One of our biggest problems is that most people fail to grasp the consequences of exponential growth.

To suggest that the consumption of oil (or any thing else) increases constantly by a certain percentage each year means that it periodically doubles, but it also means that in that period we will have used more than the total of all the previous periods combined.

In other words, if our consumption (conservatively) doubles in the next 10 years, then between 2009 and 2019 we would have used more than the total of the previous 100 years.

This can be oil, food, water - anything that we consume, not to mention population growth.

Now consider that it takes more calories to grow our food than the food actually generates (fertilizers, transportation, harvesting) and throw in an increasing global population and eventually there must be a crisis point.

That's what the Club of Rome was formed to investigate.

Curmudgeon,

This is a link to a CSIRO paper comparing the Limits to Growth projections with 30 years of reality:

http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf

According to the abstract: "Contrary to popular belief, the Limits to Growth scenarios by a team of analysts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did not predict world collapse by the end of the 20th century... The analysis [in the CSIRO paper] shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of a business as usual scenario called the "stadard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century."

You might also look at an article by John Vidal in this week's Weekly Guardian on the 30 million hectares of good agricultural land, mostly in Third World countries, that governments and companies in food-importing countries have been buying up because they no longer trust the international market to supply them, now that the big food surpluses are gone and they have to worry about suppliers restricting exports, as in 2008. According to Vidal, such a deal with Dae Woo in Madagascar was a major factor in the recent coup. The present government there has abrogated the deal. Just think of Ireland during the Potato Famine, when British troops guarded food exports while people were starving.

Judging from the Agmates link posted in the article, our government authorities are either incompetent or lying to us about how much food is exported. Aren't you concerned about this?

Thanks for all the comments on this piece.

I would like to point out that the title I originally gave to it was "Make Optimism Our Enemy" which is why the essay seems off-topic until the end. Online Opinion changed the title illustrating that it really is politically incorrect not to be optimistic!

Just some points quickly. Eclipse Now - I always admire your optimism but, as you might understand from my essay "Energy is Everything" it is the embodied energy required to build the alternative energy infrastructure that determines whether or not it can be done, not whether some economics talking head declares it to be feasible or not. What we understand of the "laws of economics" just fail to apply on the downcurve after the energy peak.

"antigreen" - all your questions on peak oil can be answered by any basic text on the subject. There are also some primers online e.g.: www.energybulletin.net/primer

Curmudgeon - amusing to hear you slander the Club or Rome's "Limits to Growth" report when the lead author of the original report was recently awarded the 2009 Japan Prize for his efforts:

www.energybulletin.net/node/47800

Also, you should be aware that someone at the CSIRO recently analysed the original projections of this study and found that they were quite good despite the primitive nature of that 1970s computer model:

www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf

An article on the possibilities for expansion of oil production from tar sands was published here:

www.fysast.uu.se/ges/files/Tarsandsarticle.pdf

Something a little less "academic" on the topic is here:

www.energybulletin.net/node/48939

And my essay "Earth as a Magic Pudding" explains why massive hydrocarbon reserves do not equate to massive available energy reserves.

Regards,

Michael

Michael Lardelli - go back and look at the CSIRO paper you recommend. In fact, they fudge most of it. It plays up stuff like the population estimates, in which the CofR is probably right and plays down where it was obviously wildly wrong, such as putting limits on resources of metals and the like.
There is also a lot of fancy talk about energy resources being within bounds to gloss over the fact that the energy industry is still there and shows no real sign of going away; despite vast increases in population food production is still more than keeping pace, and so on.
I am shocked that CSIRO resources should be permitted to produce this nonsense. As for the lead author producing a prize, it merely confirms my view that you merely have to shriek in alarm that 'we'll all be ruined' and you get a prize..

Thanks for that great set of links, Michael. It would help lazy buggers like myself if you put http:// in front of them next time.

Politically, I doubt anything will happen until the oil price hits painful levels - as in causes financial hardship for voters. We are beyond the peak now, so the only thing holding down oil prices is the GFC. It's effects are already starting to fade and oil prices are again rising rapidly. I can't help but wonder what the trigger point would be. When petrol hits $2/litre? $5/litre?

Right now it hasn't hit home. My daughter is will graduate this year, and is eagerly awaiting her first pay check. She is planning to spend it on a shiny new car, so she can ditch the bomb her daddy gave her. Daddy tells her this is nuts - she will not be able to afford to drive her expensive new petrol car by the end of its lifetime. Right now she thinks daddy is nuts. When the light bulb finally goes off in her head and she realises this is for real, I'll know society has reached an inflection point. I am hoping this will happen before she buys the car, but the odds aren't looking good.

Curmudgeon,

The limits are there. We live on a finite world. I would have thought that was obvious. But on to: "If there where more people to buy Australia's food then we produce more" Wouldn't that assume that...

A. The people buying the food can afford what we produce.
B. We have the arable land to produce the food (I can't remember the figures but last nights Australian story had information on how much land was degraded).
C. We have the cheep endless oil to drive our tractors/trucks/trains/ships to move the food?

Given that oil has peaked (even if not readily apparent) the cost of production has to rise which feeds back into point A. Modern fertilizers also depend on gas / oil. See point C. Good farming land looks like its in short supply world wide.

I suppose the really interesting think is that we will all get to see if the Club of Rome was right. Probably in about 30 years or so. We really do live in interesting times.