors) haven’t been developed yet but the basic physics works. They are inherently safe and can burn off the radioactive waste with high energy neutrons. There is 500 times more energy to be had from thorium than from uranium. Alternative energy can meet all future energy demand and is not the limitation on human population or the size of the economy. Other factors such as water supply and food production come into play earlier.
Alternative energy is affordable
The most versatile energy isn’t oil. It’s electricity which is what alternative energy is best at. What’s more, alternative energy capacity is additive to future supply unlike burning oil which subtracts from future supply. Ten years ago wind power was hopelessly uneconomic. Now it’s fully competitive and is attracting growing billions of dollars of investment every year. Wind and wave power are just second order solar energy. Solar electric (and solar thermal) is the really big one and is more reliable than wind. Efficiency is 15-20% which is plenty. It’s still currently uneconomic but that is artificial due to scarcity pricing - the supply chain has fallen behind demand. People need to see and touch a 5GW solar farm in order to understand. How about TOD composing a letter to the Gates Foundation stating the case for funding? It would change the world more than Windows ever could.
I see solar panels as being like computers. When computers cost $1m, a thousand a year were sold. When they cost $100,000, a million a year were sold. Now they cost $1000 and 100 million a year are sold (all very round numbers but the scale is the thing).
There is plenty of materials
Solar cells are less than ¼ mm thick so you get about 2000 square meters per ton of silicon. It takes only 4000 tons of silicon to make a 1GW solar farm. The rest is glass (silicon, sodium, calcium and oxygen mainly) and aluminium. Silicon is the most common metal in the earth’s crust and there are plenty of the other elements. There is no shortage of materials.
Solar energy uses the land that nobody wants
There is plenty of flat desert in the world for solar farms. The drier the better. Incoming solar radiation (insolation) is up to 1GW per km2. That can be converted in 150MW of peak electricity per km2 at 15% efficiency. You need about 7km2 of panels to produce 1GW of electricity. If you double the area for spacing between panels there is still plenty of desert. At 15km2 per GW, a terawatt (1000GW) needs about 75x75 miles of desert.
Electricity can be distributed on a planetary scale
Electricity grids can now transmit at 825kv DC. Losses are quoted as about 3% per 1000 km. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC. There is talk of such an undersea cable from Iceland to the UK to supply geothermal electricity. This allows electricity to be transmitted from the equator to the poles. The sun is always shining somewhere. Renewable electricity supply can be smoothed by dispersing geographically as is already being done with wind power in Scandinavia.
Some temporal shift of electricity use will be needed – like charging your battery vehicle at work during the day and not at night. But electricity can also be stored indirectly by pumping water up hill. This has been in use for 100 years so there is nothing new. Two global power nets will be needed, one for the Americas and the other for the Europe/Asia/Africa/Australia.
Manufacturing is huge
This is an issue that doesn’t get much coverage in TOD. Obviously replacing the energy infrastructure with solar will require a major manufacturing supply chain. But manufacturing is huge. I’m using automobile manufacturing as an example. There are about 60 million automobiles made each year weighing about 100 million tons. Solar farms weigh between 100,000 and 250,000 tons per GW – much less for thin film. A terawatt of solar farms would require 100 to 200 million tons of metals and glass which is what the car industry gets through in a year or two. Solar farms are much simpler to manufacture than engines, gearboxes and all the other stuff that goes into a car so the cost of the manufacturing base should be less.
Investment is huge
Is there enough money to replace the energy infrastructure over 20 years? Well, global GDP is about $45 trillion and investment is about 10% of that. So $1 trillion a year spent on a great build out of renewable energy is perfectly feasible. Remember money is a proxy for resources. If unemployment rises post peak (most likely) then costs come down.
Current energy efficiency sucks
Current energy efficiency is nearly an order of magnitude worse than best practise. The current automobile is a creation of the oil industry as it is. As more oil became available cars got faster and bigger. But we don’t need 200hp moving 2 tons of steel for transport. The Fiat 500 was 12hp and that was enough to get Italy motoring. We’ll all miss 0-60 in 8 seconds but it’s not the end of the world if every car journey becomes a cost/benefit trade-off and fuel price becomes the number 1 priority in choosing a car. I reckon you need 2hp per person for transport – slow but safe.
I posted before that annual oil use per capita in the US and Canada is 25 bbl compared with 12.8 bbl in Western Europe. If US/CA had the same oil use as Western Europe then the US and Canada would still be net exporters of oil. Europe did it partly by higher taxes on fuel but mainly through regulation of fuel efficiency standards – CAFE. What a price the US is paying for not updating CAFE!
Heating and cooling efficiency is even worse. Simple technology like better insulation, reverse flow heat exchangers and efficient heat pumps allow big reductions in energy use. Ship transport can go back to sail for most of its energy. We use 8% of electricity keeping mobile phone chargers and cable boxes warm for heavens sake. OLED panels 10 times more efficient than LCD. Vacuum insulated fridges 8 times more efficient. Why aren’t we using vacuum ‘filled’ honeycomb panels to insulate houses? The list goes on and on.
Will it happen?
Can this brave new world happen and could all the birds sing happily in their stable CO2 world? YES. Will it happen in time? Well, I think we call the obstacles ‘above ground factors’ in TOD. Some countries will make it but it doesn’t look promising for most. But at least the engineers are trying to come up with solutions, which is more than you can say for the doomers. Which brings me to my last point:
Everything will change
As stated in a previous post, the nature of predicting any variable forces you to keep all other variables constant. Peak oilers can’t model the responses to declining oil supply. Economists tend to think the global economy will double in the next 40 years without any regard to resource limits and so on. They also tend to think that 4% compound growth is a steady state condition but that’s another story.
Personally, I believe that peak oil and other resource limits will change everything. I just hope that the response to it will be new supply and ‘good’ demand reduction rather than ‘bad’ demand destruction via economic contraction. Either way, there are engineering solutions of sufficient scale for us to exit the oil age.
Regards and keep posting TODers,
Alan
* You won’t find ‘STAR reactor’ on the web. It’s my invented name for accelerator driven systems. Great marketing name though!
Great post! Our world crisis is a failure of imagination and leadership, and its by all the political entities. Now if you'll put a bowl of crawfish etoufe on every table as a plank, I'll support you for President
!Bob Ebersole
Thanks Bob. I agree totally with you about the failure of imagination and leadership. If you had European CAFE levels then US/CA would still be a net exporter. What a different world that would be.
