Category: World Affairs

On the Trans Mountain Pipeline

Trans Mountain pipeline

Many environmental groups in my province of B.C. oppose construction of a new pipeline from Alberta to the west coast. The motives of these groups include:

  • preventing dirty oil from contributing to climate change;
  • preventing environmental damage from pipeline and oil tanker spills;
  • concern for First Nation rights.

While these motives are admirable, all of the groups lack an understanding of, and/or deny, the laws of thermodynamics that govern our economy, and our overshoot predicament.

It’s true that climate change is a serious threat. In fact it’s much more serious than most environmental groups acknowledge. We are already locked into a dangerous 2C higher climate with 10m of sea level rise no matter what we do. There are no actions we can take today to solve the climate problem and avoid future suffering. Our choices today are to try to maintain our current lifestyle and increase future suffering, or reduce our population and consumption, and constrain future suffering.

It’s also true that the pipeline will create some new risks for environmental damage, but these risks pale in comparison to the damage the human footprint is already causing. Habitat loss, species extinction, soil depletion, nitrogen imbalance, pollution, deforestation, overfishing, and non-renewable resource depletion are the real threats environmental groups should focus on. As with climate change, nothing can be done about these threats unless we reduce human population and consumption.

In addition, if you want to maintain our current lifestyle, and you are concerned about the risk of oil spills, then there is a good argument to build the pipeline.

With regard to First Nations rights, all 7.6 billion humans descended from one small tribe in Africa about 100,000 years ago, meaning we’re all basically the same. Environmentalists should focus on the rights of all future generations, including First Nations.

Our standard of living is completely dependent on the burning of fossil energy, especially oil. We have already burned most of the cleaner and cheaper oil. That’s why we are mining dirty expensive oil sands, and fracking. To reduce our use of fossil energy we must reduce our standard living and our population.

Put another way, new pipelines will be built for another decade or so, until even the dirty oil is gone, unless we reduce our consumption of oil, and the only way to accomplish that is to shrink our economy, standard of living, and population.

If environmental groups want to make a difference on the issues that matter, as well as lesser issues like preventing new pipelines, they must:

  • set good examples in their personal lives (no more than one child, no long distance travel, reduced consumption of everything);
  • advocate for a global one child policy;
  • advocate for austerity, conservation, and a smaller economy (the simplest and most effective way to accomplish this would be to implement a higher interest rate).

It’s true that our choices are unpalatable, but they are reality, and there is a key point that must be understood when weighing what to do. The remaining affordable fossil energy is depleting quickly. Extraction will, in a decade or so, become too expensive for us to afford, meaning fossil energy will be gone for all intents and purposes. When this happens, our lifestyles and population will collapse, thanks to the laws of thermodynamics, no matter what we choose to do.

The advantages of choosing to voluntarily contract today are threefold. First, we would constrain future suffering caused by climate change. Second, we could use some of our remaining wealth to prepare a softer landing zone and to orchestrate a fairer and more humane descent. Third, we might leave some oil in the ground for our grandchildren so they can enjoy some of the comforts we take for granted. The alternative of doing nothing until thermodynamics forces the issue is chaos, war, and much more suffering for all species, including humans.

This article today suggests that environmental groups may have succeeded in preventing construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline:

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Disaster-Hits-Canadas-Oil-Sands.html

Kinder Morgan said it would halt nearly all work on a pipeline project that is crucial to the entire Canadian oil sands industry, representing a huge blow to Alberta’s efforts to move oil to market.

Here is what I predict will happen:

  1. Environmentalists will continue to deny reality and focus on the wrong things.
  2. We will not voluntarily contract the economy.
  3. We will not implement a one child policy.
  4. The Trans Mountain pipeline will be built, provided that our luck persists at avoiding an accidental crash caused by the instability we have created by using extreme debt to maintain an illusion of economic growth.

Let’s check back in a year to see if I am correct.

Dam Denial

Site C Dam Contruction aerial.

The Site C dam in my province of British Columbia has been approved and our leaders who approved it are not even aware of the issues they should have weighed in the decision.

The effect of this decision will be to keep our planet destroying population and lifestyles going for a little longer, as other non-renewable energy resources deplete.

I do not know if the dam will be good or bad for climate change, but I suspect bad given the CO2 that will be released building it, and its short (20-30 year) operating life due to the need for diesel to maintain it and the grid.

No consideration was given to the correct policies of population reduction, austerity, and conservation.

