Oil Crash

26
Mai
2006

THE WORLD AFTER OIL PEAKS

Here is a good article for everyone.

Lester Brown is always insightful and here he provides a good forecast on the world after oil peaks.

This is not doom and gloom. This is a wide-eyed, realistic assessment of how society will of necessity respond once we hit the half-way mark on global oil supplies. Many oil company geologists suggest that we are there now -- which explains the sharp rise in gas prices and airline travel. But this, Brown suggests, is only the beginning.

Best to you all,

Fred

--------

THE WORLD AFTER OIL PEAKS
http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch02_ss6_7.htm

by Lester R. Brown

May, 2006

Peak oil is described as the point where oil production stops rising and begins its inevitable long-term decline. In the face of fast- growing demand, this means rising oil prices. But even if oil production growth simply slows or plateaus, the resulting tightening in supplies will still drive the price of oil upward, albeit less rapidly.

Few countries are planning a reduction in their use of oil. Even though peak oil may be imminent, most countries are counting on much higher oil consumption in the decades ahead, building automobile assembly plants, roads, highways, parking lots, and suburban housing developments as though cheap oil will last forever. New airliners are being delivered with the expectation that air travel and freight will expand indefinitely. Yet in a world of declining oil production, no country can use more oil except at the expense of others.

Some segments of the global economy will be affected more than others simply because some are more oil-intensive. Among these are the automobile, food, and airline industries. Cities and suburbs will also evolve as oil supplies tighten.

Stresses within the U.S. auto industry were already evident before oil prices started climbing in mid-2004. Now General Motors and Ford, both trapped with their heavy reliance on sales of gas-hogging sport utility vehicles, have seen Standard and Poor's lower their credit ratings, reducing their corporate bonds to junk bond status. Although it is the troubled automobile manufacturers that appear in the headlines as oil prices rise, their affiliated industries will also be affected, including auto parts and tire manufacturers.

The food sector will be affected in two ways. Food will become more costly as higher oil prices drive up production costs. As oil costs rise, diets will be altered as people move down the food chain and as they consume more local, seasonally produced food. Diets will thus become more closely attuned to local products and more seasonal in nature. At the same time, rising oil prices will also be drawing agricultural resources into the production of fuel crops, either ethanol or biodiesel.

Higher oil prices are thus setting up competition between affluent motorists and low-income food consumers for food resources, presenting the world with a complex new ethical issue.

Airlines, both passenger travel and freight, will continue to suffer as jet fuel prices climb, simply because fuel is their biggest operating expense. Although industry projections show air passenger travel growing by some 5 percent a year for the next decade, this seems highly unlikely.Cheap airfares may soon become history.

Air freight may be hit even harder, perhaps leading to an absolute decline. One of the early casualties of rising oil prices could be the use of jumbo jets to transport fresh produce from the southern hemisphere to industrial countries during the northern winter. The price of fresh produce out of season may simply become prohibitive.

During the century of cheap oil, an enormous automobile infrastructure was built in industrial countries that requires large amounts of energy to maintain. The United States, for example, has 2.6 million miles of paved roads, covered mostly with asphalt, and 1.4 million miles of unpaved roads to maintain even if world oil production is falling.

Modern cities are also a product of the oil age. From the first cities, which took shape in Mesopotamia some 6,000 years ago, until 1900, urbanization was a slow, barely perceptible process. When the last century began, there were only a few cities with a million people. Today there are more than 400 such cities, 20 of them with 10 million or more residents. The metabolism of cities depends on concentrating vast amounts of food and materials and then disposing of garbage and human waste. With the limited range and capacity of horse-drawn wagons, it was difficult to create large cities. Trucks running on cheap oil changed all that.

As cities grow ever larger and as nearby landfills reach capacity, garbage must be hauled longer distances to disposal sites. With oil prices rising and available landfills receding ever further from the city, the cost of garbage disposal also rises. At some point, many throwaway products may be priced out of existence.

