quantifying US economic and agricultural performance based on
precarious oil and natural gas dependence. The study got the attention
of some in the environmental, renewable energy and population control
communities, but not of those who steer the ship—the government and
the oil industry. With a respectable 11,000 copies sold, many
environmentalists have still not read nor heard of it. But as energy
and environment are more and more at the top of people's concerns,
BEYOND OIL will be a landmark work."
DISRUPTION WILL GO FAR BEYOND GAS LINES
BEYOND OIL forecasts that a major consequence of our oil vulnerability
is that between 2007 and 2025 the US will cease to be a food exporter,
due primarily to rising domestic demand, topsoil loss, food production
inefficiencies, and shortages of costly petroleum used in
agriculture—to say nothing of feared climate change problems. Less
food for export will be a great fiscal problem for the US, which
relies heavily on agricultural exports, but it will spell catastrophe
for many other hungry people in other parts of the world.
ECONOMISTS DON'T LIKE IT - IT CAN'T BE ALL BAD!
The BEYOND OIL model breaks new ground by exploring the stark
geophysical limits which counter the neoclassical economists'
assumption that there will be increased resource supply or resource
substitution in response to higher prices. Neoclassical economists
have trouble with BEYOND OIL due to its unrelenting focus on the real
limits of energy resources and the pure logic of the "Energy Profit
Ratio" and all of its implications.
RUNNING FASTER TO STAND STILL
Is the future already upon us? Oil people do not worry out loud about
our increasing difficulty in producing oil. BEYOND OIL makes the
observation that a 280% increase in drilling in 1985 compared to 1973
produced less oil than in 1973.
The seriousness of our domestic oil supply situation as analyzed in
BEYOND OIL can be appreciated by using a concrete example. Let's take
the besieged Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, not underestimating the
amount of oil there, which is perhaps the greatest hope for a huge
untapped US field. Based on the US Geological Survey's most optimistic
estimate of reserves, 9.2 billion barrels, your reviewer's calculation
is that this potential production would provide less than two years of
gasoline use in this country. [However, the average estimate of those
reserves used by the Interior Department is 3.2 billion barrels,
according to the NY Times & Rocky Mountain Institute on 9/5/90.]
ALTERNATIVES ARE NO PANACEA
The book also deals thoroughly with the question of alternatives to an
increasingly expensive, diminishing resource. "Alternatives" are dealt
with in accordance with the authors' setting off the word in quotation
marks. The main criterion of alternatives feasibility is their energy
profit ratio, which is poor for all alternatives compared to cheap
oil. Long before any alternatives can be put in place, the US will
have become totally at the mercy of OPEC. "None (of the alternative
fuels) currently has an energy profit ratio comparable to those of
domestic oil and gas or imported oil during the 1950s and '60s, when,
not by accident the US economy grew at its fastest rate ever" (p. 69).
DIMINISHING OIL = DIMINISHING WEALTH?
"We may already be seeing the effect of more expensive fuel on the
economy" (p. 241). Co-author Kaufman points the reviewer to proof of
that effect, such as today's generation being poorer than our
parents', with mostly two or more workers per family instead of
one-{worker households; real family income increased from 1940 and
peaked in 1973. GNP per capita could now be stagnant, but notes
Kaufman, this is rarely if ever understood as a function of resources.
REFORMS SUGGESTED
Since conservation and efficiency were downplayed, the Afterward by
Carrying Capacity (not affiliated with Carrying Capacity Network)
listed steps to improve where we can, with policy solutions to
alleviate fossil fuel dependence. Those reforms were in the areas of
population control, raising fuel taxes, pushing cogeneration and
energy conservation/efficiency, promoting sustainable agriculture, and
investing in renewable energy.
OIL-BASED AGRICULTURE DESTROYING OUR SOIL RESOURCE
BEYOND OIL does not see a technological fix to our energy challenge.
The Age of Oil will come to an end, inevitably, but clinging to our
addiction up to the end may result in tragic dislocation and
starvation, considering the population explosion and agriculture's
current dependence on fossil fuels. The prime entropic process brought
on by petroleum-intensive agriculture is the waste and loss of
nature's storehouse of energy: the topsoil.
Fossil fuels also power every component of production, packaging,
distribution, and consumption of our food supply. Whether we cope with
these inefficiencies will determine if we can export food in the
future.
BEYOND OIL: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades.
Third Edition (1991) ISBN 0-87081-242-4
John Gever, Robert Kaufman, David Skole, Charles Vorosmarty
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