July 3, 2004

Convergence

Rice around the world is growing ever more slowly

Harmed by the present rise in atmospheric temperature

But I have quickly barred that fact from my mind

My dietary staples are wheat and potatoes, not rice

The air pollution in my town can be smelled and seen

Sunrises now almost invariably a bright flaming pink

But I have seen to it that my own lungs are protected

Air filters unceasingly clean the air in my apartment

Genetically-engineered life forms released in nature

Mix their genes with other organisms unpredictably

Fostering the growth of crop-destroying Asuperweeds@

But perhaps it will not happen, at least not to my food

Newscasts are replete with stories of weather extremes

Droughts, hurricanes, untimely and prolonged rains

But my apartment building is made of sturdy bricks

Why feel vulnerable to what affects mostly the poor?

The sword of nuclear war hangs over all of our heads

Yet deep within, I have a secret pride and smugness

We all survived the 1962 Cuban crisis, despite the fact

That, as we know now, the order to strike was given

Ten percent of the global harvest is based on water

From non-renewable sources B rivers and aquifers

But look at those large, untouched Canadian glaciers

Surely our good neighbor will help quench our thirst

The topsoil in the world=s great breadbasket regions

Has by now almost completely disappeared, eroded

Replaced by a hard, dry, cardboard-like sterile surface

I have been waiting for the usual technological fix

News sources from Africa report a steep resurgence

Of old transmissible diseases B TB, malaria, polio

But surely these diseases will not come to my town

The arrival of the West Nile virus clearly an aberration

If present trends continue, by 2025, our planet

Will have an additional 2,600,000,000 people B

A 43 percent increase over today=s 6,100,000,000

Will all these people, like me, want to own a car?

Recently, I learned that the short 160-year interval

During which we have enjoyed a source of cheap

Flexible and highly concentrated energy, is ending

The historical Adiscontinuity@ has begun, even now

Without oil, how to transport water from glaciers?

How to power our military, our cars, our air travel?

How to manufacture fertilizers, refrigerate food?

How to control a surge of invasive superweeds?

How to make our plastic gadgets, heat our homes?

How to control the climate, if we revert to coal?

How to control cancers, if we choose nuclear power?

How to grow energy crops without topsoil or water?

And now I realize that I am a citizen of the world

Not just a citizen of any one country or continent

The convergence of forces will indeed affect me B

And disastrously if we continue our present course

My children will ask, AWhy did you let it happen?@

AWhy did you not prepare, plan, help the transition?@

AWhy did you not slow down on your use of oil

Your depletion of resources, your rape of the earth?@

My throat is chocked. I have no answer

Because there is no answer.

References

Rice around the world is growing ever more slowly

International Rice Research Institute and the Agricultural Division of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, Report on Rice Production, 2004; reported by Free Speech Radio News, ARice Production drops,@ June 29, 2004. (The International Rice Research Institute is a non-profit organization based at the University of the Philippines - Los Banos, just outside Manila, the Philippines. In the United States, the report was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Heinberg, Richard, The Party=s Over B Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada), 2003, pp. 31-32.

Global warming is slowing down the growth of rice B the world=s most important food crop. This is the conclusion of a 12-year study by the International Rice Research Institute and the University of Nebraska, carried out at the Institute=s farm in Indonesia. The study correlates rice yields with atmospheric temperature.

Results show that rice yields decreased by 10 percent for every increase of one degree Celsius in minimum night time temperature. The authors theorize, AThe hotter nights make the plants work harder just to maintain themselves, diverting energy from growth.@

In combination with increasing daytime temperatures, the overall rice production decreased by 15 percent more than had hitherto been predicted by means of global climate models.

Studies in the United States also show that corn and soybean yields decrease with rising temperatures.

Heinberg notes that at the beginning of the 20^th century, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, which had remained constant at 280 parts per million (ppm) for 10,000 years, began to rise, along with global temperature. By 1998, atmospheric carbon had risen to 360 ppm, an increase of 29 percent. Predictions call for a rise, by 2050, to 560 ppm and a consequent increase in average global temperature of 2-5 degrees Celsius (3-7 degrees Fahrenheit).

The sword of nuclear war hangs over all of our heads

Chomsky, Noam, Hegemony or Survival B America=s Quest for Global Dominance (Metropolitan/Henry Holt, New York, N.Y.), 2003, pp. 74-75, 81-83 and 187.