We've been mislead by bad data on oil and gas and it may be too late in spite of my optimism above.
I guess we're saved. No need to worry about food, water, the oceans, shortages of materials, pollution, disease, and overpopulation as long as we have engineers!!
That we can do the things you advocate is quite frankly tediously obvious. I have never said we could not trip the techno-fantastic given an infinite planet. I've always pointed out the inherent physical problems with techno-fetishist's grow-at-any-cost scenario.
Why are you trying to save the technology? That's my question. It seems weird that engineers are more concerned with keeping the technology than working out truly sustainable systems. Why don't you try to work out engineering solutions that work with nature rather than against nature? Here is a test of each engineering solution: All of its components must be one hundred percent renewable. All effluvia that is poisonous, or does not occur in nature, must be used in some other process until the only effluvia created is completely pure. In effect, pure water or air. All energy used must come from the sun (not fossil sunlight), yet must not negatively affect the environment. For example: tidal energy will change many organisms' environments. Will this negatively affect the environment? All tech must be locally produced. Each micro climate must be assessed to determine optimum human population, the more tech, the less people.
I realize that many technophiles love to point out that anything created by man is "technology," and I agree. But there are qualitative and moral differences between technologies that destroy the environment and those which are part and parcel of the environment. (It is here that many "scientists" and "engineers" love to quibble over definitions.) To these people I say, go ahead, play your games. Meanwhile, the adults will be over here talking about serious things.
Clearly any man-made chemical that leads toward the destruction of an exquisitely complex life-support system is bad. Chlorofluorocarbons are a good example. Carbon in the atmosphere is another. Some people will say, as a few have, that the earth is warming due to natural factors, believing that that gives them leave to produce more CO2. But the logic here falls down. If nature is causing warming, dangerous warming, why in the world would we want to increase that warming by introducing even more carbon into the atmosphere?
The same sort of thinking prevails regarding "technology." The immature "scientists" and "engineers" who would pooh-pooh those who wish to limit technology lay claim to the same absurd argument: to wit, if any human creation is technology, then if we ban the technology we want, we have to ban ALL technology. Again, I have always admitted that my suggestions for sustainability necessarily include technology. The difference is that, in my thinking, technology must be considered within the totality of its purview. A dam built at one end of a river system affects the entire system. That affected river system will affect the entire watershed. That affected watershed will affect neighboring watersheds. And, ultimately, it will affect the entire world. Luckily, for us, the world is a large place and if we were to only build one dam, the averaging effect of this one variable introduced into a sea of variables, would seem to have little consequence. But, we are no longer a planetary population of one billion. We are 6.5-6.8 times that and rising on an exponential curve. Without the mechanical leverage of fossil fuel/sunlight, we will fall back within normal population levels. The only question is will we destroy the earth as our population declines? We have already decimated the seas. Desertification proceeds apace. Water woes are ahead.
Will we continue to work against the flow of nature and by doing so destroy it, or will we embrace our nature, embrace all nature, and in doing so enrich it and ourselves?
While the issue of technology is not a black and white issue, destroying the environment is.
Remember, no environment means no people, let alone tech.
There. I have offered solutions.
I think that my suggestions may help to prevent an engineered apocalypse. (Though I think it may be too late.)
Well, at least Brian lives up to his own credo, and keeps it brief. And Cherenkov was so civil compared to his usually more hard hitting style.
What engineers, and I know that is a gross generalization, are emblematic of is the belief that man is smart. And that belief may need some inspection.
It's based on the fact that we are capable of making things, machines, gadgets, medicines, chemicals, the vast majority of which are pretty blindly assumed to be positive additions to our lives. Whether that is always true remains to be seen, and moreover, the questions regarding their influence on our biosphere stay too far in the background.
Symbolic is that Alan writes:
Can this brave new world happen and could all the birds sing happily in their stable CO2 world? YES. Will it happen in time? Well, I think we call the obstacles ‘above ground factors’ in TOD.
Now, the response to the first question, instead of YES, of course should be: "maybe that ones that remain". Just saying yes is not very useful, since many bird species are already dead or on the brink of extinction, and many more will go, simply from what lingers of what we have added to their living environments in the past. Their song is over or fading past. And since there is no sign of this coming to a halt, it's safe to assume many more will die off, at an exponential rate.
Relating birds happily singing to stricter CAFE standards is the worst of the engineering view. Looking around me, I can no longer keep up the faith that man is smart; if he were, he'd keep his house in order. But this house I see is in terrible shape. We should really tear it down and build a new one, but we don't have engineers smart enough to do that second part.
The second question, "will it happen in time"?, is linked by Alan to "above-ground" factors, once more a sign of the belief that we can solve this. But you run into the quintessential problem for engineers: they cannot create life, and they cannot bring back the life that's been destroyed, nor the ecosystem it lived in.
The faith-based reasoning (which, ironically, is what the engineers' view boils down to) that we could reverse the wildlife die-off process by fumbling around with solar panels and automobile efficiency standards does not bode well for that wildlife. And not for man either.
Another thing Alan writes:
Solar energy uses the land that nobody wants
That is a man-centered view if ever I saw one. And it is this view that has gotten us into the mess we're in, the idea that we're somehow alone here. We need desperately to leave it behind, or we'll engineer ourselves into huge unmarked mass graves. Yes, above ground.
HeIs: Look, mankind is screwing up the planet, has been doing this for a long time and will continue doing this until the planet is pretty well wrecked. I don't disagree with this sentiment and I would be surprised if Alan or anyone else does. Having said this, Alan was talking about possible real life outcomes arising out of global oil depletion. He was discussing the world as it is, not as it should be. If you want endless discussions of how the world "should" be, where does it end? Everybody wants the whole planet to be one big happy Garden of Eden, but what we want has nothing to do with what is coming down the road.
Brian, with all due respect, I think what it comes down to is that Alan proposes a response to the wrecked planet based on trying to solve problems by us continuing to be the same "smart" creatures that caused them in the first place.
I think it's high time to stop that religion, to recognize our limits, to quit thinking we're so d*mned smart, and to realize we're not fit to be the masters of the house. That humility is the best and only hope we have.
I think the problem here is that you damn the entire human race for the failures of some. The alternative is a view where some are capable of making sensible and reasoned decisions WHILST believing that development is a prerequisite for our continued survival as a species. It doesn't view the human race as one undifferentiated mass, just with the misguided in control.
I agree with that view.
