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A Just-in-Time Species

by Toby Hemenway

Humans are activated by crisis, and often do little until it arrives. We waffle and deny as a bad situation builds, such as during Hitler’s repeated aggression in Europe in the late 1930s. Then we pass a trigger point and leap into all-out efforts; we are galvanized into war or its equivalent. Look at aircraft production in World War Two: In 1939, the US built 180 airplanes per month.(8) In 1940 we made 1600 each month, and by 1944, 8000. That’s a 4500% increase in 5 years. I’ve not heard any White House statements about “the war on oil dependence,” but when they come, I am certain we’ll make a similar effort, even if it is one of learning to make less rather than more.

Warnings about Peak Oil abound, but catastrophe enthusiasts believe that since few are heeding the warnings now, society won’t do anything until it’s too late, and will collapse. Yet already, the major oil companies are running full-page ads about Peak Oil. Ford is hyping hybrid cars, sales of which are skyrocketing. General Motors’ Washington spokesperson says we must move away from petroleum. Toyota is lobbying lawmakers to make energy independence and multiple energy sources an election issue. SUV sales are way down. We are already reacting, and each bit of conservation now buys us more time in the future. Hubbert’s curve is broadening.

Though we have slowed the growth of oil consumption, we still consume more each year. Can we consume less? And how much would consumption need to drop to avoid disaster? Here are some numbers.

In 1965, world oil production was 12 billion barrels. It may peak soon at 30 billion. Estimates project that in 2040, production will have slipped to 12 billion barrels—back to 1965 levels. To descend to that point would require a drop in consumption of 2.2% per year for 35 years. Can we do this? I think so. From 1973 to 1975, and again from 1979 to 1983, consumption fell by roughly this much per year. When prices fell, consumption rose again. For a glimpse of the future, note that when gasoline prices briefly spiked 30% due to Hurricane Katrina, US usage dropped 6% over two weeks. Saving 2.2% each year is well within reach.

Price and demand are tightly linked. We change our behavior dramatically when prices rise. Those are basic facts that Peak-Oil catastrophism ignores. China and India may be industrializing, but they are doing so into an era of expensive oil. Their relatively low per-capita income means most people there cannot afford much oil. This will make economizing and conservation unavoidable, and these countries’ attempt to mimic Western profligacy may simply be choked off as their own demand forces prices to rise.

Can we conserve enough to make a difference? Energy consultants such as Amory Lovins point out that as much as 90% of the resources and energy used by manufacturers and power plants are wasted. The cheapest way to make more oil available is to insulate, use lighter materials, and otherwise conserve. Simply doubling gas mileage would reduce oil consumption by 25%, shifting Hubbert’s curve far to the right in a single action. We could easily reduce oil use by 50% with no change in our standard of living, just by simple conservation. And 70-80% reductions are well within reach.

Catastrophists often point to all the other incipient disasters we face besides Peak Oil—global warming, aquifer depletion, soil loss, active volcanoes near cities, killer storms—and say “Take your pick; one of them is bound to get us.” They underestimate the resilience of culture and ecosystems. If we recite the list of disasters just in the US in the last 25 years they seem terrifically daunting: A series of Class 4 and 5 hurricanes, the eruption of Mount St. Helens, years of surging inflation, a stock market crash, two major earthquakes in California, huge floods, September 11, a stolen election or two, multi-state blackouts, the destruction of New Orleans—and yet the US, and the world, stumble along somehow.

Adaptive and Complex

Cultures and ecosystems are incredibly resilient because they are made of large numbers of loosely coupled, compartmentalized sub-systems. One or more compartments—such as a chunk of the power grid—can go down, but in response other components ramp up or down and otherwise adjust, and the whole system re-stabilizes at a new, or often the same, level. Hurricane Katrina illustrates this. We lost up to 30% of our oil and gas production, and a major city, overnight. Petroleum prices spiked, but other compartments in the system compensated, and gasoline prices quickly settled and slipped to below their pre-Katrina levels. Natural gas, more difficult to ship, with many sources still off-line, has not fallen in price since Katrina. If its price stays high, we’ll see conservation measures such as insulation and better windows, and a shift to other fuels, including a demand for more nuclear power (a move I don’t relish but view as inevitable). And we’ll see a drop in natural gas demand, some of which will be made up by other sources, but some will simply disappear due to higher efficiency and an adaptive cultural ecosystem that shifts its emphasis to more effective strategies.

Everything may be connected to everything else, but only loosely. Scenarios of a lock-step march to disaster betray a poor understanding of the complexity, loose linkage, and resilience of global systems.

If oil were to disappear overnight, we’d be in big trouble. But we have 35 years to gradually descend merely to 1965 levels of consumption. Nineteen-sixty-five wasn’t so bad. Even though world population is greater, energy efficiency increases are greater still. We are an adaptable species—it is our hallmark trait—and the world will change much in 35 years. My bet is on the hairless monkey.

Peak-Oil catastrophists have performed an important service by scouting out the worst parts of the terrain ahead, and by being noisy enough to have alerted many complacent people to the possibilities we face if we act stupidly. And my own scenarios aren’t exactly rosy. Even if we conserve, even if China builds more one-cylinder cars and we all have only one child, the end of the oil age is going to be rough. Worldwide depression and soaring unemployment are almost inevitable as oil gets expensive. Yet even that very dark cloud is lined with silver. Depression, by definition, is a shift from economic growth to contraction, and that in itself means less oil consumption. More importantly, a culture addicted to economic growth will find its absence painful at first, but the end of “bigger is better” can leave room for other types of growth where value is not measured in money: cultural, artistic, intellectual, social—all those things that our crude fixation on economics as the centerpiece of life tends to destroy.

High unemployment could be transformed into fewer people making, buying, and needing to earn money for unnecessary widgets; spending less time at jobs they hate; and producing, alone and in community, a larger share of what they actually need—which does not take 40 or more hours a week. It is an opportunity for the role of economics in our lives to shrink, and for an expansion of time for the many things money cannot, or should not, buy.

Humanity has reached the stage, finally, where basic survival is not in doubt for many people. We have not yet grasped that the struggle for survival is essentially over, and we have overshot. Instead of noticing that as a species we no longer need to labor all our waking hours for the basics of food and safe shelter, and to fight off disease and predators, we cannot get off the survival treadmill. So we just keep making more stuff, rather than looking up, taking a breath, and enjoying all the wonders possible from being a conscious, intelligent animal that has mastered survival. Perhaps Peak Oil, and a return to a time when resources are dear and labor is abundant, will remind us that there is much more to life than the manufactured desire to have more toys. Perhaps we can lose our small-minded obsession with getting and spending, and finally grow into maturity as a species.

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