Somewhere between our current fossil fuel binge and the promise of a sustainable energy future lies a geological destiny that threatens to plunge the world into economic hardship and warfare. That inescapable event is Peak Oil, and, if Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over, is correct, its arrival will usher in a time of unprecedented stress and turmoil, the likes of which we Americans are completely unprepared to deal with.

Speaking at the June 2004 Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in Custer, Wisconsin, Heinberg characterized the global embrace of hydrocarbons as “the biggest party in history” and noted that the United States has been “at the center of the oil empire” over the last century. Having achieved global pre-eminence in part by running through its own vast endowment of fossil fuels, the United States now depends on the kindness of foreign countries to supply it with the cheaply priced oil it once extracted from domestic wells. Without inexpensive hydrocarbons, the United States will be hard-pressed to play the role of global consumer of last resort, setting the stage for a protracted global economic downturn in the foreseeable future.

But, as Heinberg pointed out, the United States bestrides a world squeezed by a combination of rapid population growth and the imminent arrival of Peak Oil, defined as the maximum rate at which the world’s petroleum resource can be extracted. (Once the peak passes, terminal decline ensues.) Current global consumption of petroleum pierced the 80 million barrels per day (bpd) mark last year, a threshold that oil-exporting nations are struggling to meet. There is virtually no spare capacity anywhere for accommodating increased demand--very bad news indeed when China, the world’s most populous country and until recently one that was self-sufficient in petroleum, has seen a tenfold increase in automobile ownership since 1997. Meanwhile, the world’s population of human beings has doubled in the last 30 years, surpassing six billion in 1999. Since then, 400 million humans—the equivalent of North America’s entire population—have been added to the planet, Heinberg noted.

Heinberg drew attention to a little-noticed event in human history that will have a profound and lasting effect on human society. That moment, he said, occurred around 1980, when global discoveries of oil fell below global consumption. From that point forward, humans have been depleting the known amount of petroleum available. This trend has accelerated in recent years. By 2003, worldwide consumption reached 28 billion barrels while discoveries dropped to about 4 billion, resulting in a net loss of about 24 billion barrels. At that rate, supplies of petroleum will be utterly exhausted in 40 to 50 years.

Heinberg threw cold water on those who conclude from these depletion numbers that humans have sufficient time to switch to other energy sources. Long before we turn every barrel upside down in hopes of finding the last drops of oil on this planet, we will have to make our way in a world where the next year brings us less petroleum than the year before. Shrinking volumes of petroleum not only mean less gasoline, diesel oil, and jet fuel, but also smaller crop harvests and more expensive food. For Heinberg, the question of when we will run out of oil is less interesting than the question of how we cope with Peak Oil.

Peak Oil is a concept introduced by M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist who gained notoriety for his prediction that oil extraction volumes in the Lower 48 would reach their zenith between 1966 and 1972 and decline afterward. Though widely scorned and ridiculed by oil industry executives and the U.S. Geological Survey, Hubbert’s assertion was on the money. U.S. extraction (Lower 48) peaked in 1970, and has fallen since by two-thirds. True, output from Prudhoe Bay and deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico flattens the decline somewhat, but not enough to keep totals from falling.

America is, in the parlance of petroleum geologists, “a mature province,” which Heinberg asserted was another way of saying “we’ve run through the cheap, easy stuff.” What makes the current situation even more astonishing is that the United States had, going into the Hydrocarbon Era, the second-largest share of the world’s petroleum. Only Saudi Arabia was blessed with more recoverable oil. As Heinberg put it, “America had won the energy megalottery,” and the flow of petroleum from states like Texas, Oklahoma and California became the bloodstream of a vastly more productive economy that rewarded its people with unprecedented wealth and mobility.

Unfortunately, there came with this blowout little appreciation for the finitude of this magnificent inheritance. It is a safe bet that only a handful of Baby Boomers—who came of age during the fullest flowering of the Hydrocarbon Era—are aware that 75% of the country’s original endowment of oil will be consumed in their lifetimes. And even fewer of them have given serious thought to the consequences of their outsized energy appetite.

As a result, U.S. demand for crude oil continues to increase unabated, and nearly 60% of our 20-million bpd habit now comes from a foreign country. Along with the recent run-up in prices, America’s insatiable demand for petroleum products accounts for a large portion of the nation’s $500 billion/year trade deficit.

Hubbert theorized that the extraction volumes of any finite resource follow the shape of a bell curve, and that its maximum output would correspond with the midpoint of its useful life. In applying Hubbert’s theory to estimate peak output, one must know two things about the resource: how much of it has been consumed and how much of what remains is recoverable using today’s technology. As it pertains to oil, there is general agreement that humanity has already pumped about one trillion barrels out of the ground.

