The Problem with Malthus

The human population explosion of the past two and a half centuries (which has begun a dramatic wind-down) has given many people a stick to shake or at least plenty of food for thought. And beginning at about in the same timeframe as the population explosion, people have warned that we're not going to have enough food to feed us all. The father of this school of thought, Thomas Malthus, basically said that the way populations are growing, it won't take long for population to outpace food production - because there is only so much land that can be put under the plow.

Now, I've heard arguments today that sound quite similar to Malthus's from over 200 years ago, and I've heard critiques of these and of Malthus himself – and it seems to me that both sides seem to be missing something essential. Besides, most of what both sides say is just putting words into Malthus’s mouth as a straw man for the other side’s argument.

The first thing to deal with is: How could Malthus been so wrong in the first place? For his argument seemed so logical.

Let me start my comments about today's cornucopians, on the one side, and the over-population fanatics, on the other, by looking at what went wrong with Malthus. For he saw around him a development which he considered unsustainable: For every funeral he had (he was an Anglican cleric), he had 6 baptisms. (If I went by these statistics today in Germany, the relationship wouldn't exactly be turned around, but there are starting to be more deaths than births in a great number of populous countries.)

Now, what strikes me most, is that Malthus was not interested in explaining the phenomenon that he observed around him but rather to discover a general pattern behind it and to find out where it would usually end. Now, he makes an assumption that might be the reason why he has so many critics today: He assumes that it is normal to have more births than deaths; and that famine, plague and war reduce these population surpluses in due time – meaning, if people were left to themselves. With this assumption, he goes on to explain the mechanics to how an uncontrolled (exponential) population progression works: There can be an (incrementally increasing) economic/nutritional surplus for a good while, but sooner or later, the population will be checked back to the carrying capacity of the land.

Now, instead of accepting the checks that would naturally occur once the situation got out of hand, Malthus made a plea that birthrates should be controlled. It is exactly this plea that most of the developed world has fulfilled this plea and has adopted it as its own.

But why did he make the plea at all? Because he saw that the people who were having most of the babies were quite poor, infesting the city with more poverty.

In that sense, the goal of his essays was to help get rid of much of the poor and of the situation that promotes poverty. For if fewer people were born, more of them would be able to be absorbed into the workforce, escaping poverty. At the same time, if there is a smaller pool of poor people outside the workforce, wages will rise, making the workers more valuable while decreasing poverty dramatically. Of course, some poor are always there, he said. But the reason so many of them were around was a result of the great surplus in the food supply that existed at the time.

So we see that Malthus was more interested in physio-economic processes than in any “collapse” or impending famine that would necessarily (eventually) result from such a continued development.

At the same time, he (like most of the economists at the time who were looking for generally applicable models) failed to see the deeper reality of what was going on around him. Now, what I am proposing would have helped him (at least for his historical inheritance) is for most of us quite risky anyway. For basically he should have looked to see if the observed phenomenon of his environment fit the pattern that he saw repeating itself throughout history, or if the situation was a new one, saying "This time it's different".

Well, anyone who has considered economic movements, especially bubbles on the stock market, for instance, knows that claiming that it’s different this time around is almost a sure sign for being wrong. Prices/valuations only grow to the heavens when they are in a bubble which sooner or later will burst. And Malthus, of course, assumed that this time around was not really different than the other times in history – although it was mostly because that was not his primary question or concern.

Well, it was different that time. It was not only the early years of the Industrial Revolution – which is common knowledge nowadays – but there were a number of other elements which made that era in history different than any other:

1. Agricultural production per acre had been rising for a good century, especially in Great Britain, so that many more people could be fed and a much smaller portion of the population needed to work in the fields (by that time less than 50%!)
2. Transportation (later becoming part of the industrial revolution with the railroads) infrastructure was being greatly extended, so that food, and of course other production surpluses, could be more easily brought to food-hungry regions and urban populations
3. General hygiene and medicine practices were improving, so that especially infant mortality was beginning to fall dramatically
4. War had become the sole domain of the state – piracy and hoarding bands (especially from the Russian Steppe) were removed, allowing for greater prosperity

In short, what Malthus was seeing was the beginnings of a brand new trend. The old rules were not completely being replaced but rather being placed in a new framework and – until the limits of the new system were found – out of effect for a while. It's as if an isolated island country were to discover a new, empty continent and then try to say that things would return to the old limits quite soon – once the extra deer there were hunted off, for instance. But a continent has much more than just deer, and that continent will not just disappear. In the case under study here, industrialization was adopting new methods while fossil fuels, the real source of our new wealth, were just beginning to be exploited at all. Since then, the per capita amount of energy being used has grown about 100 times. Back then, one man rode a horse, e.g. which is exactly one horsepower. Nowadays one would drive a car – which usually has at least 100 horsepower.

In short, we can say that humanity, starting with Great Britain/ Northwestern Europe, was certainly moving into uncharted waters. For this was not the periodic (and in the long run, gradual) growth which Malthus assumed to be taking place. We were not simply populating a few new empty territories, as the Portuguese had done, for instance, four centuries earlier when they discovered the mid-Atlantic islands, increasing population capacity incrementally. No, with the new industrial methods and the new energy resources, we were able to multiply the amount of energy put to our personal use in comparison to before the Industrial Revolution.