Denial is amazing!

By Richard Heinberg: Saudis and Trump: Gambling Bigly

If you’re like me, you find the Middle East difficult to understand with its many tribal, religious, energy, and geopolitical themes.

This essay by Richard Heinberg does a nice job of explaining what’s going on in the Middle East today. Because our civilization depends on Middle East oil, it is an important topic worth understanding.

http://www.postcarbon.org/saudis-and-trump-gambling-bigly/

Imagine a hypothetical Middle Eastern monarchy in which:

  • Virtually all wealth comes from the extraction and sale of depleting, non-renewable, climate changing petroleum;
  • Domestic oil consumption is rising rapidly, which means that, as long as this trend continues and overall oil production doesn’t rise to compensate, the country’s net oil exports are destined to decline year by year;
  • The state has a history of supporting a radical version of Sunni Islam, but the people who live near its oilfields are mostly Shiite Muslims;
  • Power and income have been shared by direct descendants of the royal founder of the state for the past 80 years, but the thousands of princes on the take don’t always get along well;
  • Many of the princes have expatriated the wealth of the country overseas;
  • Population is growing at well over two percent annually (doubling in size every 30 years), and, as a result, 70 percent of the country is under age 30 with increasing numbers in need of a job;
  • Roughly 30 percent of the population consists of immigrants—many of whom are treated terribly—who have been brought into the country to perform labor that nationals don’t want to do;
  • A sizeable portion of the nation’s enormous wealth has been spent on elaborate weapons systems and on fighting foreign wars;
  • A powerful Shia Muslim nation located just a couple of hundred miles away has gained geopolitical advantage in recent years; and,
  • For the past three years oil prices have been too low to enable the kingdom to meet its obligations, so it has rapidly been spending down its cash reserves.

Now, ask yourself: What could possibly go wrong here?

We are, of course, discussing Saudi Arabia, which has been much in the news lately.

 

The centerpiece of “Vision 2030” is the proposal for a purpose-built city, Neom, that would be powered by solar panels and busied by cutting-edge industries like artificial intelligence, biotechnology, IoT, and robotics; its water would be supplied by desalination plants and its food grown hydroponically. Neom, if ever actually built, would most likely either be an enormous waste of billions of dollars and untold amounts of natural resources that can never be used for better purposes (as in hundreds of Chinese “ghost cities”), or would lead to an even uglier and more extreme version of haves vs. have-nots than already exists in Saudi Arabia. Add continued rapid population growth and the whole exercise becomes transparently futile.

A cheaper and more sensible plan (though likely not as popular) would be to end population growth, slash overall consumption, reduce economic inequality, make peace in the region, and aim for home-grown development of intermediate technology. Not as glamorous, not as attractive to an ambitious risk taker. But practical nonetheless.

However, even this plan comes with substantial risks, as climate change could foreclose on any progress by 2100 with deadly high temperatures that make much of the Middle East uninhabitable by humans. If the region still has a window for peaceful adaptation, it is small and quickly narrowing.

By JT Roberts: On Resources and How the World Really Works

I don’t know who JT Roberts is but he is very bright and is an excellent writer. I stumbled on some comments she made in a recent post by Tim Morgan and I thought they were so good I’ve copied them here.

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2017/10/27/111-a-spike-to-puncture-the-bubble/

In the 70s just as US domestic oil production peaked Nixon made some unusual but very interesting moves.

  • Opened China for trade
  • Established the EPA
  • Created a Petro-Dollar deal with Saudi’s
  • Took the Dollar off Gold

I have a very difficult time believing that he, or his cabinet, or congress had any clue of the significance of those particular moves. I think that in particular they would not have understood the Limits to Growth reality, since they decided not to give ear to the findings by Meadows and Forester. US wealth had been built on abundant easily accessible energy and mineral resources. The US was the manufacturer to the world up until 1970 not because of innovation but because the world couldn’t compete on price. ( The Battle of Somme was the effective killing machine it was because of the cheap steel rails that had been supplied by the US, these latter became the light gauge system in the UK ) No other country had the combination of resources at the volumes that the US had. As these became depleted it hampered growth because of affordability. Had it only been a matter of raising the price to meet increased cost of production why didn’t that happen? Affordability is the real driver of growth not supply and demand.

