An accomplished leftist challenges "Peak Oil"-- a myth by the Right

[DerekG]

Disclaimer: I still don't know whether I agree with McGowan or Ruppert, but I deem it necessary to introduce this idea to a forum comprised of people who accept "Peak Oil" without question.


There is a possibility that we're being played for fools, folks.

Earlier this year, there took place an intense denunciation of the "Peak Oil" theory by author David McGowan, a prophetic voice who penned "Derailing Democracy" and "Understanding the F-Word: American Fascism and the Politics of Illusion." On his website, the Center for an Informed America, McGowan produced a series of essays, filled with sources, which challenged the Western notion that oil is a finite resource (a fossil fuel), and that progressives like Mike Ruppert were being duped by the establishment into accepting a theory that would allow the oil industry to justify raising the price of oil. In addition, McGowan claims these artificial shortages would provide a justification for the conquest of the Middle East--with the blessings of the American people, who falsely believe oil is running out.

In short: oil is abiotic; and the military-industrial complex, far from being ignorant, is aware of this, but harbors ulterior motives (ie: justifying the bloated defense budget).

McGowan was met with great resistance by Ruppert and his allies at From the Wilderness; yet over the course of time, it was the "Peak Oil" crowd who eschewed the need for rational debate, not McGowan.


There are a series of essays centering on this topic at http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/ beginning with #52. Here's an exerpt from "Cop vs. CIA":

This story really begins in 1946, just after the close of World War II, which had illustrated quite effectively that oil was integral to waging modern, mechanized warfare. Stalin, recognizing the importance of oil, and recognizing also that the Soviet Union would have to be self sufficient, launched a massive scientific undertaking that has been compared, in its scale, to the Manhattan Project. The goal of the Soviet project was to study every aspect of petroleum, including how it is created, how reserves are generated, and how to best pursue petroleum exploration and extraction.

The challenge was taken up by a wide range of scientific disciplines, with hundreds of the top professionals in their fields contributing to the body of scientific research. By 1951, what has been called the Modern Russian-Ukrainian Theory of Deep, Abiotic Petroleum Origins was born. A healthy amount of scientific debate followed for the next couple of decades, during which time the theory, initially formulated by geologists, based on observational data, was validated through the rigorous quantitative work of chemists, physicists and thermodynamicists. For the last couple of decades, the theory has been accepted as established fact by virtually the entire scientific community of the (former) Soviet Union. It is backed up by literally thousands of published studies in prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journals.

For over fifty years, Russian and Ukrainian scientists have added to this body of research and refined the Russian-Ukrainian theories. And for over fifty years, not a word of it has been published in the English language (except for a fairly recent, bastardized version published by astronomer Thomas Gold, who somehow forgot to credit the hundreds of scientists whose research he stole and then misrepresented).

--snip--

The reality is that the attacks of September 11, and the post-September 11 military ventures, cannot possibly be manifestations of 'Peak Oil' because the entire concept of "Peak Oil' is meaningless if oil is not a finite resource. I am not saying, however, that oil and gas were not key factors behind the military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The distinction that I am making is that it is not about need (case in point: there is certainly nothing in Haiti that we need). It is, as always, about greed. Greed and control -- control of the output of oil fields that will continue to yield oil long after reserves should have run dry.

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr52.html

[Feanorcurufinwe]

1. 'which challenged the Western notion that oil is a finite resource'

I kinda lost interest after that...

Maybe he's figured out how to grow more oil, but if so, I'll probably hear about it eventually....

[htuttle]

2. I have yet to see any real evidence of this 'abiotic oil' theory

And I'd treat any science that came out of the Soviet Union in the 50's with extreme skepticism. Science was highly politicized there at the time (something of an understatement).

The shortages we are seeing now have nothing to do with how much is left in the ground. The problem now is that we can't get enough out of the ground everyday to supply what people want to burn everyday. It matters not whether oil is abiotic or not. If we are using more than we can produce, there's a shortage.

[MadHound]

3. It doesn't matter friend whether Peak Oil is a myth or not

We are still left with the stark reality that our economy is being held hostage by the oil barons and their ME suppliers. We are still polluting the air, water and land with a toxic substance. We still need to build an energy future that is cheaper, self sustaining, renewable, and clean. Quite frankly if Peak Oil, myth or reality, hastens the realization of these facts, then quite frankly I hope everybody believes in it, for that will just hasten a brighter future.

[DerekG]

9. You miss McGowan's point

"Quite frankly if Peak Oil, myth or reality, hastens the realization of these facts, then quite frankly I hope everybody believes in it, for that will just hasten a brighter future."