So what does that mean for us today? Calling on Malthus’s ghost in and of itself usually doesn’t help for either side. For, was he generally right but only 2 centuries early in calling on natural population checks? World population has grown almost ten times since he began writing and will probable increase another 50% until we’re done. And are we in the process of finding the new limits to the world system which Malthus couldn’t even guess existed? Or, as his model would suggest, are we in a severe overshoot which is only waiting for the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse to rear their ugly heads?

Of course there is the opposite view, that it is futile to try to find limits in a world that doesn’t actually know any. This view works against most of history – in the long run! – where two steps forward are usually followed by one step backwards and sometimes is followed by two or more backwards, but not usually. At the same time, we can generally agree that homo sapiens is the one species that has continued to push all “natural” limits into some distant future: The energy of sunlight was replaced (supplemented) by fire, natural selection by breeding, scavenging by agriculture, bodily abilities by tools, direct communication by speech, by writing, by recording, by databanks etc., etc..

Water is not a barrier, heights and depths are reachable, hot and cold can be breached, and we’ve been experimenting with airless environments for the past 50 years. The five continents are becoming “boring”, so that we’ve even invented a brand new continent: cyberspace. At the same time, the limits we seem to be reaching right now are of elementary/chemical nature: Phosphorus, potassium, helium, rare earths, oil and fresh water.

Malthus himself was not worried about any definite limits. His opinion was that there are limits but that we cannot really know where they are. Rather, we should control population without worrying about the limits – and by doing so controlling poverty. It sounds like the path that China took fifty years ago and that most of the West and Japan have been on since at least the 1970s with the adoption of the use of the pill, while some have been on it (e.g. France and then Germany) for over a century as their populations have stabilized and are even beginning to drop.

Well, some days I think we’re in a Malthusian “trap” as the peak-oilists, the environmentalists and the population fanatics believe. And sometimes I’m sure we’re moving onto another brand new continent, into a new paradigm as the cornucopians, the singularists and most economists assume. There is most certainly evidence for both: On the one side limits in the amount of primary energy being produced (and with esp. oil production beginning a long fall in production) and on the other side methods which have the promise of transforming our intensely energy- and transportation-based paradigm into something new. Digitalization has made some transport simply redundant.

These are the two elements that have and will continue to be discussed ad naseum by their respective proponents, both calling on Malthus’s ghost.

Global Warming - No Home for Me

Up til now, I've mostly avoided the issue of global warming, simply because I don't seem to have a view that can be swallowed by most people. And recently I discovered an insightful article that suggests where the discrepancy lies. Basically it discusses the concept that the discussion on climate change is a social/political discussion instead of one concerned with science and process modeling. Quite often, the science is instead used as an alibi to promote and reinforce one’s existing political positions and social attitudes.

Attempting to categorize the social/political relationship of people to the subject of climate change, the article differentiates into 6 different categories.

And you know what? I don't fit into any of them!!

I am neither on the "left" nor on the "right" of the scale. But I'm hardly in the middle either. Actually, it would surprise me if there were many people who would claim to fit right into one of the categories. And like most poll-related statistics, the answers that we give depend on the questions.

Nonetheless, here is the linear scale that the author presents:

The Progression of six categories in the climate change debate. For a description of the positions, click to this graphic: Six Americans.

So what are my views in comparison to the above?

First of all, I can most certainly imagine that burning fossil fuels has raised carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere. The measurements are clear that CO₂ content is rising. I can also imagine that this is causing more heat to be trapped on the earth's surface, creating a type of "greenhouse" effect, as the phenomenon is being advertised. And rising global temperatures will most certainly change overall weather patterns, evaporating more water from the oceans' surfaces into the lower atmosphere. Climate patterns will most certainly develop accordingly, creating draught for instance on the US's central plains while causing more precipitation and more extreme weather/storms elsewhere.

Now, so far, with these tendentially "certain" views, I would fit into the author's categories of either being an "alarmed" or a "concerned" citizen, meaning I'm pretty far to the left. The others in these two categories, when they talk to me, certainly wouldn't count me as being one of their own. To the "doubtful" or "dismissive" (meaning, to the far "right"), on the other hand, I would appear to be on that far "left" side.

And what about the two categories in the middle? The "cautious", for instance, are "somewhat convinced" of the science of climate change but their "belief is relatively weak", so that they could easily change their minds.

Of course, for me, if climatologists were to show that carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) does not have as much effect on surface temperatures that we have taken as established the past 25 years, then I wouldn't have much of a problem with the evidence either. I have no horse in the race regarding global warming and am not playing politics with the issue - at least not in the assumed way.

I don't think, however, that we need to worry about the scientific community changing the general consensus anytime soon. For, as it stands, recent events (those in the laboratory called "earth") are cementing this consensus and confirming that the modeling has been pretty much correct so far (drought in the US, methane plumes in Siberia, smallest ice cover over the Artic for millennia – or at least since the warm High Middle Ages).

So why should anyone try to dismiss the science as not being "proven"?

And slowly we are getting to the author's actual issue, that the debate on global warming is not a debate in the realm of climate scientology but on the level of social science. Only, the author is trying to deal with a different phenomenon: How can very smart people on the Right deny the "proven" scientific consensus on global warming? And rightly, he says in the paper itself that it really has nothing to do with the science in and of itself.

