William Lachance ([info]wlach) wrote,
@ 2007-04-21 14:21:00
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Entry tags:advogato, alberta, eroi, society

Unstable societies and the canary in the tar sands
Avery just posted a pretty interesting article comparing the cultural institutions of the United States with those of France. The conclusion that he draws is that the states is an "unstable" society while France is a "flow" society. While I haven't spent enough time in Europe to really comment on the latter (although I suspect he may be somewhat overstating the case), I think his analysis of North America is essentially spot on. However, I'd like to add something to it:

Unstable societies require the continual input of greater and greater amounts of high quality energy to avoid collapse.

What else will allow the rapid development of dispersed urban centers (with correspondingly expensive cost of transportation and infrastructure)? What else will compensate for a high bankruptcy and failure rate in business? What else will compensate for the routine and accepted displacement of unskilled labor due to relentless increases in "productivity"?

Much has been made in Canada recently about the development of the tar sands in the province of Alberta, but I think people are missing the real story in all the hullabaloo about that province's spectacular growth. Twenty years ago, you couldn't find anyone willing to spit on the tar sands. Today, the province is experiencing an economic boom based on an extraction method with an incredibly low EROI (5:1 versus 17:1 or better for oil produced by conventional means). This begs the question: why are the (multinational!) oil companies bothering with the tar sands if there are more lucrative opportunities for energy extraction out there? Why put so much capital and expertise into something which provides such a poor return on investment?

Perhaps I'm missing something (if so, please comment), but this indicates to me that we're experiencing real problems in finding the sorts of high quality sources of energy which sustain our current social and economic systems.

edit (May 31 2007): After rereading some stuff, I just realized that my postulate on unstable societies almost certainly came from Thomas Homer Dixon's The Upside of Down. How easily we forget where our ideas come from...


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[info]caffeinemonkey
2007-04-22 04:35 am UTC (link)
The tar sands, like any other source of oil, is a good investment because fundamentally oil will run out some day. When viewed from that perspective, it makes (business, not environmental) sense to get your hands on as much freaking oil as you can. Plus, all jokes aside, Alberta (being part of Canada) is a politcally and economically stable place to do business, where pretty much all other significant sources of oil are not. If you can take 5:1 EROI that's guaranteed, but a risky 17:1 EROI, which do you take? Trick answer: you take both, because it's oil and it will run out! And hey, if the 17:1 risky crap goes to hell, maybe if you bought into enough of the "expensive" 5:1 stuff you can cover your ass...

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[info]wlach
2007-04-22 03:38 pm UTC (link)
Right, the tar sands are something of an environmental disaster, but let's leave that aside for now...

From everything I've read, I don't think we're ever going to "run out" of oil, just that it's going to get increasingly expensive (and dangerous) to extract. I still think it's quite indicative that people are getting so excited about something which was seen as completely not worthwhile not so long ago: if there were no (current or expected) supply problem, wouldn't we be more likely to see the same kind of investment placed elsewhere in the world economy? Remember that every business venture comes with an opportunity cost: there's a lot of things to invest in besides energy...

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You're not wrong
[info]gear.wordpress.com
2007-04-29 07:05 am UTC (link)
There's a lot of investment going into getting harder-to-extract oil now and that is because the easy to reach reserves are depleting rapidly. We aren't going to run out in the near future but the resource is finite. Continued economic growth is not sustainable but while their are lots of rich powerful people viewing wealth as an end, not a means we will not change our socio-economic system. The armed presence in Iraq is all about securing those oil reserves. There are, apparently quite a lot of shale oil deposits in Canada, so just as soon as it becomes economically viable to get them, you might find the US looking for excuses to invade there next.

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[info]pphaneuf
2007-05-12 08:54 pm UTC (link)
From my recent visit in Danmark, and pondering energy issues, I'm afraid the best thing to do just seems to be "bloody use less of it". Just about all the ways to generate energy (including the 17%+ of "alternative energy" electricity in Danmark) has some pretty solid negative impact.

Oh well.

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[info]wlach
2007-05-13 03:29 pm UTC (link)
Sounds like a fine idea, but how do you generate economic growth without increasing the input of energy? Our assumptions of how society should operate go straight out the window.

