Dilemma: abandon our oil addiction, or abandon Earth to its fate?
May 5th, 2009One might expect that the peak in oil production would result in a decline of CO2 emissions from oil. A new study from ASPO Netherlands suggests otherwise.
Even though total oil production is expected to be much lower in the future, the study concludes oil-related emissions are, at best, likely to remain about constant and at worst could increase significantly. The reason? “Unconventional” oil: tar sands, extra heavy oil, oil shale, gas-to-liquids, and coal-to-liquids.
The production of unconventional oil and refining it to a high-grade end product are associated with far higher CO2 emissions than in the case of conventional oil. Measured over the entire cycle from production to combustion, coal-to-liquids, oil shales and extra heavy oil are the worst culprits.
Bottom line: arresting climate change requires abandoning our quest to continue our oil-dependent lifestyles after the peak in conventional crude production.
As Richard Heinberg reminds us, reducing carbon emissions essentially means using less coal, oil, and gas. Since “clean” sources of energy probably can’t be scaled up to replace fossil fuels entirely – and certainly not in time to avoid an energy crisis – this means the world will have less energy to go around. Historically, there has been a very close correlation between energy consumption growth and economic growth. Less energy means the days of economic growth are over.
This is the “inconvenient truth” nobody wants to talk about.
We have an economy that’s designed only to grow. Any interruption in growth is seen as catastrophic.
We need a different kind of economy, one designed for a stable or declining throughput of materials and energy. I think Heinberg is right when he says:
But we’re not even going to start trying to design one until more people start telling the truth about where we’re headed.