By opening China it gave the US access to offshore its energy intensive industries like steel production, and mining. As well as labor intensive industries like clothing. ( A population living on rice is far less costly in energy terms then one living on hamburgers) Establishing the EPA created additional pressure to move manufacturing elsewhere. The suspension of Dollar-Gold convertibility was a necessity as there wasn’t enough gold to cover the dollars in circulation. It also hampered the ability to create currency. The risk was that dollar demand would collapse but that was countered with the Petro-Dollar arraignment effectively giving the currency a place to go rather than returning to the US to be inflated away. That move calmed the markets, because they felt that at least their dollars could now be converted to oil, which is of higher value than Gold.

Saddam Hussein, and Qaddafi threatened the stability of that system. Saddam had boycotted sales of crude to the US in 2002 and started selling his oil in Euros. For 30 days he stopped all exports in a show of force that he had control of their national petroleum system. What he didn’t understand was he was threatening to limit access to what the US needs most, energy and resources. The war was the answer to that threat. Now Iraqi oil is safely in the control of the international oil majors. Qaddafi had made a similar error since his interest wasn’t to allow the state owned system to be controlled by the oil majors. He also threatened the the Petro-Dollar by creating a competing gold currency that was being used in Africa. The French were particularly at risk as it was replacing the Franc still in use in there former colonies.

If we look closely at NAFTA we see that much of it revolves around access to resources. In exchange for easier economic trade with the US, both Canada and Mexico have agreed to unlimited access to their oil and other resources. When the USSR fell we saw the same pattern. Anglo-US corporations rushed in to gain access to whatever resources they could. Putin the patriot didn’t play ball like Yeltsin. So now he is vilified. Canada and Mexico have peaked in oil production, and now NAFTA is at risk. The UK joined the EU just as it had oil to sell and promptly left when it didn’t.

What we see is a common pattern that is larger then any political system.

Capitalism is a dissipative system out of equilibrium, as all dissipative system are. Like hurricanes Capitalism requires energy input to exist, anything that threatens that will collapse the system. It must grow or die. Within the structure, like hurricanes, there can be self organized subsystems. Tornado’s, Micro-bursts, and other elements that feed off the core. With Capitalism these are corporations and governments. In order for the core to survive the entire system must grow in aggregate. As the net energy driving the system declines the structure weakens, like a hurricane on land or cold water.

Not only is it impossible to return to a local agricultural existence. It is also impossible to decouple the elements of the system. We see that with Trump. His platform was isolation, and now its war. He has no choice he’ll make similar moves as Nixon did, but it can’t work because there is no more sweet spots to exploit.

Just as the shale play is a high cost desperate act of a dying industry. (Shale was well know in the 70s but as uneconomical as it remains today) The US will attempt to turn back time with it’s military machine as it has in the past. The problem is they can’t return affordability so the system will simply grind to a halt.

I guess Adam Smith was right about an Invisible Hand.

 

Without energy to drive real growth all you have left is moving money around. I think most mistake the symptom for the cause. The lax regulations are needed to increase debt which increases money supply. So strangely the corruption is part of the system.

For example it has been documented that the primary money laundering economies are US and U.K. So for all their show as the bastions of freedom and democracy the reality is they benefit from corrupt dictators that stuff their ill gotten gains in the western banking and real estate system.

With Trump it’s just irrelevant he’s neither good or bad. He is no different then any other elected president. He is limited to the resources at his disposal and won’t accomplish anything beyond that. Basically a symptom not a cause.

The Appolo success if we so call it really needs to be considered in context. If you compare the energy production of the US with the USSR it becomes clear that technology wasn’t the key to the space race. In actuality the Soviet rocket engines were 20% more efficient and more powerful. They dared to pipe oxygen rich exhaust from the turbos into the primary engine. But it was done because of necessity they couldn’t afford to waste the fuel. It also constrained their ability to test run the engines. Instead they choose to test them at launch.

The arrow all points in the same direction. Without the resources that the US had access to the USSR could not compete. But it had nothing to do with technology because they were winners with technology.

AK 47 is another example.

I sum it up this way. If you have wood you cook with wood. If you have coal you cook with coal. If you have oil you cook with oil. If you have gas you cook with gas. If you have a lot of it you have trains, planes, and automobiles. I might add rockets. With a little of it you cook.

Technology is a function of abundance not the cause of it.

It’s interesting to note the Roman Empire grew in wealth through military conquest. Then it started developing schools of higher learning in imitation of the Greeks.