The danger McGowan is addressing is that "Peak Oil" may prolong the American Empire--not cut it short. If a shortage is fomented, it is not unrealistic to believe that the majority of Americans would endorse the government's militaristic aims (which, again, has more to do with maintaining the defense budget and preserving contracts).

If gas prices climb to such obscene heights, wouldn't the American people support any action that would counter said development?

Does a violent takeover of the Middle East sound so terrible if we're duped into believing our consumerist lifestyle is at risk?

[MadHound]

12. I think that it would backfire on them in that case

Too many influential people are aware of the potential energy held in such renewable resources as bio mass, bio diesel, solar, etc. If oil prices went through the roof, some entrepneuring soul would start marketing it. Hell, I'm even thinking about marketing biodiesel to my farming neighbors. If dino diesel gets even a quarter per gallon higher, it would be quite profitable.

I actually have faith in the American people. If oil went through the roof, they would push for more renewable resources, conservation, etc, not going to war for oil. This didn't happen in the oil shocks of the seventies, and it won't happen now.

[DerekG]

14. You may be right

But I have a somewhat darker view of humanity: many lack the character to rise above their own self-interest. If the takeover of the Middle East is perceived as a war of necessity, I think a good portion of the citizenry would support it.

I hope you're right, though.

[Dhalgren]

4. I think that there are at least a couple of questions that pop up.

What is the rate of abiotic generation? How does that generation rate compare to the rate of consumption? There is no doubt that the oil fields of Texas and Oklahoma have all but dried up; if left alone, will those fields become replenished? And at what rate?

I think that if "peak oil" helps us ween ourselves from petroleum, it is a good thing - regardless of whether the vaunted Soviet scientific corps is right or wrong.

[yella_dawg]

11. I grew up in the Texas oil fields.

If they're regenerating, they're damned slow about it. This theory is crap that goes around now and then.

Big question, what's the raw materials for regenerating the gazillions of tons of oil we're ripping out of the ground, water?

[DerekG]

13. McGowan cites, among other sources, a review from The Economist

From "The Argument Needs Oiling," The Economist, August 15, 2002:

In 1951, however, a group of Soviet scientists led by Nikolai Kudryavtsev claimed that this theory of oil production was fiction. They suggested that hydrocarbons, the principal molecular constituents of oil, are generated deep within the earth from inorganic materials. Few people outside Russia listened. But one who did was J. F. Kenney, an American who today works for the Russian Academy of Sciences and is also chief executive of Gas Resources Corporation in Houston, Texas. He says it is nonsense to believe that oil derives from “squashed fish and putrefied cabbages.” This is a brave claim to make when the overwhelming majority of petroleum geologists subscribe to the biological theory of origin. But Dr Kenney has evidence to support his argument.
In this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he claims to establish that it is energetically impossible for alkanes, one of the main types of hydrocarbon molecule in crude oil, to evolve from biological precursors at the depths where reservoirs have typically been found and plundered. He has developed a mathematical model incorporating quantum mechanics, statistics and thermodynamics which predicts the behaviour of a hydrocarbon system. The complex mixture of straight-chain and branched alkane molecules found in crude oil could, according to his calculations, have come into existence only at extremely high temperatures and pressures—far higher than those found in the earth's crust, where the orthodox theory claims they are formed.
To back up this idea, he has shown that a cocktail of alkanes (methane, hexane, octane and so on) similar to that in natural oil is produced when a mixture of calcium carbonate, water and iron oxide is heated to 1,500° C and crushed with the weight of 50,000 atmospheres. This experiment reproduces the conditions in the earth's upper mantle, 100 km below the surface, and so suggests that oil could be produced there from completely inorganic sources.

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr52.html

[yella_dawg]

15. Okay, cool.

But that implies that oil production, whatever the input, is still a geological process, operating on geological time scales. Which explains why the oil royalties that supported my grandfather in retirement now buy me dinner and a movie a couple of times a year.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. Sorry, but this is junk science.

The Russian theories of abiogenesis of complex hydrocarbons are not taken seriously in the West. The only American scientist of any note who is a proponent of the theory is one Dr. Thomas Gold, who is by training an astrophysicist, NOT a geologist.

Carbon analysis of crude petroleum indicates a biological origin, as there are certain isotopes present in percentages which make abiotic origin implausible at best.

And even assuming the theory WERE correct, "peak oil" would STILL be a reality, due to the geological timescale required to abiotically generate enough petroleum to refill reservoirs.

