The Oil Drum

This is a guest post by Aaron Newton, who is working with coauthor Sharon Astyk on the forthcoming book, A Nation of Farmers. Aaron contributes at Groovy Green; he also blogs at Powering Down. Aaron is a land planner and garden farmer in suburban North Carolina, seeking ways to transform the current course of human land use development in an effort to prepare for the effects of global oil production peak and its outcome on automotive suburban America.

The notion of our standard work week here in America has remained largely the same since 1938. That was the year the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, standardizing the eight hour work day and the 40 hour work week. Each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday workers all over the country wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast and go to work. But the notion that the majority of the workforce should keep these hours is based on nothing more than an idea put forth but the Federal government almost 70 years ago. To be sure it was an improvement in the lives of many Americans who were at the time forced to work 10+ hours a day, sometimes 6 days of the week. So a 40 hour work week was seen as an upgrade in the lives of many of U.S. citizens. 8 is a nice round number; one third of each 24 hour day. In theory it leaves 8 hours for sleep and 8 hours for other activities like eating, bathing, raising children and enjoying life. But the notion that we should work for 5 of these days in a row before taking 2 for ourselves is, as best I can tell, rather arbitrary.

The idea of a shorter work week is not a new one to anyone old enough to have lived through the energy shocks of the 1970's. It should be fairly obvious to anyone interested in conserving oil that reducing the number of daily commutes per week would reduce the overall demand for oil. There are about 133 million workers in America. Around 80% of them get to work by driving alone in a car. The average commute covers about 16 miles each way.

So let's stop and do some math...and I'll try to argue for 16 reasons why a four day work week is a good idea.

This is Part 2 of my post relating to curriculum for a science peak oil course. It incorporates changes based on many of the comments made below. Part 1 can be found here. A PDF version which contains both Part 1 and Part 2 can be found at this link.

One theme of Part 2 is energy, and why energy is important to our standard of living. I try to compare the energy in oil to the energy in food. To make the comparison more understandable, I convert energy to kilocalories, since most people are familiar with calories in food. I also point out the errors of economists, both in the text and in the discussion questions at the end.

Another theme is the special characteristics of oil, and why oil is valued as a liquid fuel. I think we are sometimes kind of fuzzy in our thinking about substitutes for liquid fuel. We don't think about our built infrastructure, and just assume electricity can be substituted for oil when it really is at best a very long-term alternative. I discuss various alternatives including battery-operated cars, hydrogen, and conservation. The two sections relating to corn ethanol could probably be a post of their own.

I also talk about the impact of oil on prices. I make the point that big increases in petroleum prices are likely, with only a small shortage of oil. I also point our that food prices are likely to increase, partly because of the use of petroleum for food production, and partly because corn for ethanol competes with food for land use.

At the beginning of 2007, as I was preparing to move to Scotland, I made a number of resolutions:

My Energy Resolutions for 2007

I updated the story once in Walking the Talk.

Time to look back and see how I did. (Also, be sure to give me your book recommendations for 2008. It's been a while since we discussed books.)

This is the fourth segment on the ASPO Conference and follows a report on the Workshop day, the first morning report, and the rest of Thursday. We pick up on Friday morning, which began with a talk by Peter Tertzakian on the impact of resource constraints. He began by showing the rate at which the electric light was adopted into American homes, noting that essentially 100% was not reached until the 1980’s from inception in 1890. Initially the rate of change was very slow. To make a change there has to be a compelling alternative at a cheaper price, and yet as energy consumption has grown there has been a pattern. First the economy grows, then pressure starts to build up, then there is a breaking point, with the introduction of “a magic bullet”, and the cycle restarts. We have reached a point where the cycle has reached the breaking point – and now we look for the magic bullet. He pointed out that this occurred early in Japan in the 1970’s, and that they made the switch and by adding LNG and nuclear they have been able to stabilize oil consumption.

Oil, however, has many attractive properties, so why should we now change from it? From the 1908 arrival of the model T car growth has led us to congestion, urban growth and commuting times that have increased more than 20%. And change is not necessarily productive, after buying fluorescent lights, he now leaves them on longer.

The problem is one of scale, with few realizing not only the size of the current problem but also that to come. In India Tata Motors are about to introduce a car that will cost a Lakh (100,000 rupees or $2,500) which can be anticipated to become an enormous success with their growing middle class, and concurrently a large fuel demand generator. Within the $65 trillion world GDP the largest growth rates are in the developing countries.