Education has never preceded empire. So the thought that education or technology are the source of wealth is false. It has always been resources. It will always be. So in that regard it is no coincidence that the US military is larger then the next 10 militaries combined. So the military industrial complex was also a necessity.

Ironically the competitive economic system, communism thought that they could only find success within a highly educated society. Lenin targeted Germany for that reason. But educated people make poor soldiers. Ignorant religious zealots make far better soldiers. Which system promoted religious freedom and zealotry? For God and Country. God save the Queen. In God we trust. One nation under God.

So in many places Americans are hated because of their ignorance. But perhaps their ignorance has been their strength all along. In this regard we might want to watch closely the current US administration.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

By Richard Heinberg: Energy and Authoritarianism

Arab Spring, Greece, Brexit, Trump, Venezuela, and many more to follow.

Pay attention to what our leaders and experts say. Not one has a clue what is going on.

Hidden from view = No Clue = Denial

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-09-26/energy-and-authoritarianism/

 

It is highly likely that, as events unfold, the causal criticality of energy decline will be hidden from the view of most observers, whose attention will be fixed instead on shocking but comparatively superficial and secondary political and social events. A more widespread understanding of the role of energy in society, and of the likely limits to future energy supplies, could be extremely beneficial in helping the general populace adapt to scarcity and avoid needless scapegoating and violence. Perhaps this essay can help in some small way to deepen that understanding.

 

One important wild card is the role of debt: it enables us to consume now while promising to pay later. Debt can therefore push consumption forward in time and (for a while, at least) make up for declining energy productivity. It would appear that the “fracking” boom of the past decade, which probably delayed the world oil production peak by about a decade, depended on the power of debt. But when debt defaults cascade, an economy may decline much faster than would otherwise be the case (default-led financial crashes have occurred repeatedly in modern history). And debt defaults can cripple the financial and thus the economic system of a nation with plenty of energy resources (as happened in the U.S. in the 1930s).

 

By Tim Morgan: Why Mr. Trump can’t raise American prosperity

A must read by the brilliant Tim Morgan.

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/104-why-mr-trump-cant-raise-american-prosperity/

Essentially, two things are happening to the average American. First, his or her income is rising less rapidly than the cost of essentials, squeezing the “discretionary” income which is the real definition of prosperity. Second, increases in income are being far exceeded by increases in debt, and also by growing shortfalls in pension provision. So the citizen feels both less prosperous and less secure.

As SEEDS measures it, per capita prosperity was 10% lower in 2016 than it was back in 2000. Neither is this trend likely to reverse – by 2025, the average American is likely to have seen his or her prosperity decline by a further 8% in comparison with 2016. At the same time, per capita debt has increased by almost $54,000, in real terms, since 2000, a problem now being compounded by a rapidly-growing systemic shortfall in pension provision.

‘Conventional’ economics cannot capture any of this. A perspective which ignores both “borrowed consumption” and the trend cost of energy is baffled by popular discontent, in America and elsewhere. Moreover, ‘conventional’ analysis tends to be misled by the apparently-buoyant values of stocks, bonds and property. These values are misleading, because they cannot be monetized – the only buyers for homes, for example, are the same people to whom they already belong.

For as long as these issues are overlooked, popular anger is likely to go on taking ‘the experts’ by surprise.

 

The concept of prosperity needs to be understood clearly. Prosperity is not simply the size of someone’s income. Rather, it is the sum left over after essentials have been paid for. This means that prosperity equates to “discretionary” income, which is the sum that he or she can choose how to spend.

The fundamentally energy-based nature of all output creates a natural distinction between “two economies” – the real economy of goods and services, and the financial economy of money and credit. Used properly, the financial system can deliver many benefits. Equally, though, it can be harmful, if it diverges too far from the real economy.

The potential for harm is simple. Money functions only as a “claim” on goods and services, which really makes it a claim on surplus energy. Likewise, since credit is a claim on future money, it is really a claim on future energy.

Financial “claims” – money and credit – can be manufactured out of thin air, and we can create as many of these claims as we like. But, if we create claims that exceed what the real economy can deliver, the excess cannot be honoured. Therefore, it must be destroyed. Inflation is one way of doing this, though default is another.

 

America is by no means unique in experiencing downwards pressure on prosperity – the same is happening in many other countries, often more severely than in the United States.

The problems posed for America are twofold. First, the deterioration in prosperity makes it impossible for the President to improve the material prosperity of the average American – in attempting to do so, he is about as powerless as was King Canute when he tried to turn back the tide.