This is the reason I was amazed at the six categories that the author constructed, for they have to do with how one believes in the science of global warming - except in the extreme positions. In the social sciences, the question is a completely different one: What are the morals concerning the climate and environment and what should our political consequences be regarding these?

And this is where the linear categories proposed by the author hardly help anyone, which appear to me to be different than the text of what he's saying. For what makes a difference how convinced I am of the science if I don't agree on what the meaning and moral of the science is and of what should be done about it?

Therefore, I would suggest putting a y-axis onto the graph which at least attempts categorizing us, the constituents, by how we interpret the science. Because then, not only I myself would find a spot - and I might just find out that a (probably even double-digit) number of people think like I do.

So here's my proposal for the graph:

The x-axis deals with the science, going from -2 to +2.

 



The X-axis considers one's relationship to the science of climate change. -2 is completely convince while 2 is convinced that the science of climatology is not correct.

On the far left are those who think that the science cannot be doubted and that human activity and CO₂ emissions are by far the strongest component in driving global warming.

In the middle are those who think there is probably some correlation to observed warming and CO₂ emissions, although there should be a good element of doubt involved. The scientific community's systemic doubt (scientific doubt) is also interpreted as real uncertainty to the events surrounding and causes of climate dynamics.

And on the far right are those that either think that the science of global warming is wrong, hype invented by the environmentalist (if not directly an academic/green conspiracy aimed against industry in general), and that the correlation between CO₂ and global temperatures is most certainly accidental. For in the past 2.7 million years there have been periods that have measured up to 6°C higher temperatures (interglacials) without human activity, so probably sun activity and cosmic radiation has more influence on temperature than any million parts of a common atmospheric gas – which historically has followed the temperature curve anyway, instead of leading it.

Now, if you look at this first axis, it would seem that the global warming debate is already summed up. But, like the author likewise points out, there is a whole other level to the discussion: What should we do about it, who should have the say about it, what relationship do we have to the scientific community and what does it mean for us locally and for the globe? Usually we can call this the political side of the discussion, while the author calls it the sociological debate.

For myself, like I've already indicated, the science of global warming is mostly clear cut. At the same time, I think that for political reasons from much of the scientific community, which does not want to sow doubt of the importance of "greenhouse" science (let's not confuse anyone by including the 18,000 other components which have an influence on climate!), such phenomena as cosmic rays and other cloud seeders are very underplayed. But this seems quite human: If you have a message, keep it very, very simple. Otherwise, nobody will understand what you're trying to convey. With these caveats, I would not place myself all the way to the left but pretty far: -1/-1.5 when only concerning the science involved.

At the same time, I would place myself on a political scale pretty right of center - meaning I usually disagree with greens and leftists who are calling for strong government action - not that I necessarily agree with the Right's conclusions, but they are much closer to my own sensibilities.

I most certainly see a much different future than is painted by those on the Left in regards to global warming.

For I think that the results of humanity's handiwork could only possibly be calculated into the future, as the ICPP is trying to do, IF we keep living the way we have up to now. IF we only extrapolate the present into the future, the scenarios could certainly come to pass. And, of course, the next 50 years have probably already been determined by our relationship to and actions regarding fossil fuels during the past 50 years. The problem is, I really don't think carbon dioxide will be our problem in 50 years! By then we could just as well be worrying about global cooling! Well, not quite so soon, but perhaps in 100 years..

Just think - the scenarios assume that humanity will continue burning just as much or more fossil fuels as we are now. But what about fossil fuel restraints? Being in the peak oil camp, I am of the general opinion that mankind will never burn significantly more in fossil fuels than they are doing today. IF it were to stay like this and continue a century, we would most certainly have problems. But if we were only able to continue like this, say, 15-20 years?

Not only with this simple example of disagreeing on the other elements of the future can we begin to guess what the real problem here is. There are simply a plethora of opinions, reasonings, interests and sensibilities which play a part in forming one's political stance on global warming. For the discussion presented by the author, though, we can use the American political landscape to describe the sociopolitical side of the coin.

Let's say that on the "left" there would be those who are of the opinion that:

·         Environmental concerns and economic equality are the most important issues facing mankind

·         Overpopulation is the basic root of CO₂ emissions as well as other pollution subjects, and therefore birth control should be a quite high priority of governments

·         CO₂ emissions should be strictly regulated and controlled by the government

·         Global warming needs a global answer, especially concerning the rich West

·         International governances like the United Nations should be given more powers to control national regulations

·         Government should be very active in promoting and subsidizing renewable energies and other substitutes which replace emitting technologies

·         Scientists should be brought into government to help construct sound policy

·         Mining, drilling and construction should be highly regulated, so that the environment and atmosphere suffer as little as possible

·         Economic growth should be restricted to necessities while consumption should be curbed

 

I'm sure I've missed a number of points, but the general tendency becomes clear: climate and emissions regulation fit into a broader sociopolitical framework, while government (esp. international) should be powerful enough to make the necessary changes. If this is not done, mankind will end up destroying itself.
 