I came across this same information about two years ago, and a week of serious research was enough to convince me of its lack of merit.

[Minstrel Boy]

6. Ruppert responds to McGowan:

(Me, I'll go with Ruppert. Ignoring peak oil is, I think, akin to pretending global warming isn't real, either. And really, when we're talking about geology, what kind of credential is "accomplished leftist"? He could be Karl friggin' Marx and he'd still be wrong.)

How interesting and how revealing that in posting your onerous rebuttal and pseudo-acceptance of my debate challenge, you sent it out to everyone but me. This is quite revealing as I sent my challenge directly to you personally. I guess you were assuming that either: a), I am an avid reader of your web site, or; b) that I would be unaware of your postings so that you could then misinterpret my non-response as some kind of evasive behavior. The psychology of your move is quite revealing. It shows that you have no faith in your own arguments and that you are interested only in holding a public stage and my time for as long as you possibly can or until your apparently insatiable ego is gratified. You know what my email address is.

In the two-plus years since 9/11 an increasingly sophisticated body of researchers has become aware of tactics intended to stall and distract, rather than educate. Your recent postings seem to indicate that this argument is to be won by the sheer number of words that can be thrown at the subject as opposed to arguments addressing an issue of the utmost importance to mankind. Not only have I, but a great many others, become wise to such tactics, we have learned to counter them. The debate you have assumptively proposed (as opposed to the one I challenged you with) is one which will allow you to occupy center stage for endless hours while engaging in the most insidious and duplicitous kinds of sophistry which would never be permitted in a courtroom or in a properly moderated debate, governed by rules of critical thinking and analysis.

You have employed dishonesty, straw arguments, and libelous character assassinations instead of addressing the only question that matters to anybody. That question - Is abiotic petroleum and natural gas readily available and making its way into commercial use in sufficient quantities to establish that there is no imminent energy shortage? - is rightly the only question any of us should give a damn about. That is the question for debate.

Instead you are dancing around the issue with falsehoods which are typified (as only one example) by your statement that I and a number of petroleum scientists argue that oil is derived from dinosaurs. neither I nor any reputable scientist - especially those who are Warning of Peak Oil -- has ever made such a claim. We all gagged as you put these words in our mouths. Yet it suits your purpose to falsify our statements and then defeat words which we never uttered to prove a point and thus boost your ego. You remind me of Norman Solomon. I don't participate in these kinds of debates. The Arabs have a saying that one should never argue with a fool or a liar because people might not be able to tell the difference.

http://www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/FramingTheDebateOnAbioticOilByMikeRuppert.htm


And from a rebuttal of "abiotic oil" by Dale Allen Pfeiffer:


There is some speculation that oil is abiotic in origin -- generally asserting that oil is formed from magma instead of an organic origin. These ideas are really groundless. All unrefined oil carries microscopic evidence of the organisms from which it was formed. These organisms can be traced through the fossil record to specific time periods when quantities of oil were formed.

Likewise, there are two primal energy forces operating on this planet, and all forms of energy descend from one of these two. The first is the internal form of energy heating the Earth's interior. This primal energy comes from radioactive decay and from the heat energy originally generated during accretion of the planet some 4.6 billion years ago. There are no known mechanisms for transferring this internal energy into any secondary energy source. And the chemistry of magma does not compare to the chemistry of hydrocarbons. Magma is lacking in carbon compounds, and hydrocarbons are lacking in silicates. If hydrocarbons were generated from magma, then you would expect to see some closer kinship in their chemistry.

...

Finally, because oil generation is in part a geological process, it proceeds at an extremely slow rate from our human perspective. Geological processes take place over a different frame of time than human events. It is for this reason that when geologists say that the San Andreas fault is due for a powerful earthquake, they mean any time in the next million years -- probably less. Geological processes move exceedingly slow.

It is a simple geological fact that the oil we are using up at an alarming rate today will not be replaced within our lifetime -- or within many lifetimes. That is why hydrocarbons are called non-renewable resources. Capped wells may appear to refill after a few years, but they are not regenerating. It is simply an effect of oil slowly migrating through pore spaces from areas of high pressure to the low-pressure area of the drill hole. If this oil is drawn out, it will take even longer for the hole to refill again. Oil is a non-renewable resource generated and deposited under special biological and geological conditions.
http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/peakoil1.html

[enki23]

7. once again: abiotic oil = load of complete horseshit

.

[maxsolomon]

8. let the muddying of the waters begin

energy & population are the 2 most pressing issues of the 21st century.

this bs merely makes the inevitable medicine harsher & less palatable.