Ecology and sustainability as a science defines the consequences of actions and the need to develop sensibly (and get off this planet to continue to grow).
Ecology and sustainability as a religion defines we should go backward towards some arable idyll that never really existed.
Both can generate a situation where we live in balance with our environment, but to me only one is a tenable path to take. Unfortunately we are tending to swerve off the paths entirely - unless we are very lucky.
Ah yes, the arbitrary definition of what is and what is not technology. All tools are technology - some technologies may be more dangerous than others, but that is not the issue. Humans need very little in the way of technology to destroy an environment. It is not the technology that is the problem, it is very simply just us. Too many of us is the problem. There is a finite (and I believe quite small) density of population that is "sustainable" (which just means that the damage a population does is not bad enough to matter).
You seem to think that if we abandon tools defined as "technology" by you (and therefore "bad"), then we can all do fine. This is nonsense, as we can destroy entire ecosystems with some wood, leather, skins, and bits of sharpened stones - we've done it before. Appropriate technologies will play a key role in making the transition to a smaller population tolerable, while poor ones will make it worse. The key difference between the two is a societal one, not the technology itself.
That's a point I've wanted to make for quite a while.
All the apparently "anti-technology" folks here seem to think that we could even exist at all without technology. Yet, as you say, even stone flint arrowheads are technology. Human beings are always going to invent, refine and use technology.
The trick is making sure we remain in control of it for as long as we can (which, as I've said elsewhere, will not be indefinitely, but no species lasts indefinitely anyway).
However, the whole idea of working towards having real sustainability (and technology that works in greater harmony with nature rather than against it) also implies a change in us, in our attitudes.
It is always the inner world that must change before the outer world changes though, so in essence we do need to concentrate on changing us first. The rest will follow naturally.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
No disagreement there, but there's little evidence community attitudes are likely to change except in the event of a direct, immediately visible threat to our way of existence. And Peak Oil and GW are just not that direct or immediately visible yet.
Well there we have it.
Two posters.
Both believe in Peak Oil.
Yet they have very different models of how the world works.
The Engineer (thisisalan) sees all the world as an engineering nail and his engineering skills as the hammer.
The socialist (cherenkov) sees all the world as filled with ignorant humans (including engineers) who cannot see the planet is finite.
This is what we're dealing with folk.
Each one of us has an internal model of how we think the world is put together. Each of us is 101% sure his (or her) model is the correct one. (Me? I'm 102% sure mine is correct.)
Anyway, the grand challenge is to move the models into convergence.
Not only into convergence, but also into one that properly aligns with the laws of nature and the limits of human nature.
When you approach a non-believer (one who does not know of, or believe in Peak Oil) realize that his/her world model is so foreign to your own that the other's model makes thisisalan and cherenkov look like identical twins.
I see people who use the obvious fact that the world is indeed finite to bash engineers who are attempting to try to push to make things better, which might actually work and be implemented---imperfectly---in the real world.
The "more sustainable than thou" coalition appears eager to drown any principally technology and engineering-oriented improvement from generally sympathetic quarters in pettifoggery and hectoring nihilistic criticism. Anybody sufficiently motivated and misanthropic can find an environmental critique for everything except stone age hunter gatherers plus mass cremation for the rest---integrated combined gas cycle of course.
In the actual, real world, this means that the "I love the smell of carbon burning in the morning" crowd wins.
It's good to be honest, thoughtful and careful. That's what good engineers and scientists do. Let's not turn it into "how dare you want to use technology for anything!"
bash engineers who are attempting to try to push to make things better, which might actually work and be implemented---imperfectly---in the real world.
Because sometimes 'imperfect implementation' could really be the end of the world as we've known it.
It's good to be honest, thoughtful and careful. That's what good engineers and scientists do. Let's not turn it into "how dare you want to use technology for anything!"
As an ex-engineer, I come not here to bash the profession or those who toil in it.
However, in retrospect I realize that I was trained to have Tunnel Vision while I was going through engineering school. No, not the choo-choo Charlie tunnel vision of train engineers. What I mean is that electrical engineers are brainwashed into believing that every problem is one that has an electrical solution because that view point is good for the EE community. Chemical engineers are brainwashed into believing that every problem is one that has an chemical solution because that view point is good for the ChemE community. And so on.
Very few engineers receive a cross-disciplinary education where they can hold their own talking social sciences as well as Maxwell's equations. They have been molded into cogs within the machine that simply can't step back to comprehend the whole of the machine.
The biggest laugh of all is that most engineers believe they are "rational" creatures.
I know he loves to dismiss the engineers view about future energy with a TLA but at least the engineers are trying to come up with solutions for peak oil.
For those who do not what TLA stands for, well, I think it stands for "Total Lack of Alternatives". Well, no, that's probably not right. It is probably "The Life After (oil)". Well no, that's probably not right either. After all, he is talking about engineers and their view so it must stant for "Total Lack of Ability". Yeah, that's it, Total Lack of Ability.
And I have a Total Lack of Ability to read your mind and understand acronyms that are often used by posters but never defined.
Actually, the TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) have been much improved today ... most people seem to be trying hard to define them ... my thanks to all for making the effort ... it makes things much easier to read and is altogether more 'professional'.
There was life before oil -- good life. Bach and Mozart were before oil. Shakespeare and Rubens were before oil. Etc.
There was plenty of imagination then, and I think a case can be made that although there was plenty of misery as well, quite likely the worldwide misery index is worse now than it was pre-oil.
Clearly, there will be an imaginative life after oil. It just won't include noisy, smelly, dirty internal combustion engines on the scale we have been saddled with. Everywhere I walk in my town I watch people using gasoline leaf blowers when a rake would be more useful, and weed-eaters where a scythe or sickle would work better. Kids on tiny gasoline scooters belong on skateboards or bicycles, and jet-skis are an abomination.
The whole enterprise is profit-driven, of course. When it is more profitable to make solar cells, then solar cells will be made-- and by the same people who now sell us gasoline. And as long as the taxpayer subsidises gasoline production in so many ways, it will not pay its own way, but will remain profitable long past its natural life.
There was life before oil -- good life. Bach and Mozart were before oil. Shakespeare and Rubens were before oil. Etc.
And what was the population of the Earth in the days of Bach and Mozart? Do you, Mr. NeverLNG, believe we can return to the days of Bach and Mozart with an earthly population pushing 7 billion or more?
There was life before oil -- good life. Bach and Mozart were before oil. Shakespeare and Rubens were before oil. Etc.