Then there's the middle ground:

·         Global warming probably won't be as bad as the extremist claim

·         National Governments should do what they can and force the car industry to raise gas mileage standards and improve efficiency in industry and household

·         Atomic power is probably one of the better answers/replacements

·         Governments and industry should be morally committed to voluntarily make the needed changes

·         Recycling should be made easier - then maybe I would do it too

·         Overpopulation and environmental-misuse issues (except, of course, for CO₂ emissions) are mostly problems of the Third World, surely we can donate money and help teach them how to do it right

·         We've dealt with other issues, why won't we be able to deal with this one along the way? Global "warming" is only another way of saying that things change!

 

In Summary: We don't need more (or less) government to deal with this or any other issue - our national governments and industry just have to focus more on easy solutions a bit. Besides, we'll deal with it probably just fine when we get there.

With myself, I notice a number of tangents to the way I think. Here are a few examples:

I certainly think it's a shame that people in Bangladesh and New Orleans will be flooded more often than they have been in the past. At the same time, isn't it convenient that we have someone to blame for all the problems in the low lying, poor areas of the world? Why do they have to build at/below sea level anyway?

As my wife put it quite simply (without any influence from yours truly!): Haven't there always been climate changes and bad weather? Didn't we always have to adapt?

And here, the historian comes out in me. Just think of the Egyptian capitals which had to move after only two centuries because the canals silted up and the waterways in the river delta changed course? Partially changes in the amount of water in the Nile were responsible for this .Who knows what was going on upstream, causing floods and draughts. So why should we be any different in having to move our low lying cities? If it's built low, it will flood. The Mayans, the Anasazi and Ancor Wat were all societies built on constant rain falls/water flows. Once they faltered (of course after having built their societies on best-case scenarios), the societies began faltering as well. Nowadays is no different. Why should the world-wide low lying cities not have to pay/move, irregardless of how wealthy they are?

Or, one only has to think of the end of the last ice age, about 12,000 years ago to see drastic swings of a couple of degrees temperature change in only decades, not centuries! Some of these swings helped kill off the mammoths, for instance, and horses in N. America – their place of origin. Back then, most people were still going with the flow, wandering/migrating back and forth with the weather and seasons. Some were already starting to divorce themselves from the short-term effects of the weather by adopting agriculture - and thus becoming more dependent on the long-term patterns.

On the other hand, over the last 10,000 years we have probably had the most stable temperatures for the longest time the earth has known in the last 2.7 million years, since the days that North and South America united, creating the ice-age era that we're still in. Is it really so bad, that this quiet phase might be coming to an end for a while?

25,000 years ago, as the last glacial passed its peak, the ocean was almost 120 meters lower. 120 meters!! And we should be worried about 1-3 meters in the next hundred years?

This means, that I might not disagree with the science, but I have problems with the alarmist results, with what we should do about the scientific modeling. What I certainly do not agree with is the idea that we are making the earth uninhabitable. Temperatures might rise – but there is no way that our few hundred ppm carbon dioxide will touch off a runaway green-house effect. Desertification in places, yes. Extreme weather in many places, sure. An ice-free North Pole and a colder Europe because of it, why not? War over the new habitable zones? Sounds human to me. But extinction? Not because of warmer weather.

It’s all a matter of proportion.

The second issue is that of other "obvious" consequences. What actions should government take, for instance? Should so-called carbon credits be traded? Well, that sounds complicated. Should fossil fuels be taxed so that they become uneconomical? Why, yes, why not?! Concerning the political debate that the author was referring to: What should government do because of climate change? What should government look like because of it? Should it become all-invasive in the way we live, turning into a moral agency? No. Right now, government (local and national) and its role doesn't need to be changed because of a “bit” of global warming.

Generally I agree: The government should pass prohibitive laws and tax unwanted behavior. For tax dollars go back into the economy, fueling other activities, while behavior slowly changes. And government should remain as small and simple as possible.

And finally, what solutions should be offered to protecting the planet from such global results?

Well, none.

Although I do like some of the geo-engineering ideas out there. Long live the techno-freak!

Sure, everyone should do their part in cutting down their use of everything, including energy, while improving efficiency. But to suggest the typical geo-engineering solutions or world-government approach is really barking up the wrong tree. Besides, what good does it do for someone growing corn in the Midwest to worry about the rainforest in Amazonia? Instead, local corn growers should feel free to use local resources to defend its growing season. Or to change the crop it's growing – but not to have a monopoly on water supplies and to pollute the streams with pesticides. Yet these are local and national concerns, not world ones. Certainly there should be regulations on the national level regarding the effects of their actions downstream in New Orleans.

Now with this idea, let's go back to Bangladesh.

A river flows through Bangladesh, taking the Monsoon-rains that dump their moist air onto the Himalayas back to the ocean. Much of the country ends up being under water. Year for year. And this is nothing new. The river, though, has become dangerous, destroying much of the landscape it's flowing through. And silting up the delta, just like in ancient Egypt. Why – because of global warming?

Well, the rains have become stronger, but the real problem is that the forests along the river in the mountains have been and are continuing to be cut down, so that the effect of the rains are now being magnified along the river. Meaning: Most of the answers to the effects of global warming lie not directly with fighting global warming but in fighting the immediate causes (in this case deforesting).

It's on these grounds that I find myself in the political middle, perhaps leaning to the right, but not necessarily.