[JohnyCanuck]

10. If Peak Oil is false,

then we're probably screwed anyway unless we make some very drastic changes to our lifestyles and agricultural practices and curb our expanding populations (which will require a major think of how we plan and run our economies). See the article Eating Fossil Fuels by Dale Allen Pfeifer.

The optimists among us like to point to dire predictions made by the Club of Rome 30 years ago about the limits to growth and warnings of population collapses, wars etc. brought on by a world in which the population has outstripped its resource base and say that the Club of Rome was proven wrong as their worst fears never materialized, implying that the current predictors of doom and gloom will likely be proven incorrect as well. My perspective is that the Club of Rome was incorrect in their timeline but not in their vision of what the end game would be like when we start running short of resources and competition for scarcer resources plays an increasingly important role in international relations.

Eating Fossil Fuels, makes the point that it was through massively increasing fossil fuel based energy inputs to fuel the Green Revolution that the consequences of living in a world where the population is outstripping its agricultural resource base were postponed for a time. The current industrial based, energy and water intensive, monocropping agricultural paradigm combined with ever increasing populations are not sustainable anyway. We have reached the point of diminishing returns where increasing inputs of energy produce less and less increase in outputs of crops. Should Peak Oil hit us sooner than expected, it will only make the final reckoning come that much sooner. In a way Peak Oil, could be doing us a favour by forcing us to confront reality and adapt to more sustainable lifestyles and economies before the ultimate final disater hits (running out of productive agricultural land, topsoil and water).


Eating Fossil Fuels

by Dale Allen Pfeiffer

© Copyright 2004, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

October 3 , 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW) -- Human beings (like all other animals) draw their energy from the food they eat. Until the last century, all of the food energy available on this planet was derived from the sun through photosynthesis. Either you ate plants or you ate animals that fed on plants, but the energy in your food was ultimately derived from the sun.

It would have been absurd to think that we would one day run out of sunshine. No, sunshine was an abundant, renewable resource, and the process of photosynthesis fed all life on this planet. It also set a limit on the amount of food that could be generated at any one time, and therefore placed a limit upon population growth. Solar energy has a limited rate of flow into this planet. To increase your food production, you had to increase the acreage under cultivation, and displace your competitors. There was no other way to increase the amount of energy available for food production. Human population grew by displacing everything else and appropriating more and more of the available solar energy.

The need to expand agricultural production was one of the motive causes behind most of the wars in recorded history, along with expansion of the energy base (and agricultural production is truly an essential portion of the energy base). And when Europeans could no longer expand cultivation, they began the task of conquering the world. Explorers were followed by conquistadors and traders and settlers. The declared reasons for expansion may have been trade, avarice, empire or simply curiosity, but at its base, it was all about the expansion of agricultural productivity. Wherever explorers and conquistadors traveled, they may have carried off loot, but they left plantations. And settlers toiled to clear land and establish their own homestead. This conquest and expansion went on until there was no place left for further expansion. Certainly, to this day, landowners and farmers fight to claim still more land for agricultural productivity, but they are fighting over crumbs. Today, virtually all of the productive land on this planet is being exploited by agriculture. What remains unused is too steep, too wet, too dry or lacking in soil nutrients.1

Just when agricultural output could expand no more by increasing acreage, new innovations made possible a more thorough exploitation of the acreage already available. The process of “pest” displacement and appropriation for agriculture accelerated with the industrial revolution as the mechanization of agriculture hastened the clearing and tilling of land and augmented the amount of farmland which could be tended by one person. With every increase in food production, the human population grew apace.

At present, nearly 40% of all land-based photosynthetic capability has been appropriated by human beings.2 In the United States we divert more than half of the energy captured by photosynthesis.3 We have taken over all the prime real estate on this planet. The rest of nature is forced to make due with what is left. Plainly, this is one of the major factors in species extinctions and in ecosystem stress.

The Green Revolution

In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a drastic transformation commonly referred to as the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution resulted in the industrialization of agriculture. Part of the advance resulted from new hybrid food plants, leading to more productive food crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%.4 That is a tremendous increase in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.

The Green Revolution increased the energy flow to agriculture by an average of 50 times the energy input of traditional agriculture.5 In the most extreme cases, energy consumption by agriculture has increased 100 fold or more.6

In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).7 Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:

· 31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer

· 19% for the operation of field machinery

· 16% for transportation

· 13% for irrigation

· 08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)

· 05% for crop drying

· 05% for pesticide production

· 08% miscellaneous8

Energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets, and household cooking are not considered in these figures.

