Save the world
It’s time to start
I had just dropped my daughter at the nursery when I began to save the world. I mention this detail because it’s important to emphasise that Nancy loves her nursery. If she didn’t, I wouldn’t drive four miles from home – into London’s congestion zone, at a cost of £8 a day. I wouldn’t have found myself in Connaught Square that morning, fretting about newspaper stories suggesting the price of petrol was going up. I wouldn’t have seen a woman sitting inside a peculiar car parked beside me. Nor would I have noticed, on returning to my VW Golf from the nursery, that the car had moved some yards away and the woman had disappeared.
Intrigued, I wandered over and scribbled in my notebook. When I got home I began to investigate what I had seen.
It may seem grandiose to describe my actions that morning, and in the days that followed, as “saving the world”. It may be factually incorrect, because I may not have averted global catastrophe after all. You decide – but first get your head round the following, rather terrifying background information.
A barrel of oil contains the equivalent of almost 25,000 hours of human labour. A gallon of petrol contains the energy equivalent of 500 hours – enough to propel a three-ton 4×4 along 10 miles; to push it yourself would take nearly three weeks. To support economic growth, the world currently requires more than 30 billion barrels of oil a year. That requirement is constantly increasing, owing to population growth, debt-servicing, and the rapid industrialisation of developing countries such as India and China. But we are about to enter an era in which less oil will be available each year.
And many believe that industrial society is doomed. Are we really running out?
Well, half of all supplies come from “giant” oilfields, of which 95% are at least 25 years old; 50% have been producing for 40 years or more. In the North Sea, production peaked in 1999. Late last year, Britain began to import more oil than we export. Worldwide, discoveries of new oilfields peaked in the 1960s; and despite technological advances, new discoveries are at an all-time low. A recent story in The New York Times suggested that oil companies are failing to recoup exploration costs: significant discoveries are so scarce that looking for them is a monetary loser. Not that I normally read The New York Times’ coverage of the oil business – like most people, I have tended to consider news about the oil industry to be extremely dull. That started to change when it crept out of the business pages and into the general news, and into advertisements. Practically every day, it seemed, a big oil company took a whole page to promote the fact that we are facing a crisis. One, paid for by Chevron, called on readers to help find a solution. I visited Chevron’s website, www.willyoujoinus.com, where a whirring clock monitored worldwide oil consumption: nearly 1,500 barrels a second. The more I read, the scarier it became. Michael Meacher, who was Britain’s environment minister for six years, is plainly terrified.
“The implications are mind-blowing… Civilisation faces the sharpest and perhaps most violent dislocation in recent history.”
Matthew Simmons, a Houston-based energy-industry financier and adviser to George Bush and Dick Cheney, was asked in 2003 if there is a solution. He replied: “The solution is to pray.”
These people are not loonies. Optimists believe that the market – the law of supply and demand – will solve the problem. As oil becomes more expensive, we’ll shift to some other energy source. But do high prices really cut demand? Since early 1999, oil prices have risen by about 350%.
Meanwhile, demand growth in 2004 was the highest in 25 years. That’s bad news, because the market won’t push energy companies into pursuing alternative sources of energy until oil reaches considerably higher prices.
And then it will be too late to make the switch.
The former oil-industry executive Jan Lundberg reckons the crisis will be sudden. “Market-based panic will, within a few days, drive prices skyward,” he says. “And the market will become paralysed at prices too high for the wheels of commerce and daily living.” So forget the price at the pump: when oil becomes truly unaffordable, you will be more worried about the collapse of distribution networks, and the absence of food from local shops.
Ecologists use a technical term, “die-off”, to describe what happens when a population grows too big for the resources that sustain it. Where will die-off occur this time? Everywhere. By some estimates, 5 billion of the world’s 61/2 billion population would never have been able to live without the blessed effects of fossil fuels, and oil in particular: oil powered the pumps that drained the land, and from oil came the chemicals that made intensive farming possible. If oil dries up, we can assume, those 5 billion must starve. And they won’t all be in Africa this time. You too may be fighting off neighbours to protect a shrinking stash of canned food, and, when that runs out, foraging for insects in suburban gardens.