Cities will be hard hit by the coming decline in oil production, but suburbs will be hit even harder. People living in poorly designed suburbs not only depend on importing everything, they are also often isolated geographically from their jobs and shops. They must drive for virtually everything they need, even to get a loaf of bread or a quart of milk. Suburbs have created a commuter culture, with the daily roundtrip commute taking, on average, close to an hour a day in the United States. While Europe's cities were largely mature before the onslaught of the automobile, those in the United States, a much younger country, were shaped by the car. While city limits are usually rather clearly defined in Europe, and while Europeans only reluctantly convert productive farmland into housing developments, Americans have few qualms about this because cropland was long seen as a surplus commodity.

This unsightly, aesthetically incongruous sprawl of suburbs and strip malls is not limited to the United States. It is found in Latin America, in Southeast Asia, and increasingly in China. Flying from Shanghai to Beijing provides a good view of the sprawl of buildings, including homes and factories, that is following the new roads and highways. This is in sharp contrast to the tightly built villages that shaped residential land use for millennia in China.

Shopping malls and huge discount stores, symbolized in the public mind by Wal-Mart, were all subsidized by artificially cheap oil. Isolated by high oil prices, suburbs may prove to be ecologically and economically unsustainable.

In the coming energy transition, there will be winners and losers. Countries that fail to plan ahead, that lag in investing in more oil- efficient technologies and new energy sources, may experience a decline in living standards. The inability of national governments to manage the energy transition could lead to a failure of confidence in leaders and to failed states.

National political leaders seem reluctant to face the coming downturn in oil and to plan for it even though it will almost certainly become one of the great fault lines in the history of civilization. Trends now taken for granted, such as urbanization and globalization, could be reversed almost overnight as oil becomes scarce and costly.

Developing countries will be hit doubly hard as still-expanding populations combine with a shrinking oil supply to steadily reduce oil use per person. Such a decline could quickly translate into a fall in living standards. If the United States, the world's largest oil consumer and importer, can sharply reduce its use of oil, it can buy the world time for a smoother transition to the post-petroleum era.


Adapted from Chapter 2, "Beyond the Oil Peak," in Lester R. Brown, Plan B2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), available for free downloading or for purchase on-line at http://www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm


-- Tim Hermach
Native Forest Council
PO Box 2190 Eugene, OR 97402
541.688.2600
541.461.2156
fax web page: http://www.forestcouncil.org
DEFENDING LIFE, LAND & LIBERTY *
Honest & Fully Costed Accounting,
* Voices of Integrity, Hope & Reason
* Honest & Uncompromised Education, Advocacy & Litigation
* Real Protection for 650 Million Acres of Federal Land, Rivers & Streams
See for yourself at:
http://forestcouncil.org/learn/aerial/index.html


Informant: Scott Munson

8
Feb
2006

Schweden: gänzlicher Verzicht auf Öl

Schweden will seine Energiewirtschaft vollkommen umstellen.
http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21997/1.html

5
Feb
2006

2006 Schluss mit billigem Öl

Energieinstitut: 2006 Schluss mit billigem Öl

05.02.2006

Das "Institute on Energy and Man" erwartet, dass ab 2006 Schluss ist mit der billigen Ölförderung. Der Zeitpunkt der Weltförderspitze werde in diesem Jahr erreicht. Der Ölpreis werde enorm steigen.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=6&news:oid=n4546

18
Jan
2006

6
Jan
2006

Oil, Gas and Imperialism

The Russia-Ukraine crisis is a reminder that politics, not the market, is driving global energy policies.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010506EB.shtml

10
Dez
2005

Invitation to Create a New Civilization

(and to fight the one based on oil)

By Oilwatch International (a network of civil society organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America)

[Published in November/December 2005, 25th Anniversary Issue of Earth First! Journal -- The Radical Environmental Journal]

Never before have the limits of the current development model based on hydrocarbons been seen so clearly. Never have the relationships between oil and the networks of power that control the world been so clearly understood. Never have the relationships between oil and the principal causes of misery which afflict humanity been so evident.