To give the reader an idea of the energy intensiveness of modern agriculture, production of one kilogram of nitrogen for fertilizer requires the energy equivalent of from 1.4 to 1.8 liters of diesel fuel. This is not considering the natural gas feedstock.9 According to The Fertilizer Institute (http://www.tfi.org), in the year from June 30 2001 until June 30 2002 the United States used 12,009,300 short tons of nitrogen fertilizer.10 Using the low figure of 1.4 liters diesel equivalent per kilogram of nitrogen, this equates to the energy content of 15.3 billion liters of diesel fuel, or 96.2 million barrels.

Of course, this is only a rough comparison to aid comprehension of the energy requirements for modern agriculture.

In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold.11 Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt.

Fossil Fuel Costs

Solar energy is a renewable resource limited only by the inflow rate from the sun to the earth. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are a stock-type resource that can be exploited at a nearly limitless rate. However, on a human timescale, fossil fuels are nonrenewable. They represent a planetary energy deposit which we can draw from at any rate we wish, but which will eventually be exhausted without renewal. The Green Revolution tapped into this energy deposit and used it to increase agricultural production.

Total fossil fuel use in the United States has increased 20-fold in the last 4 decades. In the US, we consume 20 to 30 times more fossil fuel energy per capita than people in developing nations. Agriculture directly accounts for 17% of all the energy used in this country.12 As of 1990, we were using approximately 1,000 liters (6.41 barrels) of oil to produce food of one hectare of land.13

In 1994, David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro estimated the output/input ratio of agriculture to be around 1.4.14 For 0.7 Kilogram-Calories (kcal) of fossil energy consumed, U.S. agriculture produced 1 kcal of food. The input figure for this ratio was based on FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) statistics, which consider only fertilizers (without including fertilizer feedstock), irrigation, pesticides (without including pesticide feedstock), and machinery and fuel for field operations. Other agricultural energy inputs not considered were energy and machinery for drying crops, transportation for inputs and outputs to and from the farm, electricity, and construction and maintenance of farm buildings and infrastructures. Adding in estimates for these energy costs brought the input/output energy ratio down to 1.15 Yet this does not include the energy expense of packaging, delivery to retail outlets, refrigeration or household cooking.

In a subsequent study completed later that same year (1994), Giampietro and Pimentel managed to derive a more accurate ratio of the net fossil fuel energy ratio of agriculture.16 In this study, the authors defined two separate forms of energy input: Endosomatic energy and Exosomatic energy. Endosomatic energy is generated through the metabolic transformation of food energy into muscle energy in the human body. Exosomatic energy is generated by transforming energy outside of the human body, such as burning gasoline in a tractor. This assessment allowed the authors to look at fossil fuel input alone and in ratio to other inputs.

Prior to the industrial revolution, virtually 100% of both endosomatic and exosomatic energy was solar driven. Fossil fuels now represent 90% of the exosomatic energy used in the United States and other developed countries.17 The typical exo/endo ratio of pre-industrial, solar powered societies is about 4 to 1. The ratio has changed tenfold in developed countries, climbing to 40 to 1. And in the United States it is more than 90 to 1.18 The nature of the way we use endosomatic energy has changed as well.

The vast majority of endosomatic energy is no longer expended to deliver power for direct economic processes. Now the majority of endosomatic energy is utilized to generate the flow of information directing the flow of exosomatic energy driving machines. Considering the 90/1 exo/endo ratio in the United States, each endosomatic kcal of energy expended in the US induces the circulation of 90 kcal of exosomatic energy. As an example, a small gasoline engine can convert the 38,000 kcal in one gallon of gasoline into 8.8 KWh (Kilowatt hours), which equates to about 3 weeks of work for one human being.19

In their refined study, Giampietro and Pimentel found that 10 kcal of exosomatic energy are required to produce 1 kcal of food delivered to the consumer in the U.S. food system. This includes packaging and all delivery expenses, but excludes household cooking).20 The U.S. food system consumes ten times more energy than it produces in food energy. This disparity is made possible by nonrenewable fossil fuel stocks.

Assuming a figure of 2,500 kcal per capita for the daily diet in the United States, the 10/1 ratio translates into a cost of 35,000 kcal of exosomatic energy per capita each day. However, considering that the average return on one hour of endosomatic labor in the U.S. is about 100,000 kcal of exosomatic energy, the flow of exosomatic energy required to supply the daily diet is achieved in only 20 minutes of labor in our current system. Unfortunately, if you remove fossil fuels from the equation, the daily diet will require 111 hours of endosomatic labor per capita; that is, the current U.S. daily diet would require nearly three weeks of labor per capita to produce.