And then there’s the right. The right can be characterized by a number of other attitudes:

·         CO₂ is not a pollutant but a basic building block for life - "plant food"

·         The science of global warming is far from being obvious and could be explained by a great number of anomalies and/or causes. Temperature rises correspond with the general end of the Little Ice Age.

·         Global warming is a ploy to disempower especially the benign American world military presence, the pax americana

·         For that case, global warming rhetoric is used as a ploy and a moral lever for a number of things: To loosen American middle class affluence; to give more power to national and especially international instances; to take power away from the free markets and give more to a socialistic government; to take moral authority away from religion and give it to the state

·         It's also an excuse for redistributing wealth to a morally strengthened third world

·         It's an excuse to take power and wealth away from industry and give it to central authorities, i.e. more socialism

·         Socialism is the reason for Europe's economic woes today

·         Economic stimulus to private corporations is much more important than wasting money on "alternative" energies, which btw are not alternatives all. They're just more expensive and produce less energy

·         CO₂ emissions might be high now. If it really is a problem, technology will certainly be able to deal with it in the future. Energy scarcity is the same myth as the others promoted by environmentalists

·         We should not be passing "prohibitive" laws (thou shallt not emit CO₂). On the contrary, offshore drilling, etc.. should be allowed, so that we have the energy we need in order to be able to make the changes we need.

·         Markets should be free to decide if solutions are needed or not

·         Human ingenuity and market forces will cancel out resource restraints and pollution problems - meaning we can deal with such things in the future, if it really is a problem

 

Well, now that we have two linear progressions from left to right, how about we turn the social/political orientation on its head, showing those on the political Left, which tends to be the Green position as well, on the bottom (-2); those on the political Right on the top (2), so that we can make a nice grid of the two, combining the scientifity with the politity of the situation. This is especially for myself important as someone who does not fit on either of the linear schemes - meaning left is not Left and right is not Right.

 

 

Double axis graph: X-axis remains the same, concerning the science of climate change, while the y-axis measures the social/political orientation of one's views.

When we plot the views of the six categories presented by the author, we would expect a straight line from the lower left to the upper right. It seems to me that this line has a certain bend, like the one I've plotted:

 

This tells me that the author's attempt to distribute the different views gets caught up too much on the amount of belief that one has in the science. In his world view, the population is most certainly bent (like in the graph) toward ignorance to and/or disbelief of the science. Therefore one's task, to right the situation, would be to evangelize to a belief in the science of global warming. Well, that sort of negates the insight that the author is presenting: That especially in America, people are more caught up in the politics of climate change (non-consensus) than in the science.

Secondly, on a graph like the one I've constructed, it appears more possible to find one's own spot in the whole discussion. Like for myself: Science views more "left", while my political views are more "right", so that my opinion can be found in the left-upper corner (the blue spot). Other positions are possible as well, like someone who doubts that CO₂ has a lot of effect on the climate but is in favor of a government that has an increasing role in society. Yes, mandatory health care should become law, for instance. This is plotted as red on the graph.

I am very interested in following the climate change debate. In 20 years, we'll probably have a completely different understanding of how weather works. And I doubt that CO₂ will neither lose its role as driver of climate change nor it being the central element in the debate. Just think of Kyoto - how long ago was that?!

And I expect the world to be a touch warmer in 20 years than it is today.

On the other hand, I expect to see the world being much more resource-challenged than it is today. The search for the next round of alternative energies, fossil fuels and nuclear will be well under way. The natural gas abundance in the US will not be completely gone - just restrained and falling unabatedly again. Basically we will use everything we've got and can get our hands on. Energy will be even more expensive - but doable.

But right here and now I want to make a prediction that I have not seen anywhere else – a long-run game changer.

It will be our search for energy which will either make the CO₂ situation worse or better. Sooner or later, though, we will have to move away from hydrocarbons, just because they will get too expensive to produce. And in our search for renewables, we will have to get bigger and bolder: The bigger the engine, the better energies will be able to be collected and harnessed from it. At the same time, we will begin moving up in the atmosphere: Our wind mills will get taller and perhaps bigger. And solar will be collected somewhere above our heads instead of in fields on the ground: Above the rooftops and above the trees. And someday above the clouds.

Now, in 20 years, the trend to "higher" will be noticeable, but still so little, that it of course will not have any effect on our climate. As the years go on, however, it will begin blocking off sunlight that would otherwise hit the earth's surface. Like in a forest, the ground does not heat up as much as in pasture or especially in the desert. In 100 years’ time, perhaps, the newly created shade might start to make a temperature difference, perhaps balancing out the warming done by CO₂. Not long after that, it might even be making such a temperature difference that the fears of global warming will be forgotten. Who knows, maybe the ghost of global cooling will start haunting us.

Granted, this is only one of many possible futures.

But it should demonstrate that it's not at all possible to extrapolate the present situation with our emissions and our fossil-fuels way of life too far into the future, the way the thinking on global warming does today.

For others who believe in the abundance of things, this view would praise the ingenuity of human innovation. But for someone like me, it will have more to do with unintended consequences. Global warming is most certainly an unintended consequence. And I think the end of it will be just as unintended.