Maybe some miracle form of energy with a better EROI than petroleum will come down the pipe to save us all, but I'm not betting on it.

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[info]pphaneuf
2007-05-13 04:45 pm UTC (link)
It would necessarily require improving efficiency, of course, which I suppose requires changing some assumptions of how society should operate. Yes, urban centers should be denser, not more dispersed. You can produce the same amount of light with a fluorescent lightbulb with only a fraction of a tungsten lightbulb. In a way, a business that fail can be a saving, as the market declared it to be spurious, and it can now finally stop wasting resources trying to do something nobody wants. With a more dense population and a good public transport system, unskilled workers changing job within a city isn't as much of a problem.

I'm not sure that economic growth necessarily requires more energy. Creation of wealth isn't a zero-sum game, wealth can be created from almost none (including energy), in some cases. Admittedly, this isn't quite the common case.

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[info]wlach
2007-05-14 07:38 pm UTC (link)
I don't have the source handy right now, but it's documented that the energy intensity of our societies has been going steadily down for the last 20 years or so (that is to say, the amount of energy needed to produce a unit of GDP). Nonetheless, our consumption of energy has continued to increase. This is Jevon's Paradox on a large scale: gains in efficiency are lost because consumption of resources just increases along with it.

With regard to your second point (creation of wealth isn't a zero-sum game and wealth can be created from almost nothing), I think that depends on how you define wealth. :) The cheap Chinese goods we intellectual property workers take for granted certainly weren't produced from "almost nothing". You can't wear or eat computer code and patents...

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[info]pphaneuf
2007-05-14 08:07 pm UTC (link)
I am only guessing, but I have a feeling that this may be due to the resource not actually becoming scarcer. Being generally more efficient then just means that it's more profitable to use. But the efficiency I'm talking about is more about making up for resources becoming more scarce. With the kind of populations we have, land to live on should be expensive, as it should be more dedicated to agriculture, to feed all those people. Electricity is damaging the environment, and this damage has a cost that is not fully transferred to the end-users, and if it were, we would be much more careful with its usage. A car is a luxury, why is everyone and their brother going around in one? All that I would prefer less coercion from above, I suppose these are some things that government could intervene into.

As for wealth, an inoperative car (thus of almost no value) can sometimes be fixed for a couple of hundreds of dollars of parts and a few hours of work by a skilled mechanic. After that, it can be worth more than the combination of the old value of the car and of the parts, either for having a useful car or for outright resale (I had a friend who fixed cars to pay for school, actually). I think that's a good example of skilled labour showing value over unskilled labour, without being overly white-collar...

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[info]wlach
2007-05-14 08:20 pm UTC (link)
I love your ideas, but I think what you're talking about would be seen as a reduction in the standard of living by most people in the Western world. Using resources as you suggest would definitely result in a reduction of the GDP. As I suggest in my original post, I'm pretty sure we're going to be forced into this situation, whether we like it or not, but I don't think the transition will be as orderly or natural as you or I would like.

On a completely different note, I think these sorts of problems (issues of energy and resource utilization) are quite amenable to analysis using computer technology. I'll probably write more about that later in the week.

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[info]pphaneuf
2007-05-15 06:27 am UTC (link)
Yeah, I certainly agree that there would have to be a reduction in the standard of living, but this might not be entirely related to the GDP. Denmark, while a bit of an extreme, uses a bit less than 6 MW/h per inhabitant, and the US is using more than 12 MW/h per inhabitant, while still having a higher GDP per capita than the US (they're not exactly chock-full of natural resources, they even have "Christmas trees" listed as one of their main exports on their Wikipedia page!). They also have an overwhelming large middle-class (very little poverty and not too many rich people), are apparently happier, get laid more and are generally hotter. ;-)

But you're right, it'll eventually come to some situation that reduces the standard of living, but I'd much prefer it to be because we tuned our consumption than because we're virtually run out (maybe it'll just become too expensive for most people) of a number of resources. And while it might not look exactly like Mad Max, it probably won't be too pleasant.

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Gots a question
(Anonymous)
2007-11-08 02:08 am UTC (link)
Hey, I have a question about the tar sands project in alberta. Do you think it's sustainable and if so why? It'd be a great help if you could explain why.

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