Quite plainly, as fossil fuel production begins to decline within the next decade, there will be less energy available for the production of food.

Soil, Cropland and Water

Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. Technologically-enhanced agriculture has augmented soil erosion, polluted and overdrawn groundwater and surface water, and even (largely due to increased pesticide use) caused serious public health and environmental problems. Soil erosion, overtaxed cropland and water resource overdraft in turn lead to even greater use of fossil fuels and hydrocarbon products. More hydrocarbon-based fertilizers must be applied, along with more pesticides; irrigation water requires more energy to pump; and fossil fuels are used to process polluted water.

It takes 500 years to replace 1 inch of topsoil.21 In a natural environment, topsoil is built up by decaying plant matter and weathering rock, and it is protected from erosion by growing plants. In soil made susceptible by agriculture, erosion is reducing productivity up to 65% each year.22 Former prairie lands, which constitute the bread basket of the United States, have lost one half of their topsoil after farming for about 100 years. This soil is eroding 30 times faster than the natural formation rate.23 Food crops are much hungrier than the natural grasses that once covered the Great Plains. As a result, the remaining topsoil is increasingly depleted of nutrients. Soil erosion and mineral depletion removes about $20 billion worth of plant nutrients from U.S. agricultural soils every year.24 Much of the soil in the Great Plains is little more than a sponge into which we must pour hydrocarbon-based fertilizers in order to produce crops.

Every year in the U.S., more than 2 million acres of cropland are lost to erosion, salinization and water logging. On top of this, urbanization, road building, and industry claim another 1 million acres annually from farmland.24 Approximately three-quarters of the land area in the United States is devoted to agriculture and commercial forestry.25 The expanding human population is putting increasing pressure on land availability. Incidentally, only a small portion of U.S. land area remains available for the solar energy technologies necessary to support a solar energy-based economy. The land area for harvesting biomass is likewise limited. For this reason, the development of solar energy or biomass must be at the expense of agriculture.

Modern agriculture also places a strain on our water resources. Agriculture consumes fully 85% of all U.S. freshwater resources.26 Overdraft is occurring from many surface water resources, especially in the west and south. The typical example is the Colorado River, which is diverted to a trickle by the time it reaches the Pacific. Yet surface water only supplies 60% of the water used in irrigation. The remainder, and in some places the majority of water for irrigation, comes from ground water aquifers. Ground water is recharged slowly by the percolation of rainwater through the earth's crust. Less than 0.1% of the stored ground water mined annually is replaced by rainfall.27 The great Ogallala aquifer that supplies agriculture, industry and home use in much of the southern and central plains states has an annual overdraft up to 160% above its recharge rate. The Ogallala aquifer will become unproductive in a matter of decades.28

We can illustrate the demand that modern agriculture places on water resources by looking at a farmland producing corn. A corn crop that produces 118 bushels/acre/year requires more than 500,000 gallons/acre of water during the growing season. The production of 1 pound of maize requires 1,400 pounds (or 175 gallons) of water.29 Unless something is done to lower these consumption rates, modern agriculture will help to propel the United States into a water crisis.

In the last two decades, the use of hydrocarbon-based pesticides in the U.S. has increased 33-fold, yet each year we lose more crops to pests.30 This is the result of the abandonment of traditional crop rotation practices. Nearly 50% of U.S. corn land is grown continuously as a monoculture.31 This results in an increase in corn pests, which in turn requires the use of more pesticides. Pesticide use on corn crops had increased 1,000-fold even before the introduction of genetically engineered, pesticide resistant corn. However, corn losses have still risen 4-fold.32

Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. It is damaging the land, draining water supplies and polluting the environment. And all of this requires more and more fossil fuel input to pump irrigation water, to replace nutrients, to provide pest protection, to remediate the environment and simply to hold crop production at a constant. Yet this necessary fossil fuel input is going to crash headlong into declining fossil fuel production.

US Consumption

In the United States, each person consumes an average of 2,175 pounds of food per person per year. This provides the U.S. consumer with an average daily energy intake of 3,600 Calories. The world average is 2,700 Calories per day.33 Fully 19% of the U.S. caloric intake comes from fast food. Fast food accounts for 34% of the total food consumption for the average U.S. citizen. The average citizen dines out for one meal out of four.34

One third of the caloric intake of the average American comes from animal sources (including dairy products), totaling 800 pounds per person per year. This diet means that U.S. citizens derive 40% of their calories from fat-nearly half of their diet. 35

Americans are also grand consumers of water. As of one decade ago, Americans were consuming 1,450 gallons/day/capita (g/d/c), with the largest amount expended on agriculture. Allowing for projected population increase, consumption by 2050 is projected at 700 g/d/c, which hydrologists consider to be minimal for human needs.36 This is without taking into consideration declining fossil fuel production.