For this reason, I think it is even dangerous to give elected governments more power to make the preparations for a future which would - irregardless of our actions to "fix" the CO₂ problem - have no relevance. (Back to topic: this puts me into the political right.) At the same time, I think fossil fuels should be well taxed - if only to fund research on how to get out of the fossil fuel business. Otherwise, subsidies should be kept down to a minimum - while the government should be forced to get rid of the ethanol mandate (which forces food "to be burned"). For if corn is not profitable, why grow it? Of course, there should be help in "doing the right thing" like planting trees and letting nature and natural vegetation return.

But that's me preaching again.

Anyway, if you didn't find yourself in one of the six categories presented by the author, I just thought I would let you know you're not alone. 'Cause I didn't either.

The 3 Phases of the Age of Oil: Transition continued

Even though we are somewhere in the middle of the second phase of the Age of Oil, somewhere around global peak, we have only recently begun the transition away from it. This is mostly to be seen in developed nations, where absolute oil (and, of course, relative) usage has fallen and large subsidies have been awarded to promote renewable energies.

In the same respect, the transition will hardly be complete as the second phase of the Age of Oil comes to an end. It will most certainly be well under way, and perhaps the winners - both the regional political winners and the respective technologies - will likely have become evident. Oil as a commodity, on the other hand, will not lose its general importance (e.g. as one of the main ingredients for the chemical industry) but will have begun to lose its universal usage that it has in certain sectors such as transportation today.

Likewise, oil's global peak of production is turning out not to be very sharp (meaning it hasn't moved up and then back down again within a short couple of years) but is coming more in the shape of a plateau which will eventually start dropping, probably at about the same time that Saudi Arabia's production begins to falter. This is, of course, a personal guess - maybe it will coincide with Russia's fall instead.

Global production will most likely begin falling gradually while individual countries / regions continue adjusting consumption patterns, just like they started to within the last decade. It is even possible that some countries further ramp up on oil use, mostly because of their present momentum - and here I'm not only thinking of China. Parallel to this, there will just as well be producing countries that increase production - and most likely their consumption as well.

But once production goes from its nearly 75 mbd of crude which has been the hard top since 2005, to under 60 mbd - the levels before the mid-1990s: even for such countries, rationing (usually in the form of "exotic" pricing) will most likely begin. Goal for them being to export more, drawing in more hard cash for the local economy.

That's when the second phase will have come to an end.

Phase 3

The world that peak oil buffs see coming after the peak is probably the one that begins in what I would like to call the third phase. By that time, either we will have found viable alternatives and systems to replace and/or transform our present economy, or we won't have.

Now, this might sound like an obvious statement until we look at it more deeply. At the present, society tends to think that we only need to replace the energy source and continue on as before. And if the new source has a different form than liquid combustibles, then we have to change our usage. This is being done at the moment with transportation, for instance: Instead of oil, electricity is being offered as a fuel.

Just consider: I can't put electricity in the car in my driveway, so it doesn't work just to replace the fuel. I also need a new car packed full of batteries. Of course, I'm not alone in needing a car, meaning that electric cars need to be introduced in a big way. And the whole infrastructure that goes along with it. And the supporting energy has to be ramped up and manufacturing switched over to produce it. At least a billion cars will need to be built with lithium-ion batteries to make the new system work.

Is this even possible? Will we even be able to supply enough lithium for them all? Or will human ingenuity come up with a new battery composed of even more abundant materials than Lithium, for instance?

This assumes, of course, that enough electricity will be produced to power the cars day by day. And because it is a replacement of a more efficient (direct) power source, the back of my envelope says that it amounts to about 100% new production above today's.

With this simple analysis we see that nearly 40% of our primary energy usage needs to be replaced, meaning that even without considering our present infrastructure of coal and nuclear power plants, we would have to ramp up production of renewables and/or coal and/or nuclear enormous amounts. Or do you really think that our democratically chosen politicians and profit-driven markets will choose the environmentally friendly approach to this, only using renewables?

Again, I'll put this into the category of "hope", hoping that we can successfully make the switch to electric without civilization mostly crashing along the way.

Of course, this is a very simplistic way of looking at things in which we "only" need to find new energy sources and build new infrastructure. Whether the medium is electricity or hydrogen or a number of different possible carriers, the scenario remains the same, with electric production supporting the whole structure.

On a more differentiated approach, we will more than likely be able to (rather: be forced to) find alternative ways of running our economies and our lives that don't use the same sort and/or amounts of energy. For instance, we might telecommute to work. Or we might not even "work" the same way that we do today. We might become a civilization of free-lancers and day-wagers, for instance, reducing the amount of energy we use immensely by staying home a lot more. On the energy side of the equation, this scenario means we will stop using oil products to get to work while using electricity to run our cyber-offices, our automatic transportation trains, etc.. Primary energy use would then generally drop significantly, perhaps compensating for the lack of access to oil. The hope is, that the quality of our lives will not suffer. However, this still requires an increase in electric use while we mothball our SUVs.

This sounds like the easier, more doable path: Less energy use combined with a quantum leap in virtual activity - with an aging population anyway; less general consumption while paying back government and private debt - and, of course, cleaning up the banking system.

But isn't this a perfect cocktail for a shrinking economy?

