By Tracy Sorensen
and Allen Myers
Modern industrial society is largely based on oil. Oil and the products of its refinement power much of industry, heat homes and offices, and are the fuel in our cars and in the trucks, airplanes and sometimes trains that move many of the goods we consume. A world whose economy is not based on oil seems to many almost inconceivable.
But if civilisation really "requires" oil in the sort of quantities now consumed, civilisation has not much future. The oil is going to run out, in as short a time as a few decades.
In 1989, known world oil reserves totalled 1011 billion barrels — enough, at current consumption levels, to last a mere 44 years.
But while industry and transport remain based on oil, its consumption is likely to increase as less developed countries attempt to industrialise. If the people of sub-Saharan Africa were to consume oil at the same rate as Western Europe, for example, known reserves would last only 37 years instead of 44. Were they to consume at the US rate (twice as high per capita as Western Europe's), the figure would be 31
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Of course, new discoveries of significant oil deposits are possible, although that is becoming less likely, given the scope of oil prospecting that has already occurred. Even a new find like that of the North Sea would only postpone for a few years the day when the change to some other energy source becomes inescapable.
There are really only two choices, if the earth is to go on supporting its present population at its present standard of living — let alone improving the desperately poor standard now inflicted on much of the world. Either change now to a renewable energy source, or change in 30, 40 or 50 years' time.
But changing a few decades down the track is not a real choice, except for those who profit from oil and who want to get every last possible dollar before the change is made. Change is imperative now because the burning of oil and its derivatives is a major contributor to the production of carbon dioxide, and therefore to global warming.
Photochemical smog, the destruction wreaked by inevitable spills and accidents, the environmental impacts of oil drilling and exploration, noise pollution and the loss in quality of life as a
result of proximity to combustion engines, all pale in significance beside this overarching environmental problem.
Even if oil supplies were infinite, it could prove suicidal for humanity to continue burning it at anything like present rates. In the very near future, oil (and coal) must be replaced by non-polluting energy sources if we are to avoid catastrophic changes to the climate of the planet.
Globally, fossil-fuel burning releases over 5 billion tonnes of carbon — 70% of human carbon emissions — each year. Coal and oil each contribute over 41% of this; the remainder comes from natural gas. Despite public concern about global warming, from 1986 to 1989 carbon emissions from fossil fuels increased 7.5%.
Every litre of oil burnt in a car engine gives rise to 2.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide; in the US, the average car produces its own weight in CO2 every year.
A study by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released last year, forecast rapid climate change unless carbon emissions are cut sharply.
CSIRO researcher Barrie Pittock estimates that, on present trends, air temperatures could rise by 3-4° by the year 2030, shifting Australia's weather systems to the south.
"Rainfall patterns will also move," he told Australian Geographic, "and rainfall in some regions may change by as much as 50% either way. Tropical cyclones may occur farther south and become more intense and frequent. Sea levels will probably rise by an average of 10-50 centimetres by the year 2050 and maybe a metre by 2100."
According to the US Union of Concerned Scientists, to slow and eventually stop further warming, world emissions of carbon dioxide will have to be cut by 50-80% from present levels, while emissions of other greenhouse gases will have to be reduced by 10-100%.
But while international awareness of the urgency of the problem is growing, the biggest user of fossil fuels, the US, has blocked recent moves — the latest international meeting ended in Geneva in June — to a draft convention to halt climate change.
The oil corporations and their supporters argue that it is not economical to shift from fossil fuels to the wide range of alternatives now being developed.
But the alleged economies are false. Aside from the $26 billion annual subsidy that the US government provides to fossil fuel
producers, there are the billions spent to safeguard oil supplies militarily, and the hundreds of millions to clean up oil spills like the one that laid waste to the Alaskan coast in 1989. The potential losses associated with global warming are incalculable.
An article in the Australian Conservation Foundation's magazine Habitat reports that US analysts have estimated that, if the cost of the Gulf War and the past costs of maintaining a military presence in the Middle East were included in the price of petrol, its true price in the United States (currently around 39 cents per litre) would be multiplied by at least four.
Harold M. Hubbard explained in the April 1991 Scientific American:
"The burdens that a barrel of oil or a kilowatt-hour of electricity imposes beyond its stated price are what economists call externalities: costs borne by people who are not parties to the transaction that imposes them.
"For more than two decades, environmental economists and ecologists have been struggling to identify and measure the external costs of energy production and consumption. Meanwhile conventional economics and current market policy ignore externalities, effectively setting their cost at zero."
While it is difficult to calculate external costs precisely, their inclusion undermines the claim that alternative energy sources (and measures for increasing fuel efficiency) are "uneconomic".
As the Union of Concerned Scientists comments: "The short-term focus that pervades the economy also places renewable-energy sources at a disadvantage. The high initial costs of solar collectors, wind turbines, and other renewable technologies make them more expensive than conventional technologies in the short term, even though their costs in the long run are likely to be lower. Although making comparisons on the basis of 30-year levelised costs should correct for this bias, in fact most energy decisions are not made on this basis."
Oil is a fuel without a future. It will run out in half a century or less — if it doesn't destroy the planet before then. The question is not whether there is a future for oil, but whether we can abandon it in time to preserve a future for humanity.