And there will still be a 'good life' for the moneyed classes after peak oil.
This good life you speak of before oil - where people lived in one room with a stove and many froze to death in the winter - will return for many with the end of oil.
However, then proportion of people who are miserable now is quite likely higher now than it was in the 17th and 18th centuries -- despite the promise of abundance from cheap oil.
True degradation of the human species started with multiplication of human energy and imagination through industrial processes.
Back To the Future!! -- Long Live the Paleolithic!
However, then proportion of people who are miserable now is quite likely higher now than it was in the 17th and 18th centuries -- despite the promise of abundance from cheap oil.
Not by a long shot. Most of humanity in those days lived very close to edge of survival. In fact that is what kept the population from exploding, deaths equaled births.
"Sennely is a typical self-sufficient village near the French City of Orleans. It consists of subsistence farmers whose needs are supplied locally: rye grain for bread, cattle, pigs, apples, pears, plums, chestnuts, garden vegetables, fish in the ponds, and bees for honey and wax.
"Population and resources are more-or-less in balance because of the poor health of the residents: they tended to be stunted, bent over, and of a yellowish complexion. By the time children were ten or twelve, they assumed the generally unpleasant appearance of their elders: they moved slowly, had poor teeth, and distended bellies. Girls reached the age of 18 before first ministration.
"Malnutrition was the norm. One third of the babies died in the first year and only one third reached adulthood. Most couples had only one or two children before their marriage was broken by the death of one parent. 'Yet, for all that, Sennely was not badly off when compared to other villages.'" After the Black Death
Sennely was a typical French village. It was not much better in the cities. People lived close to the starvation level. Children were typically put to work in the mills and factories well before they reached the age of ten. It was a miserable time all over Europe and even worse in most of Asia.
And this is the kind of life we hope to live after fossil fuels, but it will take a long time to get back up to the prosperity level of Sennely. The coming anarchy, the collapse of law and order as we move into a dog eat dog world, will make make life miserable for many decades.
If there is ever a time of plenty this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.
Richard Dawkins: River Out of Eden, page131-132
The reality is that oil is peaking and declining, much of our way of life can be said to be dependent on that which is declining. That might be a bad thing, but other populations of other organisms crash when they outgrow their resource base, yet they go on as species, and sometimes improve and sometimes, we believe, might develop into new and more fit species. Who knows where human populations will be in 50 years? For sure, very few of us living now will be there.
I do not believe that all pre-industrial populations were miserable, in fact, there is good evidence to the contrary. Misery increased with the advent of industrialization, though no doubt it was present before that, especially in marginally productive areas.
Maternal mortality is a product of poverty and malnutrition -- and is more pronounced in poor groups in industrial civilizations than it is in pre-industrial civilizations that have not outstripped their resource base. Epidemic disease is the result of crowding, poor sanitation and malnutrition -- i.e., cities.
I maintain, and I believe it is supported by evidence, that oil energy has made the rich unbelievably richer, allowed for a temporary middle class, and impoverished the multitudes. Loss of oil will not necessarily make the human race miserable
This is a tough question. Radical as I am, I don't know how to define misery well enough to be sure that the number of miserable has risen as a proportion, not just an absolute.
I like to think that the innate dignity of the human, or his ego, requires that he have some say in the form of his life. So if I lived as a herdsman in 1700, I was short on material goods but had a lot of autonomy. I could beat the crap out of my wife without state punishment. If I was being cheated by my neighbors I could go to tribal authorities where I represented a large % of the political class, instead of modern state authorities where I represented 0.000001% of the citizenry and might lose my case because the state signed some pact with the IMF. Failing that, I'd shoot it out with the guy using unrifled muzzleloaders. Modern people seem frustrated at losing that option, but look at the guns we have now.
Most of all, I think humans could reconcile themselves to "Acts of God", which we now recognize to include many of the ecological restraints to growth. But the rise of Progress by definition involved the canceling of Acts of God with new Acts of Man. So the more people see the world around them as being man-made, the more angry they get that they are deprived. If you're poor because of a drought, religion tells you how to deal with God's will. If you're poor because a banker or foreign investor devalued your life, you want to pick up that muzzleloader and - oh! The man-made state backing that rich guy has man-made Maxim guns. Too bad. You now know your enemies are mortal and defeatable, but you'll have to organize a cataclysmic revolution to get at them.
Instead of a world of thousands of little economic pyramids of serfs, small landowners, and big landlords all trembling under the unstoppable power of God, the global marketplace has piled all those pyramids on top of each other to build one great temple to growth. Like the Tower of Babel, it worships man. But if the American pyramid is on top, imagine how frustrating life must be for those in the pyramids stacked below us, whose states obey America and the banking system, whose status as leading citizens of tiny states has been devalued. If our herdsman's descendant is lucky, his turf is a fraction its former size, the government wants to build a dam to flood him, and Archer Daniels Midland has USAID cash backing to replace it all with a plantation. If he's not lucky, he lives in a refugee camp, or works in a sweatshop or on that plantation, no unions allowed. Cashwise, he may be better off. As a person, well, he's really more like an insect, isn't he?
The reason I can't quite conclude that the % of people in misery is actually greater is that this descendant of herdsmen might feel very differently about his fate if he worked at a factory that built cheap exports to suck out the wealth of former colonial masters, and felt sure that the profits would be used by the state to further stick it to whitey. He might have less autonomy, but nationalism gives him a sugar rush of mass aggregation - our mob will soon rise and crush the other mobs. I must do all in my power to make our mob stronger. And I got a 10% pay raise.
This is why I think workers in China are a hell of a lot more motivated than workers in our stooge states like Mexico. China has more than offset the explosive growth of extreme poverty (<$1/day) in neoliberal Latin America and abandoned Africa. Acts of Man look damn good to them. They really believe they're gonna come out ahead in the progress game.
But you and I know that the oil isn't there to make it happen.
Confound the doomers. Let’s hear it for life after oil.
This post is in response to an earlier post by Cherenkov who accused me of “Engineer Tunnel Vision”, or ETV for showing dangerous signs of techo-optimism. I know he loves to dismiss the engineers view about future energy with a TLA but at least the engineers are trying to come up with solutions for peak oil. The alternative is to throw your hands in the air and say we are all going to die (true but so what?).
I totally agree with him that the gap between what can be done physically and what is likely to be done may be unbridgeable. Public life is innumerate. Most politicians are lawyers and want proof which can only come post peak. Most voters haven’t a clue about the size or scale of things. Both groups see the world in terms of human interactions rather than the physical interactions with nature that make life possible. Both groups will look for someone to blame and grab what they can for themselves rather than engage in a common effort to overcome difficulties.