Second, the use of cheap money to ‘manufacture’ nominal economic growth is already creating an escalating level of forward risk. Just as Americans are getting less prosperous, they are also becoming ever more indebted, and face ever greater insecurity as provision for pensions deteriorates.

The time cannot be too far off, for America as for the world more generally, where the future (represented by the collective balance sheet) overwhelms the present.

By Alice Friedemann: German Military Study on Peak Oil

German Military - Peak Oil Study - 2010

Alice Friedemann summarizes here a 2010 study on peak oil conducted by the German military.

http://energyskeptic.com/2017/german-military-peak-oil-summary/

The original full report can be found here.

And what was the German government’s response to this excellent report on peak oil by their own military?

They increased their population with immigration.

Denial is amazing!

 

Today approximately 90% of all industrially manufactured products depend on the availability of oil. Oil is not only the source material for producing fuels and lubricants but is also used as hydrocarbon for most plastic. It is one of the most important raw materials in the production of many different products such as pharmaceuticals, dyes and textiles. As the source material for various types of fuels, oil is a basic prerequisite for the transportation of large quantities of goods over long distances. Alongside information technology, container ships, trucks and aircraft form the backbone of globalization. Oil-based mobility also significantly influences our lifestyle, both regionally and locally. For example, living in suburbs several miles from their workplace would be impossible for many people without a car.

 

Societal risks of peak oil

  1. Economic collapse
  2. Transportation restricted
  3. Erosion of confidence in state institutions

There are not sufficient alternatives to oil for transportation, so when oil grows short, there are likely to be extreme restrictions for private vehicles, especially in suburbs, resulting in a “mobility crisis” that would make the economic crisis much worse.

Scarce or expensive oil would drive up the cost of all goods. Our current international movement of goods has largely been made possible by the technological progress in the field of freight traffic (container ships, trucks, cooling systems), which are based on fossil fuels.  So trying to switch all modes of transport to alternative energy sources is much more complex with today’s common means of transportation and technology. Mobility on the basis of fossil fuels is likely to remain a long time.   Oil shortages could lead to bottlenecks in delivering food and other life-sustaining essential goods.

After peak oil, there would be significant differences from past food shortages:

  • The crisis would concern all food traded over long distances, not just single regions or products. Regions that are structurally already at risk today would however be particularly affected (see figure 6).
  • Crop yields also depend on oil. Lack of machines or oil-based fertilizers and other chemicals to increase crop yield would therefore have a negative effect on crop production
  • The increase in food prices would be long-term
  • Competition between the use of farmland for food production and for producing biofuels could worsen food shortages and crises.

 

After oil shortages people will experience a lowering of living standards due to an increase in unemployment and the cost of oil for their vehicles. Studies reveal that only continuous improvement of individual living conditions provide the basis for tolerant and open societies. Setbacks in economic growth can lead to an increase in the number of votes for extremist and nationalistic parties.

 

Other likely consequences

Banks left with no commercial basis. Banks would not be able to pay interest on deposits as they would not be able to find creditworthy companies, institutions or individuals. As a result, they would lose the basis for their business.

Loss of confidence in currencies. Belief in the value-preserving function of money would dwindle. This would initially result in hyperinflation and black markets, followed by a barter economy at the local level.

Collapse of value chains. The division of labor and its processes are based on the possibility of trade in intermediate products. It would be extremely difficult to conclude the necessary transactions lacking a monetary system.

Collapse of unpegged currency systems. If currencies lose their value in their country of origin, they can no longer be exchanged for foreign currencies. International value-added chains would collapse as well.

Mass unemployment. Modern societies are organized on a division-of-labor basis and have become increasingly differentiated in the course of their histories. Many professions are solely concerned with managing this high level of complexity and no longer have anything to do with the immediate production of consumer goods. The reduction in the complexity of economies that is implied here would result in a dramatic increase in unemployment in all modern societies.

National bankruptcies. In the situation described, state revenues would evaporate. (New) debt options would be very limited, and the next step would be national bankruptcies.

Collapse of critical infrastructures. Neither material nor financial resources would suffice to maintain existing infrastructures. Infrastructure interdependencies, both internal and external with regard to other subsystems, would worsen the situation.

Famines. Ultimately, production and distribution of food in sufficient quantities would become challenging.

War.  Oil shortages are likely to be seen by importing nations as a national security issue leading to conflict, which could also emerge over renewable energy resources.