Dr Richard Duncan, of the Institute on Energy and Man, has monitored the issue for years. “I became deeply depressed,” he notes, “when I first concluded that our greatest scientific achievements will soon be forgotten and our most cherished monuments will crumble to dust.” Of course, this isn’t the first time people have predicted imminent apocalypse. During the late 19th century, Londoners feared they would all be killed by the methane in horse manure. But oil is certain to run out eventually, and most experts believe that will happen during the lifetimes of people now living.
Pollyannas point out that the size of official oil reserves went up dramatically in the 1980s, and the same will happen again as oil companies discover new oilfields. But geologists say the world has been thoroughly searched already.
Not everyone believes we’re doomed. Cheerier prognostications suggest that our future will more closely resemble 1990s Cuba. The American trade embargo, combined with the collapse of Cuba’s communist allies in eastern Europe, suddenly deprived the island of imports. Without oil, public transport shut down and TV broadcasts finished early in the evening to save power. Industrial farms needed fuel and spare parts, pesticides and fertiliser – none of which were available. Consequently, the average Cuban diet dropped from about 3,000 calories per day in 1989 to 1,900 calories four years later. In effect, Cubans were skipping a meal a day, every day, week after month after year. Of necessity, the country converted to sustainable farming techniques, replacing artificial fertiliser with ecological alternatives, rotating crops to keep soil rich, and using teams of oxen instead of tractors. There are still problems supplying meat and milk, but over time Cubans regained the equivalent of that missing meal.
And ecologists hailed their achievement in creating the world’s largest working model of largely sustainable agriculture, largely independent of oil.
Can we steer ourselves towards the Cuban ideal? If so, how?
Well, let me tell you what I did. First I switched exclusively to wind power as the source of my domestic electricity, through a company called Ecotricity, which promises the price will not differ significantly from what I paid before. Then I got a man round to give us a quote for installing double-glazed sash windows. The latest, high-specification glass, I was told, traps domestic heat but allows sunlight to pass through, which means you can turn the thermostat right down in winter. I contacted a company that specialises in solar power. If I acted quickly, I could get government subsidies. I put my name down for a domestic wind turbine – apparently, traffic at the end of my street makes a greater racket, but I would need planning permission. The turbine would cover roughly a third of my electricity needs. The cost: £1,500.
I bought a tray for sprouting seeds (highly nutritious, apparently) and started the long process, as yet unresolved, of persuading my wife that we must dig up our flowerbeds and turn the garden into an allotment. I even got in touch with a local vicar who keeps chickens in his garden, and asked how I might do the same.
Does this really amount to “saving the world”? I’ve saved the best till last. Remember Nancy’s nursery, and the peculiar car I saw in Connaught Square? The car is called a G-Wiz (pictured above); it runs entirely on electricity, has four seats and storage in the bonnet, and is no bigger than a Smart car. A G-Wiz costs as little as £7,000. It does not incur road tax. It’s in the cheapest insurance bracket, and exempt from the congestion charge. In Westminster you can park for nothing in pay-and-display spaces, or in your local car park, with free electricity to charge the batteries.
The downside? It can’t go faster than 40mph, and the batteries go flat after about 40 miles. That didn’t bother me: we’d use it in London, and for trips further afield we could hire a car. There was one problem. Unless local councils install a socket on the pavement, the only people who can run an electric car are the lucky few with off-street parking.
So I started a campaign. I wrote a letter to drop through my neighbours’ doors, explaining about the coming oil crisis and describing the electric car. I promised to write to the council urging it to install electric sockets if at least a few of my neighbours would do the same. Within hours, two names appeared. Over the next couple of weeks, eight others had joined them. With this support, I wrote to my local councillors. For good measure, I sent through government proposals to subsidise that kind of installation by up to 60%. Placing my order for the G-Wiz, I popped a non-refundable cheque for Pounds 1,250 in the post. I would just have to hope Barnet council comes through before the car arrives.
I felt proud to belong to a district that was saving the world. And, to be honest, I felt rather pleased with myself. I sent for some fake parking tickets to leave on the windows of petrol-guzzling 4×4s. And I wrote a letter to the Saudi oil minister, urging him to invest in alternative energy technology before it’s too late.
It has been a long and tiring campaign. I realise it may not work. I don’t honestly believe most people will be motivated to match my shining example.