The notion of our standard work week here in America has remained largely the same since 1938. That was the year the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, standardizing the eight hour work day and the 40 hour work week. Each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday workers all over the country wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast and go to work. But the notion that the majority of the workforce should keep these hours is based on nothing more than an idea put forth but the Federal government almost 70 years ago. To be sure it was an improvement in the lives of many Americans who were at the time forced to work 10+ hours a day, sometimes 6 days of the week. So a 40 hour work week was seen as an upgrade in the lives of many of U.S. citizens. 8 is a nice round number; one third of each 24 hour day. In theory it leaves 8 hours for sleep and 8 hours for other activities like eating, bathing, raising children and enjoying life. But the notion that we should work for 5 of these days in a row before taking 2 for ourselves is, as best I can tell, rather arbitrary.

The idea of a shorter work week is not a new one to anyone old enough to have lived through the energy shocks of the 1970's. It should be fairly obvious to anyone interested in conserving oil that reducing the number of daily commutes per week would reduce the overall demand for oil. There are about 133 million workers in America. Around 80% of them get to work by driving alone in a car. The average commute covers about 16 miles each way.

So let's stop and do some math...and I'll try to argue for 16 reasons why a four day work week is a good idea.

Imagine for a moment that we bought food in the way we currently buy electricity. We might order from a supply list with no prices marked and have whatever we fancied delivered to our door whenever we pleased. A single, un-itemized bill would arrive in the mail once every couple of months covering all the food ordered and delivered during the billing period. How would our food bills probably compare to what they are currently? How would we go about reducing our food bill in order to save money when we know nothing about the cost of each act of consumption? If the 'Ministry of Food Supply' were worried about the amount of food available, reliance on expensive imports or whether the delivery system might not be up to the task, what could they do to encourage a 'food conservation culture'?

What is missing from our hypothetical scenario is real-time price feedback, which would allow consumers to take responsibility for their own consumption. Its absence makes the task of trying to reduce demand much more difficult, both for consumers and for those trying to manage the supply. If we are ever to introduce a conservation culture, the tradition of passive consumption must first be challenged.

This is a guest post by chrisale.

A major policy speech introducing the new plan by the Conservative Party of Canada to reduce Canadian GHG emissions has been leaked to the Opposition Liberals... and in an attempt to avoid influencing the markets before they open today (Wednesday), the crux of the plan has been released.

The CBC reports:

The speech says that by 2020, the government hopes it will have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 150 million tonnes.

It also says the government will explore emission credit trading with the U.S. and Mexico, something they have been reluctant to embrace in the past.

"The Tory government intends to stop the rise of greenhouse gases in three to five years".

I did not get to watch the first debate of the Democratic candidates for president, but I have seen some coverage of it. The Wall Street Journal's Energy Roundup had a write-up on it a couple of days ago:

Leavin’ on Eight Jet Planes…

From the coverage I have seen, the answers to questions on energy and the environment were underwhelming. Let's look at what they did say, and what I wish they would have said.

This is a guest post from Jeff Vail.

Will Peak Oil lead to inflation, deflation, or some variant thereof? I don’t claim to know the answer—in fact, I’d argue that anyone who "knows" the answer is discussing theology, not economics. My hope here is to present a case for Peak Oil resulting in inflation, and to spark a centralized debate on the topic. Allow me one courtesy: for the purposes of this discussion, assume that we are not able to sufficiently mitigate the effects of Peak Oil through conservation, efficiency, or alternative energy sources. Assume that Peak Oil will have significant, negative economic effects—the issue that we are discussing here is whether those negative effects will be inflationary or deflationary. I will focus my discussion on effects on the United States, but thoughts on the inflation/deflation debate outside the US are certainly welcome.

The good folks at NYC's PlaNYC 2030 sustainability office have just released a series of short powerpoint presentations establishing a baseline on a variety of sustainability metrics and their analysis on future trends.

It paints a somewhat troubling picture of where we are now and where we are headed. Moreover, only some of this is within our own control. Because Global Warming is by definition not locally controlled, NYC might do everything in its power and still face major consequences of rising sea levels along with many other global port cities. In many senses though the point is not that NYC will be the decisive place where carbon reductions are found and the battle is won. Rather it's to show that NYC is doing more part in the fight against global warming and can continue to make great strides in reducing it's contribution. My hope is that NYC can be a shining light in the fight to reduce greenhouse gases, a showcase city proving that reductions in Greenhouse gases are not just possible, but economically efficient and increase quality of life. And when I say NYC, I'm really talking mostly about the infrastructure built in the 19th Century (dense, walkable, mixed use land use) and early 20th Century (extensive mass transit system complete with subways, regional train system and trolleys).