Where opinions diverge is on the question of how much recoverable oil is left. Estimates range between one trillion barrels to two trillion barrels. The optimistic scenario assumes the only one-third of the resource has been exploited whereas the pessimistic scenario assumes the one-half of the oil is irretrievably gone. The proponents of the larger figure--economists and government forecasters for the most part—express confidence (at least in public) that continued technological progress will drive new discoveries of oil in locations where previous assessments were less encouraging. Along with this faith in technology comes a predisposition to ignore the energy costs associated with extracting oil from, say, the tar-coated sands mined in northern Alberta or deepwater locations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Anchoring the so-called pessimist camp is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), a network of petroleum geologists, industry executives and academics experts who have banded together to evaluate the world’s endowment of oil and gas, and study the terminal decline of these fuels. Unimpressed by “flat earth” economists who presume that the power of money transcends physical limits, ASPO’s most prominent spokespeople, like Colin Campbell and Matthew Simmons, believe that Peak Oil will be a traumatic event that the world cannot run away from. ASPO is profoundly skeptical of official estimates of oil availability, pointing to the recent writedown which wiped out 23% of Dutch Shell’s “proven” reserves.

Equally bothersome to ASPO are forecasts from government agencies, such as those of the International Energy Administration, which contend that depletion won’t happen for at least 20 years. In contrast, several speakers at ASPO’s May 2004 conference in Berlin pegged Peak Oil’s arrival to occur between 2005 and 2007. These industry analysts based their conclusions on the following trends: North Sea oil extraction is past peak, Mexico is set to peak this year, Russian exports are constrained by limited pipeline capacity, and Saudi Arabia’s largest fields are filling up with water. The take-home message was unmistakably clear, Heinberg said. Worldwide export capacity is either on the verge of reaching the summit, or is there already.

Heinberg noted that while the ASPO conference attracted plenty of media coverage in Europe, it didn’t rate a mention in the United States. The absence of American journalists attending this meeting is symptomatic of a larger climate of denial that chills discussion of America’s addiction to oil. The official view of Peak Oil, Heinberg said, is most fittingly captured in the following statement from Vice President Dick Cheney. “The American way of life is non-negotiable.”

It is hard to imagine an outlook more steeped in denial and filled with hubris than Cheney’s, but it expresses the national mindset in a way that goes to the heart of our problem. Cheney’s unwillingness to even entertain the idea of petroleum depletion, let alone participate in a public debate on it, reflects a political establishment that has no Plan B to deal with America’s voracious hunger for petroleum. To have a credible Plan B would require a public discussion that political leaders would be unable to control. Imagine what their responses would be to questions like: “But who allowed things to get this far out of hand?” or “Why did you wait until now to tell us?” But the federal government has a poor track record for admitting error, especially large ones. When considering how abjectly dependent on cheap oil we’ve become, and how sensitive Americans are to even moderate jumps in gasoline prices, the likelihood that officialdom will soon lift the taboo on Peak Oil and that the subject will surface on Face the Nation or Lou Dobbs’ Moneyline is remote to nonexistent. “What giant sucking sound?” is about the best we can expect from the political and media elites for now.

The ongoing drawdown of America’s stores of petroleum parallels the sapping of any national will to do something about it, other than to continue treating the earth as if were a giant piñata. Energy policy in the country has never been more divorced from reality than it is now. Spurring business purchases of Hummers and other outsized vehicles with tax credits makes no more sense than burning the lifeboats on the Titanic to stay warm for another half-hour. If every privately employed petroleum geologist agrees that the American oil province has already yielded most of its hydrocarbon riches, how much of a contribution can come from new wells on public lands? Not much, but as long as this veritable media blackout on Peak Oil endures, top officials like Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will not have to answer that question in public. What passes for federal energy policy, then, are symbolic gestures, like calls from the White House to expand drilling in northern Alaska, dribbled out to convey the impression that the government is on the case and citizens are safe from enduring any sacrifice or hardship. As any petroleum geologist will tell you, new straws stuck into the Alaskan tundra would have as much effect on global oil supplies as rain dances would on the Sahara Desert’s climate.

Heinberg closed his talk by comparing humans with another bloom-and-crash species--yeast. When placed in a sugar-rich environment, like grape juice, yeast multiply like crazy. Their rapid growth results in more effluent, which after a certain point becomes toxic to them, and their numbers decline as quickly as they rose beforehand. Not noted for their intelligence, yeast populations have no idea of what’s in store for them when they are blooming. The same cannot be said humans, however. Population growth does not diminish human capacity to project into the future. Individually, many of us can understand that Peak Oil will usher in a new environment that will be far more hostile to growth than our current one. Regrettably, our isolated Cassandra-like warnings seem to have no effect on the prevailing culture of growth upon which American society is organized.

Though we can congratulate ourselves on being smarter than yeast, it will be our response to Peak Oil that will indicate if we are indeed the wiser species.

Books by Richard Heinberg:

The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrialized Societies, New Society Publishers, 2003.

Power Down: Rational Responses to Energy Resource Depletion, New Society Publishers, August 2004.

Petroleum and Natural Gas Watch is a RENEW Wisconsin initiative tracking the supply demand equation for these fossil fuels, and analyzing its effects on prices, consumption levels, and the development of energy conservation strategies and renewable energy alternatives. For more information on the global and national petroleum and natural gas supply picture, visit "The End of Cheap Oil" section in RENEW Wisconsin's web site: www.renewwisconsin.org