Peak Oil and the Century of Famine

Editors Note: The following article by Peter Goodchild is reprinted with permission from the author’s blog, Countercurrents.org. The potential for four billion people succumbing to famine is certainly a symptom of poor health.

“Of all the humans who have ever lived on the Earth, most were born in the last 50 years.”

Around the beginning of the twenty-first century, there began a clash of two gigantic forces: overpopulation and oil depletion. The event went unnoticed by all but a few people, but it was quite real. As a result of that clash, the number of human beings on Earth must one day decline in order to match the decline in oil production.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to get those two giant forces into equilibrium in any gentle fashion, because in every year that has gone by for the last few thousand years — and every year that will arrive — the human population of Earth is automatically adjusted so that it is roughly equal to the planet’s carrying capacity. Like so many other animals, human beings always push themselves to the limits of that carrying capacity. The Age of Petroleum made us no wiser in that respect, and in fact dependence on fossil fuels has led us to a crisis far greater than any in the past…

End of the World as We Know It

By Tony Davenport
[Editors Note: This article was originally published on page 16 of the S. African Sunday Independent on October 12, 2008]

It is not as bad as you might imagine – it’s worse, and before you bury your heads in the sands of collective denial, please consider how it is coming about. The truth will set you free, but first it will probably make you ill.

We have had it too easy with cheap energy for a century and the cheap part is going to disappear. Quickly. Energy is the ubiquitous part of everything we consume, and liquid fuel is getting scarce.

The easy part is to understand how we got to where we are. The difficult part is predicting how we can possibly manage to make our way out of this one. It will draw on our deepest resolve and wisdom, and probably require a “Copernican” shift in our thinking (Copernicus was the first astronomer to prove scientifically that the sun rather than the Earth was at the centre of our cosmic system).

We seem to have scientific prowess, but there’s no time for self-congratulation. This time the solutions are the cause of a much bigger problem. Our current pursuit of growth and the elevation of human material wants above all else are the raison d’être of the problem. We promote consumption and ignore efficiency. We live as though there is no tomorrow, and the way we are going there probably won’t be.

We might have just one last window of opportunity and it requires that we draw deeply on our resolve, think wisely and act purposefully. People will need to make unpleasant choices.