Behind the worst wars of the last century and the current, Behind the waste of industrial, economic and financial resources, Behind the instability and impoverishment of many nations, Behind innumerable state coups, dictatorships and manipulations of democracy, Behind the age-old exploitation of workers, Behind the most dangerous chemical industries, Behind the systematic extinction of uncountable indigenous peoples, Behind the contamination of the world's fresh water, the water of the seven seas and the air of our cities, Behind the accumulation of enormous amounts of chemical and plastic wastes, Behind climate change that includes ever more extreme cyclones, floods and hurricanes, Behind the appearance and manifestation of numerous degenerative illnesses and, Behind the extinction of species on planet Earth,

Is Oil.

The 20th century was the century of poisoning and mass death of people and life all over the planet. This poisoning is the product not only of the wastes caused during extraction of oil, oil spills on land and sea and acid rain; it is also the consequence of agrochemicals, persistent pollutants, fuels, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pharmaceuticals, hospital wastes and other components produced from oil. These are being accumulated and dumped on the planet…and they are killing the Land.

We have suffered severe and repeated threats to the sovereignty of our nations due to wars and intrigues caused by oil. The large empires define their economic and military power in relation to their possibilities of obtaining secure access to their coveted black gold, in farflung regions around the globe.

The 20th century created, from its industrial oil bases, a culture founded on a pattern of of addictive energy and material consumption that has poisoned, sickened, crippled and killed hundreds of millions of people, while confronting and exterminating thousands of traditional communities, separating them from their healthy and ecological customs. Only a very few have managed to survive, in a way that is ever more one of isolation, impoverishment and defenselessness.

While this occurred, we have accepted these aggressions as separate nations or communities. Or worse still, we have fought among ourselves: inhabitants of one country against another, people from the North against those from the South, the urban poor against indigenous and peasant people, those ill from consumption against pacifists, those who propose against those who criticize...

Looking at each struggle from a distance, it is difficult not to see the profound connections between them.

The struggle to stay healthy and eat well, the fight for clean sources of energy, the fight for a sustainable and sovereign agriculture, the fight for decontamination and against global warming, the fight against transnational companies that expropriate and evaporate our natural resources, the fight for peace in the world...winning these fights depends to a great extent on our ability to jointly resist the oil industry and the civilization it sustains.

The crisis of the oil civilization has reached its climax. But the way forward to free ourselves from this crisis is hardly being carried out. To the contrary, our exit is delayed while the effects of this crisis increase in a manner which is ever more lethal. It seems evident that the transition into a new civilization requires the diffusion of alternative scientific and environmental technologies for sustainable energy systems -- as well as new economic, political, and cultural mechanisms that will allow the reconstruction of peace and equality among peoples, recover our health, restore our environment, absolve international debt, compensate for the pillaging of the countries of the South, and assure justice and true democracy everywhere.

For us, a clear path is shown by the fight of the peasant, fishing and indigenous communities that face a frontline battle against globalization and neoliberalism--defending their right to live on their lands with autonomy and without physical, cultural or environmental aggressions, even those that are considered "symbols of progress." But we need to listen to each other, so that we may imagine solutions that take into account, in a global form, the problems of us all.

Which are the organizations and networks that could start a positive collaboration in the fight against the oil civilization? Which are the most important local and global movements that we cannot ignore in our efforts? Which are the new initiatives that we could and should invent?

To answer these and other questions, Oilwatch International is inviting sympathetic networks to participate in a joint dialogue of our struggles and launch a global Campaign against the civilization based on oil. We invite you to send your opinions, considerations and ideas that may help consolidate this concept, so that we can create a way forward together. Please send your comments to the International Secretariat of Oilwatch at tegantai@oilwatch.org.ec

[Issued on September 19, 2005 and published in November/December 2005, 25th Anniversary Issue of Earth First! Journal -- The Radical Environmental Journal ]

OILWATCH INTERNATIONAL is a network of civil society organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America that promotes a post petroleum civilization, with its International Secretariat located in Quito, Ecuador. The Oilwatch network was born inspired by the necessity to develop global strategies for communities affected by oil operations, and to support the resistance struggles of communities against those operations. Among the network's functions is the exchange of information regarding oil companies operating in affected countries, about their practices as well as the different resistance movements and international campaigns against specific companies. Oilwatch makes an effort to raise, at the global level, the environmental conscience of humanity, to expose the impacts of oil operations on tropical forests and local populations, and to reveal the relationship between oil activities and the destruction of biodiversity, climate change and unpunished violations of human rights.