A shrinking economy leads to less income for governments, which leads to more relative debt and the need for stronger budget cuts, which puts less money back into the economy. A very vicious cycle that can be presently testified to by the Piigs - of course with their quite individual themes and characteristics, they can somehow be put in the same category anyway. Right now, while the world economy is still generally expanding, there remains a reasonable hope that such countries/regions could hook back into the obviously still expanding world. Once the global economy leaves the course of expansion, however, what hope will we have for all but the fewest "lucky" economies around the world, which either just happen to have the right goods and resources need by all or with an ingenious long-term leadership?

Which leads us to the conclusion that two things need to happen to not fall into the peak oil trap of a shrinking economy as described above –

1) replacement of energy sources and infrastructure while

2) revamping our economic paradigm based on expansion to one that can just as easily contract without leaving carnage in its path.

And hence peak oil's despair: If we accept these premises, it would be more than likely that we fail to establish a new working macro-system, waking up one day in an economically obviously dysfunctional world. In that case, oil restraints will then translate directly into poverty, not only in the usual culprit countries like sub-Saharan Africa, but also in countries that are considered much more advanced. Region for region, country for country, class for class will lose its connection to prosperity.

Of course, between hope and despair is a third route. And many variations of it. For, as John Michael Greer never tires of pointing out: Once peak oil has set in, we have no notion of what the world could actually look like. We have never been there before. It will be like landing on an alien planet we've seen from afar through a telescope, not knowing what to look for - but finding out what reality looks like once we're there, all the same.

Now, I am not convinced that industrial society will disappear or follow the way of the Roman Empire, disintegrating into a dark ages. For the most part, we will make do. But what does that mean? Most of us will experience this as being worse than today - more difficult to get by, benefits being cut, relative poverty in old age. Some of our energy slaves, things we take for granted day for day, will be taken away - but not all of them. We will learn to conserve a lot - but not go back to depending on our own canning, for instance, to survive. The world will not turn back to becoming something "made by hand", as James Kunstler presents it. The suburban intermezzo, on the other hand, will quickly fade away, just like the ex-urban has been doing since 2008. It will pay to shorten our supply lines and to develop "smart" logistics.

After presenting all the "nots", it simply remains the question of the "wills". What will it be like?

We will work harder. And more of us will work/ need to work to make ends meet. At the same time, unemployment statistics will skyrocket, if only because established institutions will be laying off, going bankrupt, rationalizing anything and everything that isn't completely necessary. This may seem like a contradiction, except when we realize that this can only work if we give up a great deal of our income and well-paying jobs. And it's not like we'll be giving them up (as if we had a choice) but rather, they will simply disappear.

Black markets and mafia organizations will thrive, while the state will be busy fighting off Soviet-style collapse, never really re-experiencing the Russian re-birth as the new millennium began. Shadow states, in whatever form they might take, will become common as the funds in the public sector needed to counter such power struggles dry up.

But we will have our i-phones. Even if we have nothing else, these electronics will disappear as likely as the radio disappeared during the Great Depression. There may not be enough to eat on the table, but we'll give anything to be connected and online. Granted, there is a possibility that we lose contact to our communications satellites or that communication towers be demolished and used as building materials etc.. like the coliseum in Rom was used as a stone quarry after it was no longer functional nor needed. Well, how about setting up a neighborhood watch with sharpshooters against those trying to steal something from "our" communications towers?

Nevertheless, however connected we are, the trend in our physical surroundings will certainly be shrinking. Instead of the increasing amounts of living space that each of us has had the past century or more, we will learn once again how to be "stacked" on top of each other better. The closer we are, the less energy will be used in such undertakings as climatizing our living space and supply logistics. Now, although we'll be closer together physically, using all the tools that we have developed the last years will allow us to experience a much greater virtual space which is at our disposal - another way of changing our immediate experiences to and with our surroundings.

This middle scenario between hope and despair includes for this reason both expansion and contraction. One clear megatrend will be a more or less speedy transition away from the transportation paradigm of the 20th century based on a car for everyone. This doesn't necessarily mean that we'll give up the car - just the idea that a car or two belongs in each of our driveways. Many non-poor city dwellers throughout the world have gotten along very well in life without one, while knowing the time-tables of the public transportation system better than the multiplications table. Besides, who would say that a "smart" transport system isn't in the cards?

Likewise we need a different support of and activity for our economy which replaces the purchase, financing, upkeep and fueling of the automobile. Smart phones and laptops, despite their great improvement within the Information Age, hardly replace the sums of money, (meaning economic activity) which flow through the car industry. Housing and perhaps smart homes will continue to be a great part of the economy - but the gap left by the automobile will not quickly be replaced. And if not, then contraction is already programmed into the cards.

What could the next big thing be? Well, here is not the place to try to come up with new ideas but to discuss the general scenarios: hope, despair and making due. For, yes, we need a solution. And when I discuss "finding" a solution, I don't mean scratching it onto a piece of paper or model it on a computer. This is not a "all we have to do is.." type of thing, not a one-problem puzzle. Change our energy source. Change our infrastructure. Change the way capitalism works. Change the way the markets and our monetary system work. Change our lifestyles, our settlement patterns and our logistics. And the question of whether our world is about to get so much smaller, as some peak oil economists would suggest, depends our how we "transform" our society in these points and many others.

