source: The EconomistThe current known oil reserves are expressed in the above figure. I've added up roughly and came up with a value of 1.100 bn barrels (1 US bn = 1.000m) . If we keep spending at current rate, that is 90 m barrels a day, we have oil left for 12.200 days, that is about 34,5 years, assuming that the demand does not increase, which is unlikely since countries like China and India are demanding ever more. Of course somehow miraculously, it seems that every year, the reserves left tend to equal the ones of the previous year, which indicates that either they find them as quick as they deplete them or they can't do arithmetics very well... or they are just afraid to tell the truth.
The big challenges facing our society are securing energy, food and water for a 6 bn population (and growing). This is the main challenge that can bring about major catastrophe such as a war at a large scale, not Global Warming or Climate Change. There is no sensible measure we can take to correct climate. Any drastic measure will not bring about control of the situation, because such a system does not respond linearly. Whatever happens we'll just have to adapt to the new circumstances, with ingenuity, as we've done in the past. However securing energy, food and water, is something we can do, and should be doing harder.
We need and we must improve energy usage efficiency, develop further the renewable energy infrastructure, promote energy micro-generation and storage, develop desalination techniques and make them more accessible. We need to use more sustainable agriculture methods, that favor diversity of food species and rotation to prevent soil exhaustion and plant diseases, rather than usage in large scale of pesticides. We need to increase global population mobility such as not to exhaust local resources and allow people to go where the jobs are. And this is just the beginning.
1 comment:
Good post, I agree with all the points you make on the last two paragraphs, but I think that your reasoning leaves one fundamental point out: The tipping point for our economic system - and by extension, our society - is not when we will have depleted all known oil reserves. As peak oil theory states, the crisis is precipitated when peak production occurs, which necessarily happens waaay before all the oil has been pumped out of the ground (in fact, it should happen when about half the oil is left). You may delay the onset of peak production a bit with the right technology, but not by much, and only at the expense of a steeper drop when you get past the peak.
Thus, the real question is whether the current tightness in the market (production very close to demand, and no spare pumping capacity left) is something temporary, since new developments might increase production to the point that a comfortable margin with the demand is achieved, or if production doesn´t go any higher because it *cannot* go any higher - in other words, we´re currently living at the ´flat top´ of the peak, and about to go downhill...
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