Delusions aside, the engineers’ case for life after oil is based on four things - sufficient alterative energy supply, greatly increased energy efficiency, the realisation that everything must change, and the need for much reduced CO2 emissions. The following points give a taste as to why one engineer at least thinks there are solutions with sufficient scale to allow us to leave the oil age in an orderly fashion. All numbers are approximate but it’s the scale I’m trying to convey.
There is enough energy
This was Euan’s point when he stepped us through the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces of nature. Incoming solar energy to the flat deserts and the rooftops of the world is orders of magnitude greater than total human energy usage. Add wind and tidal power to that. STAR reactors* (Sub-Critical Thorium Accelerated Reactors) haven’t been developed yet but the basic physics works. They are inherently safe and can burn off the radioactive waste with high energy neutrons. There is 500 times more energy to be had from thorium than from uranium. Alternative energy can meet all future energy demand and is not the limitation on human population or the size of the economy. Other factors such as water supply and food production come into play earlier.
Alternative energy is affordable
The most versatile energy isn’t oil. It’s electricity which is what alternative energy is best at. What’s more, alternative energy capacity is additive to future supply unlike burning oil which subtracts from future supply. Ten years ago wind power was hopelessly uneconomic. Now it’s fully competitive and is attracting growing billions of dollars of investment every year. Wind and wave power are just second order solar energy. Solar electric (and solar thermal) is the really big one and is more reliable than wind. Efficiency is 15-20% which is plenty. It’s still currently uneconomic but that is artificial due to scarcity pricing - the supply chain has fallen behind demand. People need to see and touch a 5GW solar farm in order to understand. How about TOD composing a letter to the Gates Foundation stating the case for funding? It would change the world more than Windows ever could.
I see solar panels as being like computers. When computers cost $1m, a thousand a year were sold. When they cost $100,000, a million a year were sold. Now they cost $1000 and 100 million a year are sold (all very round numbers but the scale is the thing).
There is plenty of materials
Solar cells are less than ¼ mm thick so you get about 2000 square meters per ton of silicon. It takes only 4000 tons of silicon to make a 1GW solar farm. The rest is glass (silicon, sodium, calcium and oxygen mainly) and aluminium. Silicon is the most common metal in the earth’s crust and there are plenty of the other elements. There is no shortage of materials.
Solar energy uses the land that nobody wants
There is plenty of flat desert in the world for solar farms. The drier the better. Incoming solar radiation (insolation) is up to 1GW per km2. That can be converted in 150MW of peak electricity per km2 at 15% efficiency. You need about 7km2 of panels to produce 1GW of electricity. If you double the area for spacing between panels there is still plenty of desert. At 15km2 per GW, a terawatt (1000GW) needs about 75x75 miles of desert.
Electricity can be distributed on a planetary scale
Electricity grids can now transmit at 825kv DC. Losses are quoted as about 3% per 1000 km. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC. There is talk of such an undersea cable from Iceland to the UK to supply geothermal electricity. This allows electricity to be transmitted from the equator to the poles. The sun is always shining somewhere. Renewable electricity supply can be smoothed by dispersing geographically as is already being done with wind power in Scandinavia.
Some temporal shift of electricity use will be needed – like charging your battery vehicle at work during the day and not at night. But electricity can also be stored indirectly by pumping water up hill. This has been in use for 100 years so there is nothing new. Two global power nets will be needed, one for the Americas and the other for the Europe/Asia/Africa/Australia.
Manufacturing is huge
This is an issue that doesn’t get much coverage in TOD. Obviously replacing the energy infrastructure with solar will require a major manufacturing supply chain. But manufacturing is huge. I’m using automobile manufacturing as an example. There are about 60 million automobiles made each year weighing about 100 million tons. Solar farms weigh between 100,000 and 250,000 tons per GW – much less for thin film. A terawatt of solar farms would require 100 to 200 million tons of metals and glass which is what the car industry gets through in a year or two. Solar farms are much simpler to manufacture than engines, gearboxes and all the other stuff that goes into a car so the cost of the manufacturing base should be less.
Investment is huge
Is there enough money to replace the energy infrastructure over 20 years? Well, global GDP is about $45 trillion and investment is about 10% of that. So $1 trillion a year spent on a great build out of renewable energy is perfectly feasible. Remember money is a proxy for resources. If unemployment rises post peak (most likely) then costs come down.
Current energy efficiency sucks
Current energy efficiency is nearly an order of magnitude worse than best practise. The current automobile is a creation of the oil industry as it is. As more oil became available cars got faster and bigger. But we don’t need 200hp moving 2 tons of steel for transport. The Fiat 500 was 12hp and that was enough to get Italy motoring. We’ll all miss 0-60 in 8 seconds but it’s not the end of the world if every car journey becomes a cost/benefit trade-off and fuel price becomes the number 1 priority in choosing a car. I reckon you need 2hp per person for transport – slow but safe.
I posted before that annual oil use per capita in the US and Canada is 25 bbl compared with 12.8 bbl in Western Europe. If US/CA had the same oil use as Western Europe then the US and Canada would still be net exporters of oil. Europe did it partly by higher taxes on fuel but mainly through regulation of fuel efficiency standards – CAFE. What a price the US is paying for not updating CAFE!
Heating and cooling efficiency is even worse. Simple technology like better insulation, reverse flow heat exchangers and efficient heat pumps allow big reductions in energy use. Ship transport can go back to sail for most of its energy. We use 8% of electricity keeping mobile phone chargers and cable boxes warm for heavens sake. OLED panels 10 times more efficient than LCD. Vacuum insulated fridges 8 times more efficient. Why aren’t we using vacuum ‘filled’ honeycomb panels to insulate houses? The list goes on and on.
Will it happen?
Can this brave new world happen and could all the birds sing happily in their stable CO2 world? YES. Will it happen in time? Well, I think we call the obstacles ‘above ground factors’ in TOD. Some countries will make it but it doesn’t look promising for most. But at least the engineers are trying to come up with solutions, which is more than you can say for the doomers. Which brings me to my last point:
Everything will change
As stated in a previous post, the nature of predicting any variable forces you to keep all other variables constant. Peak oilers can’t model the responses to declining oil supply. Economists tend to think the global economy will double in the next 40 years without any regard to resource limits and so on. They also tend to think that 4% compound growth is a steady state condition but that’s another story.