Oilwatch members include:

Coordinación de Organizaciones Mapuche - ARGENTINA Belice Institute of Environmental Law and Policy (BELPO) - BELICE Toledo Developement Corporation (TDC) - BELICE Bullet Tree Falls Environmental Club - BELICE FOBOMADE – BOLIVIA FUNDACIÓN SOLÓN – BOLIVIA Projeto Brasil Sustentável e Democrático/Rede Brasileira de Justiça Ambiental - BRASIL GTA / Comision Pastoral de la Tierra - BRASIL Asociación CENSAT Agua Viva – COLOMBIA FUNDACION AGUAVIVA - COLOMBIA Centro de Desarrollo Comunitario - Cabildo Mayor U'Wa - COLOMBIA ORJUWA-T Organización Wayúu Munsurat COLOMBIA OILWATCH COSTA RICA FoE CURAZAO Acción Ecológica – ECUADOR CESTA – EL SALVADOR Madre Selva - GUATEMALA Consejo de Investigaciones para el Desarrollo de Centroamérica (CIDECA) - GUATEMALA Alianza por la vida y la Paz - GUIATEMALA Frente Petenero Contra Represas - GUATEMALA MOVIMIENTO MADRE TIERRA - HONDURAS Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH) - HONDURAS Confederación de Pueblos Autóctonos de Honduras (CONPAH) - HONDURAS ALIANZA VERDE - HONDURAS Federación Indígena Tawahka, (FITH) - HONDURAS Federación de Tribus Xicaque de Yoro (FETRIXY) - HONDURAS Federación Indígena FETRIPH pueblo PECH de Olancho - HONDURAS Casifop - MEXICO Sociedad de Amigos Santo Tomás – MEXICO Centro Humboldt - Oilwatch Mesoamérica - NICARAGUA URACCAN-IREMADES - NICARAGUA Centro de Educación para la Paz y la Justicia (CEDUPAZ) – NICARAGUA CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS INTERNACIONALES - NICARAGUA COIBA - PANAMA ECORED - PANAMA MNJ-PAT - PANAMA SOBREVIVENCIA - PARAGUAY APRODEH - PERÚ CONACAMI - PERÚ Racimos de Ungurahui - PERÚ TOXIC TEXACOWATCH – SURINAM WRM – URUGUAY REDES - URUGUAY Amigransa- Red Alerta Petrolera Orinoco Oilwatch - VENEZUELA Centre Pour l'Environnement et le Développement - CAMERÚN Cadic - CONGO EPOZOP / ASSAILD - CHAD CPPL - Commission Permanente Petrole Locale - CHAD Chadian Association for the defence of Human Rights / LTDH - CHAD RESAPIME SARH GRAMP/TC - CHAD CILONG - CHAD CIAJE - GABON Third World Network - GHANA FoE GHANA LIVANINGO - MOZAMBIQUE Oilwatch Africa – NIGERIA Environmental Rights Action (ERA) - NIGERIA Justice et Paix (of Catholic Church) - REPUBLIC OF CONGO (BRAZZAVILLE) GroundWork – SOUTH AFRICA Earthlife Africa eThekwini – SOUTH AFRICA Earthlife Africa Johannesburg - SOUTH AFRICA Earthlife Africa Cape Town - SOUTH AFRICA Sudan Council of Churches (SCC) - SUDAN Ecograph - AZERBAIJAN UBINIG - BANGLADESH BanglaPraxis - BANGLADESH Community developmnet Library - BANGLADESH PRAYAS - INDIA PAN - INDONESIA JATAM (Jaringan Advokasi Tambang) - INDONESIA FoE MALAYSIA Third World Network - MALAYSIA ActionAid - PAKISTAN Pakistan Institiute of Labour Education and Research - PAKISTAN Center for Environmental Justice - SRI LANKA EarthRights International (ERI) - THAILAND CAIN Campaign for Alternative Industriy Network - THAILAND Burma Issues - THAILAND Study Group for Natural Resource Sustainability - THAILAND Kalayanamitra Council - THAILAND LAOHAMUTUK - TIMOR PERDU-Manokwari - WEST PAPUA CEE Bankwatch Network - GEORGIA Indigenous Oil Campaign Organizer Indigenous Environmental Network - USA