Lloyd, Marion, The Boston Globe, October 13, 2002; Sullivan, Kevin, The Washington Post, October 13, 2002; cited in Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival B America=s Quest for Global Dominance (Metropolitan/Henry Holt, New York, N.Y.), 2003, pp. 12 and 74.

The Missile Crisis:

By March 1960, the U.S. government had made a formal, secret decision to overthrow the Castro government.

In February 1961, Arthur Schlesinger, prominent historian and advisor to President John F. Kennedy, suggested to Kennedy that in order to avoid the Ainevitable political and diplomatic fallout@ from the planned invasion of Cuba by a proxy army, the U.S. should first try to trap Castro in some action that could be used as a pretext for invasion.

In April 1961, the U.S. invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Having failed, Kennedy implemented a crushing embargo on Cuba.

By late 1961, the embargo had become part of Operation Mongoose, a program of paramilitary operations, economic warfare, and sabotage against Cuba.

On October 25, 1962, Adlai Stevenson, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, unveiled a photograph taken by U.S. spy planes, of a missile site in Cuba. Kennedy accused Nikita Khrushchev, Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, of having placed nuclear missiles at the site. Kennedy threatened nuclear war unless the missiles were immediately removed.

On October 27, 1962, at the moment of most tension in the crisis, as his submarines were under attack by U.S. destroyers, Soviet submarine officer Vasili Arkhipov blocked an order to retaliate with nuclear-armed torpedoes. Had he followed orders and fired, a devastating response would have undoubtedly followed, leading to a major war, most probably nuclear.

The Commemorative Conference:

In October 2002, the National Security Archive, based in Washington, D.C., organized a conference in Havana, Cuba, in commemoration of the 40^th anniversary of the October 1962 Cuban crisis. Attendees included a number of those who witnessed the crisis from within as it unfolded.

Arthur Schlesinger: A[The missile crisis] was the most dangerous moment in human history,@ commented Schlesinger.

Thomas Blanton: A[The world was] one word away [from nuclear war]... A guy named Arkhipov saved the world,@ declared National Security Archive representative Blanton.

Ten percent of the global harvest is based on water

Postel, Sandra, Pillar of Sand B Can the Irrigation Miracle last? (W. W. Norton, New York, N.Y.), 1999; cited in Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold B The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World=s Water (The New Press, New York, N.Y.), 2002, pp. 6-7, 60 and 252.

If present trends continue, the present world population of 6.1 billion will, by 2025, include an additional 2.6 billion people. To feed this world population, an additional two thousand cubic kilometers (about 476 cubic miles) of irrigation water will be needed. This in a situation where even now, agricultural operations are creating water deficits.

By 2025, the population within the basins of the world=s most hotly contested water B the Aral Sea region, the Ganges, the Jordan, the Nile, and the Tigris-Euphrates B will have increased by between 45 and 75 percent. If agricultural production is to increase proportionately, the demand for fresh water will explode.

If present trends continue, by 2025, our planet

Barlow, Maude and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold B The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World=s Water (The New Press, New York, N.Y.), 2002, pp. 6-7.

Heinberg, Richard, The Party=s Over B Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada), 2003, p. 29.

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 2003 B Millennium Development Goals, A Compact among Nations to end Human Poverty, (Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y.), 2003, p. 253.

In 1820, world population was around 1.0 billion.

In 1975, it was 4.1 billion B 3.1 billion people having been added in 155 years (an increase of 310 percent).

In 2001, it was 6.1 billion B 2.0 billion people having been added in 26 years (an increase of 49 percent).

In 2025, it is projected to be 8.7 billion B 2.6 billion having been added in 24 years (an increase of 43 percent).

Recently I learned that the short 160-year interval

Campbell, C. J., The Coming Oil Crisis (Multi-science and Petro-consultants), 1997, (no page number); cited in Heinberg, Richard, The Party=s Over B Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada), 2003, Figure 1, p. 30.

Duncan, Richard, ADuncan=s World Oil Forecast #5,@ Report of the Institute on Energy and Man to the Geological Society of America, Summit 2000, Pardee Keynote Symposia, Reno, November 13, 2000; cited in Heinberg, Richard, The Party=s Over B Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada), 2003, pp. 103-104. Duncan=s data on oil production peaks are through the end of 1999 and account for more than 98 percent of the world=s oil production.