To provide all of this food requires the application of 0.6 million metric tons of pesticides in North America per year. This is over one fifth of the total annual world pesticide use, estimated at 2.5 million tons.37 Worldwide, more nitrogen fertilizer is used per year than can be supplied through natural sources. Likewise, water is pumped out of underground aquifers at a much higher rate than it is recharged. And stocks of important minerals, such as phosphorus and potassium, are quickly approaching exhaustion.38

Total U.S. energy consumption is more than three times the amount of solar energy harvested as crop and forest products. The United States consumes 40% more energy annually than the total amount of solar energy captured yearly by all U.S. plant biomass. Per capita use of fossil energy in North America is five times the world average.39

Our prosperity is built on the principal of exhausting the world's resources as quickly as possible, without any thought to our neighbors, all the other life on this planet, or our children.

Population & Sustainability

Considering a growth rate of 1.1% per year, the U.S. population is projected to double by 2050. As the population expands, an estimated one acre of land will be lost for every person added to the U.S. population. Currently, there are 1.8 acres of farmland available to grow food for each U.S. citizen. By 2050, this will decrease to 0.6 acres. 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current dietary standards.40

Presently, only two nations on the planet are major exporters of grain: the United States and Canada.41 By 2025, it is expected that the U.S. will cease to be a food exporter due to domestic demand. The impact on the U.S. economy could be devastating, as food exports earn $40 billion for the U.S. annually. More importantly, millions of people around the world could starve to death without U.S. food exports.42

Domestically, 34.6 million people are living in poverty as of 2002 census data.43 And this number is continuing to grow at an alarming rate. Too many of these people do not have a sufficient diet. As the situation worsens, this number will increase and the United States will witness growing numbers of starvation fatalities.

There are some things that we can do to at least alleviate this tragedy. It is suggested that streamlining agriculture to get rid of losses, waste and mismanagement might cut the energy inputs for food production by up to one-half.35 In place of fossil fuel-based fertilizers, we could utilize livestock manures that are now wasted. It is estimated that livestock manures contain 5 times the amount of fertilizer currently used each year.36 Perhaps most effective would be to eliminate meat from our diet altogether.37

Mario Giampietro and David Pimentel postulate that a sustainable food system is possible only if four conditions are met:

1. Environmentally sound agricultural technologies must be implemented.

2. Renewable energy technologies must be put into place.

3. Major increases in energy efficiency must reduce exosomatic energy consumption per capita.

4. Population size and consumption must be compatible with maintaining the stability of environmental processes.38

Providing that the first three conditions are met, with a reduction to less than half of the exosomatic energy consumption per capita, the authors place the maximum population for a sustainable economy at 200 million.39 Several other studies have produced figures within this ballpark (Energy and Population, Werbos, Paul J. http://www.dieoff.com/page63.htm; Impact of Population Growth on Food Supplies and Environment, Pimentel, David, et al. http://www.dieoff.com/page57.htm).

Given that the current U.S. population is in excess of 292 million, 40 that would mean a reduction of 92 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third. The black plague during the 14th Century claimed approximately one-third of the European population (and more than half of the Asian and Indian populations), plunging the continent into a darkness from which it took them nearly two centuries to emerge.41

None of this research considers the impact of declining fossil fuel production. The authors of all of these studies believe that the mentioned agricultural crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not become critical until 2050. The current peaking of global oil production (and subsequent decline of production), along with the peak of North American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this agricultural crisis much sooner than expected. Quite possibly, a U.S. population reduction of one-third will not be effective for sustainability; the necessary reduction might be in excess of one-half. And, for sustainability, global population will have to be reduced from the current 6.32 billion people42 to 2 billion-a reduction of 68% or over two-thirds. The end of this decade could see spiraling food prices without relief. And the coming decade could see massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before by the human race.

Three Choices

Considering the utter necessity of population reduction, there are three obvious choices awaiting us.

We can-as a society-become aware of our dilemma and consciously make the choice not to add more people to our population. This would be the most welcome of our three options, to choose consciously and with free will to responsibly lower our population. However, this flies in the face of our biological imperative to procreate. It is further complicated by the ability of modern medicine to extend our longevity, and by the refusal of the Religious Right to consider issues of population management. And then, there is a strong business lobby to maintain a high immigration rate in order to hold down the cost of labor. Though this is probably our best choice, it is the option least likely to be chosen.