Again, it's not necessarily a question of single solutions. Instead, complete systems need to be exchanged which function in the real world with real politicians, businessmen, workers and families that have to care for an aging population - and which require a functioning economic and monetary regime. For it has been our present economic regime that has been causing serious problems in a big way at least since the Japanese troubles began after 1990. Our ready supply of energy has most certainly compensated for our monetary constraints over the last century - a role that it will not necessarily be able to fill in the future with a shrinking resource base.

Therefore, I don't think it will come down to whether there are enough energy solutions and corresponding human ingenuity in the physical sense. Instead, it might just come down to a monetary system that fits the physically "shrinking" world of the Information Age instead of the expansion of the industrial era.

For let's not forget that it took until the 20th century to come up with a system that replaced hard currency, for instance - the bane of capitalism: Long periods of depression, despite technological expansion, visited the West basically everywhere for the most of (and especially in the second half of) the 19th century. Occasional gold rushes with the corresponding expansion of money supply relieved the general depressive atmosphere. Fiat currencies, which allowed money supply to grow along with the general economic growth, finally relieved the situation. Of course, not without growing pains such as the German hyperinflation of the early 1920s, the British return to hard currency in the mid-1920s and the ensuing world depression of the 1930s.

Will it take just as long for us to come up with a replacement or improvement of the "fiat" system that will fit the coming era? Let's hope not.

These are some of the fears which are running through the peak oil community: That on the one side we will have less power input from fossil fuels (especially oil), causing economic development to stagnate. On the other side, there will continue to be an economic/monetary system which depends on the collection of interest, which itself depends on an expanding economy and yearly increasing tax income. On the investment side, this is translated into the fact that the stock market demands a return on the capital tied up there. Profit. Now, most stocks are owned by institutional investors, meaning insurances and pension/endowment funds are the ones collecting these gains. If there is no gain in the value of stocks and/or no dividend, these funds can only pay out of their base capital, quickly having nothing left from which to earn an interest. Such generational contracts such as the Social Security system in the U.S. and similar government retirement programs likewise depend on next year's income being higher than the last - simply because an increasing number of people are receiving benefits year for year while fewer are paying into it.

Re-investing

The final challenge on the monetary side goes another step deeper into the mechanics of economics, especially those of the capitalistic type: Corporately investing.

This activity is that which gives capitalism its name. For through the workings of the larger economy and flows of money, capital has the habit of accumulating in one or more areas, in one or a number of hands. At the same time, certain actors tap into such "depots" in order to accomplish larger projects like building a ship for trade, opening a mine or developing a piece of land into e.g. a plantation. Opening a factory and building a railroad were typical activities in the early capitalistic/industrial era.

In order to accomplish such feats, great amounts of capital need to be invested, but also need to be "freed up" i.e. extracted from other activities, restricting investments in some of the rest of the economy. Generally speaking, investment in one area pulls capital and investment away from the next. There is, of course, strong competition for investment capital. On the other hand, the dramatic expansion of credit associated with a fiat currency, while governments spend freely on the calculated income from future taxes, has relaxed the immediate correlation of investment in one area resulting in capital starvation in an other. One could even think that competition for capital would be regulated by interest rates.

Despite such expansion of credit, we have witnessed this phenomenon in recent years in what is known as the "Dutch disease". Investment and expansion in the natural gas industry in Holland meant stagnation in the rest of the national economy - at least until expansion eased and the windfalls could be exploited. After the new infrastructure and investment had been installed, on the other hand, the Dutch did quite well among the European economies. Once, that is, the fresh capital was producing profits and being freed up to wander elsewhere.

Because of this phenomenon, the real problem with transitioning from one energy source and energy infrastructure to another is not that oil products themselves become more expensive. Rather: Because of expensive oil, more capital will be needed to invest in replacing capacity either in oil production or in the production of other energies, be it solar, wind or atomic. These projects require enormous amounts of capital, which is taken away from other needy areas in the economy. And because the capital return may not be as high as in other projects (trade, real estate, internet), a lot of hype is needed to get this capital committed.

These thoughts are an introduction to the probable path much of the world will experience (have already begun to experience) during transition to the third phase of the Age of Oil. Between the scenarios of hope and despair is "making due" or malaise, the vision of a capital-starved world. In it, a lack of growth and expansion combined with the enormous primary investment needs of the energy sector and its related infrastructure and industries combine to create an anemic economic environment in more or less permanent crisis. At the same time, once the new basic infrastructure/paradigm is in place, capital could begin wandering back into competing sectors.

Once that happens, maybe we'll then start worrying about getting into space again!

At any rate, it's extremely difficult to describe the third phase, simply because this all depends on which of the three (or which of the many of the other possibilities) we will go down. With the information that we now have in front of us, the most probable is a semi-functioning form of malaise. The transition into it is the tricky part, one that could end up going any which way. This is quite different from the past 200 years, where the path that development followed would have not been so different, regardless of how history itself would have gone. Granted, it could have been faster or slower, depending on who had won the world wars and the fight for ideological primacy. In the end, though, the technologies would not have been generally different.

This is, however, a claim that I cannot prove - just like I cannot prove how the world is going to react to a depraved energy situation. And anyone who claims they know how the world will, in the mid-term, react is either an blasted genius, a true visionary or downright a miscalculating fool. And although I think that there are people who understand quite well how the world and its people function (J.M. Greer or on the psychological side Nate Hagens), I doubt that they can fathom how this future will be.