Roberts, Paul, The End of Oil B On the Edge of Perilous New World (Houghton Mifflin, New York, N.Y.), 2004, pp. 31-32.

The beginning of the oil age can be considered to have started on January 10, 1901, at Spindletop, just outside Beaumont, Texas, when a hole in the sandstone some 1,100 feet below the ground, began to gush 100,000 barrels of oil a day B more than the combined production of every other well on earth.

Campbell projects that the end of the global oil supply is likely to take place around the year 2060.

Duncan estimates that the world oil production peak is likely to be in the year 2006. His estimated and projected oil production peaks, by country, is as follows:

Countries whose Oil Production peaked before 1999:

Libya (1969), United States (1970), Venezuela (1970), Iran (1976), Romania (1976), Indonesia (1977), Trinidad and Tobago (1977), Brunei (1979), Peru (1979), Tunisia (1981), Cameroon (1985), Former Soviet Union (1987), Egypt (1993), Papua New Guinea (1993), Syria (1995), Argentina (1997), Ecuador (1997), Italy (1997).

Countries whose Oil Production was projected in 1999 to peak between 2000 and 2004:

Norway (actual peak was in 2000), United Kingdom (actual peak was in 2000), Angola (2002), Brazil (2003), Equatorial Guinea (2003), Malaysia (2003), Colombia (2004), Congo (2004), Denmark (2004), Gabon (2004), India (2004), Thailand (2004), Qatar (2004 B or perhaps 2007, if natural gas liquids are included), Vietnam (2004).

Countries whose Oil Production was projected in 1999 to peak in 2005 or thereafter:

Australia (2005), Mexico (2005), Oman (2005), Yemen (2005), Algeria (2006), Canada (2006), China (2007), Nigeria (2007), Iraq (2009), United Arab Emirates (2009), Kuwait (2010), Saudi Arabia (2017).

Without oil, how to transport water from glaciers?

Cleveland, C. J., Costonzo, R., Hall, C. A. S. and Kaufman, R., AEnergy and the U.S. Economy B A Biophysical Perspective,@ Science 225, 1984, pp. 890-897; summarized in Richard, The Party=s Over B Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada), 2003, pp. 152-153.

Richard, The Party=s Over B Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada), 2003, pp. 167-203.

Odum, Howard T., Environmental Accounting, AEmergy,@ and Decision Making (John Wiley, New York, N.Y.), 1996; summarized in Richard, The Party=s Over B Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada), 2003, pp. 152-153. Odum=s term Aemergy@ means essentially Aembodied energy.@

The Cleveland and Odum studies, as reported by Heinberg, are summarized in Table 1 (see next page).

In the Table, items with an asterisk (*) are from the Odum study (1996). All other items are from the Cleveland study (1984). Time is relevant to the ratio of energy return over energy invested (EROEI) because the net energy yield for a given source may change B downwards due to depletion of a resource base or upwards due to technological refinements.

Table 1: Energy Yield Ratio

(Ratio of Energy Return over Energy Invested, EROEI)

Non-renewable Sources of Energy:

Oil and gas

Discoveries, U.S. wellheads, 1940's over 100.0

Alaska (oil)* 11.1

Discoveries, U.S. wellheads, 1970's 8.0

Coal

At the mouth of the mine, 1950's 80.0

At the mouth of the mine, 1970's 30.0

Wyoming* 10.5

Natural gas

Onshore* 10.3

Offshore* 6.8

Oil shale 7

Coal liquefaction 4

Geo-pressured gas 3

Renewable Sources of Energy:

Rainforest wood, 100-year growth* 12.0

Methanol (wood) 2.6

Plantation wood* 2.1

Solar space heat 1.7

Ethanol (sugarcane, corn) 1.3

Palm oil* 1.1

Electricity Production:

Tidal electric, 25-foot tidal range* 15.0

Geothermal* 13.0

Hydro-power 11.2

Coal, U.S. average 9.0

Geothermal, hot dry rock 7

Solar, photo-voltaics 6

Solar, power tower 4.2

Geothermal, liquid dominated 4.0

Nuclear (light-water reactor) 4.0

Solar, power satellite 2.0

Ocean-thermal power plant* 1.5

Dependent Sources (No Energy Yield):

Solar voltaic cell electricity* 0.41

Solar water heater* 0.18

Farm windmill, 17 miles per hour wind* 0.03

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* Items with an asterisk are from the Odum study (1996). All other items are from the Cleveland study (1984).

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