Failing to responsibly lower our population, we can force population cuts through government regulations. Is there any need to mention how distasteful this option would be? How many of us would choose to live in a world of forced sterilization and population quotas enforced under penalty of law? How easily might this lead to a culling of the population utilizing principles of eugenics?

This leaves the third choice, which itself presents an unspeakable picture of suffering and death. Should we fail to acknowledge this coming crisis and determine to deal with it, we will be faced with a die-off from which civilization may very possibly never revive. We will very likely lose more than the numbers necessary for sustainability. Under a die-off scenario, conditions will deteriorate so badly that the surviving human population would be a negligible fraction of the present population. And those survivors would suffer from the trauma of living through the death of their civilization, their neighbors, their friends and their families. Those survivors will have seen their world crushed into nothing.

The questions we must ask ourselves now are, how can we allow this to happen, and what can we do to prevent it? Does our present lifestyle mean so much to us that we would subject ourselves and our children to this fast approaching tragedy simply for a few more years of conspicuous consumption?

Author's Note

This is possibly the most important article I have written to date. It is certainly the most frightening, and the conclusion is the bleakest I have ever penned. This article is likely to greatly disturb the reader; it has certainly disturbed me. However, it is important for our future that this paper should be read, acknowledged and discussed.

I am by nature positive and optimistic. In spite of this article, I continue to believe that we can find a positive solution to the multiple crises bearing down upon us. Though this article may provoke a flood of hate mail, it is simply a factual report of data and the obvious conclusions that follow from it.

-----

ENDNOTES

1 Availability of agricultural land for crop and livestock production, Buringh, P. Food and Natural Resources, Pimentel. D. and Hall. C.W. (eds), Academic Press, 1989.

2 Human appropriation of the products of photosynthesis, Vitousek, P.M. et al. Bioscience 36, 1986. http://www.science.duq.edu/esm/unit2-3

3 Land, Energy and Water: the constraints governing Ideal US Population Size, Pimental, David and Pimentel, Marcia. Focus, Spring 1991. NPG Forum, 1990. http://www.dieoff.com/page136.htm

4 Constraints on the Expansion of Global Food Supply, Kindell, Henry H. and Pimentel, David. Ambio Vol. 23 No. 3, May 1994. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.dieoff.com/page36htm

5 The Tightening Conflict: Population, Energy Use, and the Ecology of Agriculture, Giampietro, Mario and Pimentel, David, 1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page69.htm

6 Op. Cit. See note 4.

7 Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Pimentel, David and Giampietro, Mario. Carrying Capacity Network, 11/21/1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page55.htm

8 Comparison of energy inputs for inorganic fertilizer and manure based corn production, McLaughlin, N.B., et al. Canadian Agricultural Engineering, Vol. 42, No. 1, 2000.

9 Ibid.

10 US Fertilizer Use Statistics. http://www.tfi.org/Statistics/USfertuse2.asp

11 Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Executive Summary, Pimentel, David and Giampietro, Mario. Carrying Capacity Network, 11/21/1994. http://www.dieoff.com/page40.htm

12 Ibid.

13 Op. Cit. See note 3.

14 Op. Cit. See note 7.

15 Ibid.

16 Op. Cit. See note 5.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Op. Cit. See note 11.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Op Cit. See note 3.

26 Op Cit. See note 11.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Op. Cit. See note 3.

31 Op. Cit. See note 5.

32 Op. Cit. See note 3.

33 Op. Cit. See note 11.

34 Food Consumption and Access, Lynn Brantley, et al. Capital Area Food Bank, 6/1/2001. http://www.clagettfarm.org/purchasing.html

35 Op. Cit. See note 11.

36 Ibid.

37 Op. Cit. See note 5.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Op. Cit. See note 11.

41 Op. Cit. See note 4.

42 Op. Cit. See note 11.

43 Poverty 2002. The U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/poverty02/pov02hi.html

35 Op. Cit. See note 3.

36 Ibid.

37 Diet for a Small Planet, Lappé, Frances Moore. Ballantine Books, 1971-revised 1991. http://www.dietforasmallplanet.com/

38 Op. Cit. See note 5.

39 Ibid.

40 U.S. and World Population Clocks. U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

41 A Distant Mirror, Tuckman Barbara. Ballantine Books, 1978.

42 Op. Cit. See note 40.

[cheezus]

16. there's plenty of oil! dinosaurs are dying every day to make more!

:tinfoilhat: