*THE PARTY'S OVER

Richard Heinberg

Clairview Books, 2003, 274 pp., £11.95 p/b - ISBN 1902636457

Reviewed by David Lorimer

Oil, War and the Future

Pre-adaptation is a useful concept from evolutionary biology, indicating a capacity to see a fundamental change looming and adapt smoothly before a catastrophe supervenes and forces a more drastic adjustment. The possibility of such pre-adaptive thinking in relation to our economic future has been around at least since the publication of The Limits to Growth thirty years ago. Although the detailed forecasts have since been revised upwards (see the more recent book Beyond the Limits), the basic principle of the eventual exhaustion of finite natural resources must hold good in the long term. As Kenneth Boulding observes, 'anyone who believes exponential growth can go on for ever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist'.
In this timely and significant book, Richard Heinberg addresses the multifaceted implications of oil depletion. He expresses his basic thesis in a series of succinct bullet points:

  • Modern industrial societies are utterly dependent on fossil fuel energy resources, and known alternatives cannot provide an adequate substitution
  • These societies are vulnerable to economic and political disruption as a result of even minor reductions in energy availability
  • Fossil fuel depletion is inevitable
  • Production will peak soon and global demand will outstrip global supply within ten years at most
  • Oil will play an even more critical role in the geopolitics of the 21st century
  • Only a co-operative response to oil depletion will minimise the short-term inconvenience in our transition to lower overall energy use.
Heinberg begins by putting our situation in a historical context, explaining the centrality of wood in mediaeval Europe, then coal in the 19th century (world output grew from 15 million tons in 1800 to 700 million in 1900), coming to oil and natural gas in the 20th. A society can gain energy subsidies by means of a number of strategies, which included first using up your own forests then those of your neighbours. The same applies to resources in general, so that slavery can be understood as a massive import of human energy to drive the economic system. The final strategy, now being applied, is to draw down nature's stocks of non-renewable energy resources; these, however, are subject to diminishing economic returns since the energy required for their extraction gradually increases to the point where more energy is required to extract it than is produced - this is known as the EROEI (energy return over energy invested - when this is less than one, the enterprise is wholly uneconomic).
The payoffs of this drawdown process have been spectacular in terms of economic and population growth, but so have their liabilities: environmental degradation, climate change and what the author calls a 'phantom carrying capacity', that is to say a human population that cannot be sustained with a lesser input of energy. A central issue in this respect is the dependency of agriculture on inputs from fossil fuels, which include the production of fertiliser, pesticides and the application of machinery to replace human labour as well as the fuel used in long-distance transport. All this makes the whole process so highly energy-intensive that modern agriculture is, in energy input terms, 'by far the least efficient form of food production ever practised'. And if the era of cheap energy, on which modern agriculture is based, comes to an end, then what size of population can be supported? I think that Heinberg's estimate is perhaps unduly pessimistic (2 billion) since he takes no account of the yield increases obtained from combining traditional knowledge with modern methods in agro-ecology. And although he mentions that a quarter of output a hundred years ago was required for the maintenance of horses, he omits reference to the 40% of grain harvest currently fed to animals - an even higher proportion.
The central part of the book is devoted to an examination of the arguments surrounding oil depletion: size of reserves, ease and cost of extraction, and the potential of substitution of other technologies for oil. As indicated above, the author concludes that oil demand will soon exceed oil production, and that none of the substitutes (which he covers in detail) will offer anything like the convenience, low cost or energy density of oil. This is an uncomfortable conclusion but one with which it is hard to disagree unless a wholly new energy technology emerges to enable us to continue our present levels of consumption without their concomitant side-effects.
The last two chapters provide an analysis of the widespread consequences of oil depletion and suggestions for managing the structural collapse. This affects transport (tourism at current levels is quite unsustainable), food, heating, the environment and even public health. Today's analysis, argues the author, must discard 19th century models based on energy-driven industrial growth as well as our current monetary system, and must take into account 'ecological principles, energy-resource constraints, population pressure, and the historical dynamics of complex societies - including the infrastructural reasons for their growth and collapse'. Here he signals the demise of previous civilisations owing to ecological overshoot.
Political scenarios partly depend on whether they are predominantly left- or right-wing models, but the overarching international power of the United States may be a decisive factor in deciding whether we ultimately adopt a competitive or co-operative approach and if we can do so in time to avert catastrophic disruption. With short-term political and economic horizons combined with a general unwillingness to change before it is absolutely necessary, the prospects are not good. However, at least a part of the solution is for people in general to become far better informed on these issues, and this book is an excellent place to start.