4
Dez
2005

Erdölspezialist: "The game is over"

28.11.2005

Der US-amerikanische Erdölspezialist Professor Kenneth S. Deffeyes hatte den 24. November 2005 zum "World Oil Peak Day" erklärt, als Tag, an dem der Höhepunkt der Ölförderung weltweit erreicht ist.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/index.php?pageID=6&news:oid=n4152

21
Nov
2005

Peak Oil and Thanksgiving Day are now linked

Thanksgiving Day 2005

Kelpie Wilson writes that peak oil and Thanksgiving Day are now linked. Geologist Kenneth Deffeyes predicted two years ago that the peak moment of world oil production would occur on Thanksgiving Day 2005.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112105I.shtml

10
Nov
2005

7
Nov
2005

Statt schnödem Öl Weizen verheizen

Perverser geht’s nicht mehr!

Während Millionen Menschen weltweit verhungern, heizen dänische und deutsche Bauern mit Weizen.

stern.de: Energieträger: Statt schnödem Öl, Weizen verheizen
http://www.stern.de/wissenschaft/natur/548521.html

Was ist perverser?!

... Energie, die in Millionen von Jahren entstanden ist, innerhalb von wenigen Jahren zu verbrennen, damit die Atmosphäre zu vergiften, und somit weltweit für Klimaveränderungen, Hunger, Trockenheit, Überschwemmungen, Katastrophen und Krankheit zu sorgen, oder endlich die Landwirtschaft zu renovieren, die Produkte ehrlich und fair handeln und selbstverständlich auch für die Energiegewinnung zu verwenden?

Pervers ist, dass hier täglich Millionen Menschen Diesel und Benzin verfahren, Kerosin verfliegen und noch immer fossil heizen! Pervers ist Landstriche, Lebensräume und Geschichte für Braunkohle weg zu baggern. Pervers ist für Ölsand Landstriche zu vernichten.

Pervers ist, dass konservative Politiker, dies auch noch unterstützen, entgegen jeder natürlichen Vernunft und bewahrenden Einstellung.

Pervers ist, dass seit Jahrzehnten für Öl Kinder in Kriegszeiten aufwachsen müssen, und ganze Länder verwüstet werden, Ländereien mit giftigen Rohölen verseucht werden, im Interesse der Multis, von Shell, Exxon über Elf, Total und BP und ihren Öl motivierten Schlachten, nur für unseren schnellen Konsum!

Pervers ist, dass Biomasse nicht vollständig verwertet wird, sondern noch immer als minderwertiger Energieträger verleumdet wird! Pervers ist, noch immer Urwälder abzuholzen, für Produkte die nach weniger als 6 Monaten Müll sind und verbrannt werden.

Alle fossilen Vorräte sind begrenzt, nicht nur Öl, Gas sondern insbesondere auch das Uran für die AKWs!

Wirtschaftlich reicht das noch wenige Dutzend Jahre, und dann?

Und das alles völlig unabhängig von den Klimadiskussionen, Ökosteuern,... das Öl (Gas, Uran) geht zu neige!

Weizen, Mais und Biomasse wächst jährlich zu 100% nach, die Sonne stellt keine Rechnung und die Hungerproblematik ist kein Erzeugungsproblem sondern ein Verteilungsproblem, das z.T. bewusst aufrecht erhalten wird, um sich gegenüber den Schwellenländern wirtschaftliche Vorteile zu sichern, z.B. die Ausbeutung der dortigen Rohstoffe!


bs

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