Personally, I believe that peak oil and other resource limits will change everything. I just hope that the response to it will be new supply and ‘good’ demand reduction rather than ‘bad’ demand destruction via economic contraction. Either way, there are engineering solutions of sufficient scale for us to exit the oil age.
Regards and keep posting TODers,
Alan
* You won’t find ‘STAR reactor’ on the web. It’s my invented name for accelerator driven systems. Great marketing name though!
Alan,
Great post! Our world crisis is a failure of imagination and leadership, and its by all the political entities. Now if you'll put a bowl of crawfish etoufe on every table as a plank, I'll support you for President
!Bob Ebersole
Thanks Bob. I agree totally with you about the failure of imagination and leadership. If you had European CAFE levels then US/CA would still be a net exporter. What a different world that would be.
We've been mislead by bad data on oil and gas and it may be too late in spite of my optimism above.
Thanks. That was great.
WR
Alan: Great post.
Wow. Thanks, Alan.
I guess we're saved. No need to worry about food, water, the oceans, shortages of materials, pollution, disease, and overpopulation as long as we have engineers!!
That we can do the things you advocate is quite frankly tediously obvious. I have never said we could not trip the techno-fantastic given an infinite planet. I've always pointed out the inherent physical problems with techno-fetishist's grow-at-any-cost scenario.
Why are you trying to save the technology? That's my question. It seems weird that engineers are more concerned with keeping the technology than working out truly sustainable systems. Why don't you try to work out engineering solutions that work with nature rather than against nature? Here is a test of each engineering solution: All of its components must be one hundred percent renewable. All effluvia that is poisonous, or does not occur in nature, must be used in some other process until the only effluvia created is completely pure. In effect, pure water or air. All energy used must come from the sun (not fossil sunlight), yet must not negatively affect the environment. For example: tidal energy will change many organisms' environments. Will this negatively affect the environment? All tech must be locally produced. Each micro climate must be assessed to determine optimum human population, the more tech, the less people.
I realize that many technophiles love to point out that anything created by man is "technology," and I agree. But there are qualitative and moral differences between technologies that destroy the environment and those which are part and parcel of the environment. (It is here that many "scientists" and "engineers" love to quibble over definitions.) To these people I say, go ahead, play your games. Meanwhile, the adults will be over here talking about serious things.
Clearly any man-made chemical that leads toward the destruction of an exquisitely complex life-support system is bad. Chlorofluorocarbons are a good example. Carbon in the atmosphere is another. Some people will say, as a few have, that the earth is warming due to natural factors, believing that that gives them leave to produce more CO2. But the logic here falls down. If nature is causing warming, dangerous warming, why in the world would we want to increase that warming by introducing even more carbon into the atmosphere?
The same sort of thinking prevails regarding "technology." The immature "scientists" and "engineers" who would pooh-pooh those who wish to limit technology lay claim to the same absurd argument: to wit, if any human creation is technology, then if we ban the technology we want, we have to ban ALL technology. Again, I have always admitted that my suggestions for sustainability necessarily include technology. The difference is that, in my thinking, technology must be considered within the totality of its purview. A dam built at one end of a river system affects the entire system. That affected river system will affect the entire watershed. That affected watershed will affect neighboring watersheds. And, ultimately, it will affect the entire world. Luckily, for us, the world is a large place and if we were to only build one dam, the averaging effect of this one variable introduced into a sea of variables, would seem to have little consequence. But, we are no longer a planetary population of one billion. We are 6.5-6.8 times that and rising on an exponential curve. Without the mechanical leverage of fossil fuel/sunlight, we will fall back within normal population levels. The only question is will we destroy the earth as our population declines? We have already decimated the seas. Desertification proceeds apace. Water woes are ahead.
Will we continue to work against the flow of nature and by doing so destroy it, or will we embrace our nature, embrace all nature, and in doing so enrich it and ourselves?
While the issue of technology is not a black and white issue, destroying the environment is.
Remember, no environment means no people, let alone tech.
There. I have offered solutions.
I think that my suggestions may help to prevent an engineered apocalypse. (Though I think it may be too late.)
Cherenkov: If you insist on writing nonsense try to keep it brief.
I understood what he wrote. If you don't, just refrain from posting a response at all. Your post has much less value per linear inch than his.
Well, at least Brian lives up to his own credo, and keeps it brief. And Cherenkov was so civil compared to his usually more hard hitting style.
What engineers, and I know that is a gross generalization, are emblematic of is the belief that man is smart. And that belief may need some inspection.
It's based on the fact that we are capable of making things, machines, gadgets, medicines, chemicals, the vast majority of which are pretty blindly assumed to be positive additions to our lives. Whether that is always true remains to be seen, and moreover, the questions regarding their influence on our biosphere stay too far in the background.
Symbolic is that Alan writes:
Now, the response to the first question, instead of YES, of course should be: "maybe that ones that remain". Just saying yes is not very useful, since many bird species are already dead or on the brink of extinction, and many more will go, simply from what lingers of what we have added to their living environments in the past. Their song is over or fading past. And since there is no sign of this coming to a halt, it's safe to assume many more will die off, at an exponential rate.
Relating birds happily singing to stricter CAFE standards is the worst of the engineering view. Looking around me, I can no longer keep up the faith that man is smart; if he were, he'd keep his house in order. But this house I see is in terrible shape. We should really tear it down and build a new one, but we don't have engineers smart enough to do that second part.
The second question, "will it happen in time"?, is linked by Alan to "above-ground" factors, once more a sign of the belief that we can solve this. But you run into the quintessential problem for engineers: they cannot create life, and they cannot bring back the life that's been destroyed, nor the ecosystem it lived in.
The faith-based reasoning (which, ironically, is what the engineers' view boils down to) that we could reverse the wildlife die-off process by fumbling around with solar panels and automobile efficiency standards does not bode well for that wildlife. And not for man either.
Another thing Alan writes:
That is a man-centered view if ever I saw one. And it is this view that has gotten us into the mess we're in, the idea that we're somehow alone here. We need desperately to leave it behind, or we'll engineer ourselves into huge unmarked mass graves. Yes, above ground.
HeIs: Look, mankind is screwing up the planet, has been doing this for a long time and will continue doing this until the planet is pretty well wrecked. I don't disagree with this sentiment and I would be surprised if Alan or anyone else does. Having said this, Alan was talking about possible real life outcomes arising out of global oil depletion. He was discussing the world as it is, not as it should be. If you want endless discussions of how the world "should" be, where does it end? Everybody wants the whole planet to be one big happy Garden of Eden, but what we want has nothing to do with what is coming down the road.