Eventually, the government will impose the kind of restrictions normally used in wartime. When that happens, we’ll move out of London to begin a new life of genuine self-sufficiency.
If this sounds far-fetched, you should know that many people have already retreated from urban life, in readiness for the coming catastrophe. So many are doing it, in fact, that an American book recommending suitable locations has started to sell, second-hand, for as much as $150.
Where am I going? I’d rather not say. Because when the electric grid collapses, I don’t want anybody breaking into my house to make free with the electricity generated by my wind turbine and solar panels. I don’t want you scoffing my beansprouts, or roasting my precious chickens.
WHAT COULD REPLACE OIL?
Switching the world’s infrastructure – including billions of homes, hundreds of millions of motor vehicles, and millions of industrial plants – to alternative energy will be horrendously expensive.
What could replace oil? It can’t be gas, coal or uranium because, like oil, they’re running out. (They’re also wrecking the environment, but that’s another story.) We need to switch to something renewable.
That’s no small task. It would take 220,000 square kilometers of solar panels to power today’s global economy. Covering such an area would require enormous amounts of time, money – and oil, to locate and mine the raw materials, then manufacture, distribute and maintain the panels.
The solar industry will shortly hit a shortage of silicon. Developments in nanotechnology, producing ultra-thin paints and laminates, use much less silicon than older solar technology. But building a single plant to produce those paints and laminates costs $1bn or more.
There are other problems. Solar and wind power depend on weather conditions. We don’t have electrical distribution systems that would allow us to collect solar energy on the parts of the Earth where the sun is shining and sell it to the other part where it’s night-time. Dr. Richard Smalley of Rice University proposes a fundamental overhaul of the global electrical grid. He’s working on a highly conductive, carbon-based wire that would improve efficiency and permit cheaper long-distance power transmission. But the breakthroughs needed to make that happen will amount to “minor miracles,” he says. “Even if we had the technology right now, it would still take several decades because it’s such a big enterprise.”
Professor David Criswell, at the University of Houston has another solution. He suggests building arrays of solar panels on the moon – where sunshine is eight times stronger than on earth, because there’s no atmosphere – and beaming power to satellites around the earth, to distribute all over the planet.
Criswell points out that solar panels on the moon could be as thin as paper without any danger or blowing away, or corroding. Most of the raw materials would be taken from the moon itself, so the only things needed from earth are manufacturing equipment plus the odd human to keep an eye on things and inject – you’ve guessed it – a spot of oil for lubrication.
To break even, he reckons, lunar power would cost $400bn. But once it’s up and running the cost will come down rapidly.
It does seem a lot of money. But carrying on as we are would be just as expensive, because demand for oil is growing so fast. The International Energy Agency says that by 2030 developing countries will push demand up by 47 per cent. To keep pace, producers will need to spend about $100bn a year to develop new supplies – assuming that were possible, which geologists say it is not.
OIL ISN’T ONLY USEFUL AS FUEL
The vast majority of oil we consume is burned up as fuel. But hundreds of everyday objects are made from petrochemicals. We take them for granted now, but to drive your car unnecessarily, or fly away on a holiday that might just as well have taken place near home, is to burn a valuable resource that might one day have been used to make products like these:
Household: Ballpoint pens, battery cases, bin bags, candles, carpets, cassettes, curtains, detergents, drinking cups, dyes, enamel, linoleum, paint, brushes and rollers, pillows, refrigerants, refrigerator linings, roofing, safety glass, shower curtains, telephones, toilet seats, water pipes
Personal: Cold cream, hair colouring, lipstick, shampoo and shaving cream, combs, dentures and denture adhesive, deodorant, eyeglasses, sunglasses and contact lenses, hand lotion, insect repellent, shoe polish and shoes, tights, toothbrushes and toothpaste, vitamin capsules
Medical: Anesthetics, antihistamines, antiseptics, artificial limbs, aspirin, bandages, cortisone, hearing aids, heart valves
Leisure: balloons, boots and lures, cameras, fishing rods, footballs and golf balls, guitar strings, skis, stereos, tennis rackets, tents
Agriculture: Fertilizers, insecticides, preservatives
Other: Antifreeze, boats, life jackets, glue, solvents, motorcycle helmets, tyres, parachutes
16 October 05