Brian, with all due respect, I think what it comes down to is that Alan proposes a response to the wrecked planet based on trying to solve problems by us continuing to be the same "smart" creatures that caused them in the first place.
I think it's high time to stop that religion, to recognize our limits, to quit thinking we're so d*mned smart, and to realize we're not fit to be the masters of the house. That humility is the best and only hope we have.
I think the problem here is that you damn the entire human race for the failures of some. The alternative is a view where some are capable of making sensible and reasoned decisions WHILST believing that development is a prerequisite for our continued survival as a species. It doesn't view the human race as one undifferentiated mass, just with the misguided in control.
I agree with that view.
Ecology and sustainability as a science defines the consequences of actions and the need to develop sensibly (and get off this planet to continue to grow).
Ecology and sustainability as a religion defines we should go backward towards some arable idyll that never really existed.
Both can generate a situation where we live in balance with our environment, but to me only one is a tenable path to take. Unfortunately we are tending to swerve off the paths entirely - unless we are very lucky.
Agreed.
At PeakOil.com, my sig is a quote from Einstein:
"The problems of today will not be solved by the same thinking that produced the problems in the first place."
Snap! :)
Although I notice the wording is slightly diffrent - but I have seen many versions of it...
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
wording I've seen:
"Everything has changed, except our way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
Please feel free to post an actual rebuttal of what was 'nonsense'.
Cherenkov's post made perfect sense to me. And he's no more verbose than Alan was.
Ah yes, the arbitrary definition of what is and what is not technology. All tools are technology - some technologies may be more dangerous than others, but that is not the issue. Humans need very little in the way of technology to destroy an environment. It is not the technology that is the problem, it is very simply just us. Too many of us is the problem. There is a finite (and I believe quite small) density of population that is "sustainable" (which just means that the damage a population does is not bad enough to matter).
You seem to think that if we abandon tools defined as "technology" by you (and therefore "bad"), then we can all do fine. This is nonsense, as we can destroy entire ecosystems with some wood, leather, skins, and bits of sharpened stones - we've done it before. Appropriate technologies will play a key role in making the transition to a smaller population tolerable, while poor ones will make it worse. The key difference between the two is a societal one, not the technology itself.
That's a point I've wanted to make for quite a while.
All the apparently "anti-technology" folks here seem to think that we could even exist at all without technology. Yet, as you say, even stone flint arrowheads are technology. Human beings are always going to invent, refine and use technology.
The trick is making sure we remain in control of it for as long as we can (which, as I've said elsewhere, will not be indefinitely, but no species lasts indefinitely anyway).
Agreed.
However, the whole idea of working towards having real sustainability (and technology that works in greater harmony with nature rather than against it) also implies a change in us, in our attitudes.
It is always the inner world that must change before the outer world changes though, so in essence we do need to concentrate on changing us first. The rest will follow naturally.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
No disagreement there, but there's little evidence community attitudes are likely to change except in the event of a direct, immediately visible threat to our way of existence. And Peak Oil and GW are just not that direct or immediately visible yet.
CRASH OF WORLD MODELS
Two posters.
Both believe in Peak Oil.
Yet they have very different models of how the world works.
The Engineer (thisisalan) sees all the world as an engineering nail and his engineering skills as the hammer.
The socialist (cherenkov) sees all the world as filled with ignorant humans (including engineers) who cannot see the planet is finite.
This is what we're dealing with folk.
Each one of us has an internal model of how we think the world is put together. Each of us is 101% sure his (or her) model is the correct one. (Me? I'm 102% sure mine is correct.)
Anyway, the grand challenge is to move the models into convergence.
Not only into convergence, but also into one that properly aligns with the laws of nature and the limits of human nature.
When you approach a non-believer (one who does not know of, or believe in Peak Oil) realize that his/her world model is so foreign to your own that the other's model makes thisisalan and cherenkov look like identical twins.
I see people who use the obvious fact that the world is indeed finite to bash engineers who are attempting to try to push to make things better, which might actually work and be implemented---imperfectly---in the real world.
The "more sustainable than thou" coalition appears eager to drown any principally technology and engineering-oriented improvement from generally sympathetic quarters in pettifoggery and hectoring nihilistic criticism. Anybody sufficiently motivated and misanthropic can find an environmental critique for everything except stone age hunter gatherers plus mass cremation for the rest---integrated combined gas cycle of course.
In the actual, real world, this means that the "I love the smell of carbon burning in the morning" crowd wins.
It's good to be honest, thoughtful and careful. That's what good engineers and scientists do. Let's not turn it into "how dare you want to use technology for anything!"
bash engineers who are attempting to try to push to make things better, which might actually work and be implemented---imperfectly---in the real world.
Because sometimes 'imperfect implementation' could really be the end of the world as we've known it.
http://www.saynotogmos.org/klebsiella.html
As an ex-engineer, I come not here to bash the profession or those who toil in it.
However, in retrospect I realize that I was trained to have Tunnel Vision while I was going through engineering school. No, not the choo-choo Charlie tunnel vision of train engineers. What I mean is that electrical engineers are brainwashed into believing that every problem is one that has an electrical solution because that view point is good for the EE community. Chemical engineers are brainwashed into believing that every problem is one that has an chemical solution because that view point is good for the ChemE community. And so on.
Very few engineers receive a cross-disciplinary education where they can hold their own talking social sciences as well as Maxwell's equations. They have been molded into cogs within the machine that simply can't step back to comprehend the whole of the machine.
The biggest laugh of all is that most engineers believe they are "rational" creatures.
Alan wrote:
For those who do not what TLA stands for, well, I think it stands for "Total Lack of Alternatives". Well, no, that's probably not right. It is probably "The Life After (oil)". Well no, that's probably not right either. After all, he is talking about engineers and their view so it must stant for "Total Lack of Ability". Yeah, that's it, Total Lack of Ability.
And I have a Total Lack of Ability to read your mind and understand acronyms that are often used by posters but never defined.
Ron Patterson
For those who do not what TLA stands for, well, I think it stands for "Total Lack of Alternatives"
TLA three Letter Acronym
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-letter_acronym
Actually, the TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) have been much improved today ... most people seem to be trying hard to define them ... my thanks to all for making the effort ... it makes things much easier to read and is altogether more 'professional'.
Xeroid.
There was life before oil -- good life. Bach and Mozart were before oil. Shakespeare and Rubens were before oil. Etc.
There was plenty of imagination then, and I think a case can be made that although there was plenty of misery as well, quite likely the worldwide misery index is worse now than it was pre-oil.
Clearly, there will be an imaginative life after oil. It just won't include noisy, smelly, dirty internal combustion engines on the scale we have been saddled with. Everywhere I walk in my town I watch people using gasoline leaf blowers when a rake would be more useful, and weed-eaters where a scythe or sickle would work better. Kids on tiny gasoline scooters belong on skateboards or bicycles, and jet-skis are an abomination.
The whole enterprise is profit-driven, of course. When it is more profitable to make solar cells, then solar cells will be made-- and by the same people who now sell us gasoline. And as long as the taxpayer subsidises gasoline production in so many ways, it will not pay its own way, but will remain profitable long past its natural life.
And what was the population of the Earth in the days of Bach and Mozart? Do you, Mr. NeverLNG, believe we can return to the days of Bach and Mozart with an earthly population pushing 7 billion or more?
Ron Patterson
Not likely, is it Mr. Darwinian? But what living, breeding population of any species whatever doesn't exceed its resource base and die back?
Also, Mozart and Bach lived on the fruits of empires that were despoiling overseas colonies and abusing natives in remote regions.
But that is putting too fine a point on my point.
There was life before oil -- good life. Bach and Mozart were before oil. Shakespeare and Rubens were before oil. Etc.
And there will still be a 'good life' for the moneyed classes after peak oil.
This good life you speak of before oil - where people lived in one room with a stove and many froze to death in the winter - will return for many with the end of oil.
well, yes.
However, then proportion of people who are miserable now is quite likely higher now than it was in the 17th and 18th centuries -- despite the promise of abundance from cheap oil.
True degradation of the human species started with multiplication of human energy and imagination through industrial processes.
Back To the Future!! -- Long Live the Paleolithic!
NeverLNG wrote:
Not by a long shot. Most of humanity in those days lived very close to edge of survival. In fact that is what kept the population from exploding, deaths equaled births.
Sennely was a typical French village. It was not much better in the cities. People lived close to the starvation level. Children were typically put to work in the mills and factories well before they reached the age of ten. It was a miserable time all over Europe and even worse in most of Asia.
And this is the kind of life we hope to live after fossil fuels, but it will take a long time to get back up to the prosperity level of Sennely. The coming anarchy, the collapse of law and order as we move into a dog eat dog world, will make make life miserable for many decades.
Ron Patterson
we are a long way from the message -- peak oil
The reality is that oil is peaking and declining, much of our way of life can be said to be dependent on that which is declining. That might be a bad thing, but other populations of other organisms crash when they outgrow their resource base, yet they go on as species, and sometimes improve and sometimes, we believe, might develop into new and more fit species. Who knows where human populations will be in 50 years? For sure, very few of us living now will be there.
I do not believe that all pre-industrial populations were miserable, in fact, there is good evidence to the contrary. Misery increased with the advent of industrialization, though no doubt it was present before that, especially in marginally productive areas.
Maternal mortality is a product of poverty and malnutrition -- and is more pronounced in poor groups in industrial civilizations than it is in pre-industrial civilizations that have not outstripped their resource base. Epidemic disease is the result of crowding, poor sanitation and malnutrition -- i.e., cities.
I maintain, and I believe it is supported by evidence, that oil energy has made the rich unbelievably richer, allowed for a temporary middle class, and impoverished the multitudes. Loss of oil will not necessarily make the human race miserable
This is a tough question. Radical as I am, I don't know how to define misery well enough to be sure that the number of miserable has risen as a proportion, not just an absolute.
I like to think that the innate dignity of the human, or his ego, requires that he have some say in the form of his life. So if I lived as a herdsman in 1700, I was short on material goods but had a lot of autonomy. I could beat the crap out of my wife without state punishment. If I was being cheated by my neighbors I could go to tribal authorities where I represented a large % of the political class, instead of modern state authorities where I represented 0.000001% of the citizenry and might lose my case because the state signed some pact with the IMF. Failing that, I'd shoot it out with the guy using unrifled muzzleloaders. Modern people seem frustrated at losing that option, but look at the guns we have now.
Most of all, I think humans could reconcile themselves to "Acts of God", which we now recognize to include many of the ecological restraints to growth. But the rise of Progress by definition involved the canceling of Acts of God with new Acts of Man. So the more people see the world around them as being man-made, the more angry they get that they are deprived. If you're poor because of a drought, religion tells you how to deal with God's will. If you're poor because a banker or foreign investor devalued your life, you want to pick up that muzzleloader and - oh! The man-made state backing that rich guy has man-made Maxim guns. Too bad. You now know your enemies are mortal and defeatable, but you'll have to organize a cataclysmic revolution to get at them.
Instead of a world of thousands of little economic pyramids of serfs, small landowners, and big landlords all trembling under the unstoppable power of God, the global marketplace has piled all those pyramids on top of each other to build one great temple to growth. Like the Tower of Babel, it worships man. But if the American pyramid is on top, imagine how frustrating life must be for those in the pyramids stacked below us, whose states obey America and the banking system, whose status as leading citizens of tiny states has been devalued. If our herdsman's descendant is lucky, his turf is a fraction its former size, the government wants to build a dam to flood him, and Archer Daniels Midland has USAID cash backing to replace it all with a plantation. If he's not lucky, he lives in a refugee camp, or works in a sweatshop or on that plantation, no unions allowed. Cashwise, he may be better off. As a person, well, he's really more like an insect, isn't he?
The reason I can't quite conclude that the % of people in misery is actually greater is that this descendant of herdsmen might feel very differently about his fate if he worked at a factory that built cheap exports to suck out the wealth of former colonial masters, and felt sure that the profits would be used by the state to further stick it to whitey. He might have less autonomy, but nationalism gives him a sugar rush of mass aggregation - our mob will soon rise and crush the other mobs. I must do all in my power to make our mob stronger. And I got a 10% pay raise.
This is why I think workers in China are a hell of a lot more motivated than workers in our stooge states like Mexico. China has more than offset the explosive growth of extreme poverty (<$1/day) in neoliberal Latin America and abandoned Africa. Acts of Man look damn good to them. They really believe they're gonna come out ahead in the progress game.
But you and I know that the oil isn't there to make it happen.