Fossil Fuels at Peak-Peak Food and Population Overshoot

[4dsc]

http://www.whatcomwatch.org/php/WW_open.php?id=765

A wall chart in the Whatcom Community College physics lab shows the historical (and projected future) curve of oil extraction along with other geo-petroleum data. There is also a curve on the chart that, because of its color, is difficult to see and is easy to overlook entirely. When I ask a student in my energy class to notice it and tell everyone else what the label on the curve is, there’s always a moment of realization and the dawning of a major future problem in a world with declining oil availability. The nearly invisible curve shows world population versus time, and the population curve correlates perfectly with the oil extraction rate curve.

Before oil (and natural gas) humans used manual labor to grow food, and the amount of food determines an upper limit on population. The large-scale, increasing use of oil and natural gas in the industrial world’s food-growing enterprise has meant ever-increasing quantities of food — until now. Therefore, population increase over the past 150 years correlates very well with oil extraction.

By far the largest population increase in the history of humans occurred in the 20th century, and the resources making that possible were oil and natural gas. Now that we face a very near-term decline in both of these resources, it is time to start planning how we will continue to feed a population of over 6 billion humans. In about 100 years, when oil and gas are essentially gone, will it even be possible to provide enough food for six to 10 times as many people as populated the planet before oil and gas? This article will summarize what I’ve learned during the past three years on this subject, which still troubles me far more than anything else related to peak oil/gas and climate change. This is a challenging topic to think about, because I continue trying to find reason for hope when the logic seems to provide little justification for it. Still, we can learn from our past, and there are some seeds for food-growing ideas there.

[Deja Q]

1. Tell those who breed the most to use protection...

I'll double my cynicism and nod to the "cultures" who abort female fetuses or do other nasty things to girls, claiming females are liabilities and other nonsense ideas (google it, there's plenty to legitimately frown on) - for being such liabilities (mostly because it's a chauvinistic concept going back to male heirs, etc, etc), the number of inhabitants is at an absurdly high level.

[lostnotforgotten]

2. Doing My Part - Childless Here - Past My Prime Now

How many more sacrifices are required?

[sam sarrha]

3. that is why they are pack'n the Mexicans and other Migrants into the US. demand raises price=profits

lowers wages and Skyrockets housing, education and fuel costs..profits way up for the plutocracy

[Lasher]

4. My grandparents raised 5 children through the Great Depression

He worked like a dog from daylight till dark, beating a living out of the land. He was lucky to have had a plow and a horse, and to have known how to use them. My grandmother had a lot of skills such as preservation of meat, frit, and vegetables. They took a couple of boys in to work and live with them for a few years because their families couldn't feed them.

I wonder how many people in the USA today have these skills and resources as well as available land to farm.

[GliderGuider]

5. I consider global food supply to be the biggest post-peak problem

Consider the fact that the world has consumed more grain than it has produced in six of the last seven years. That has happened in an environment of energy abundance, and indicates that our food production mechanisms are currently running flat-out. The food supply is already being strained by the world's population growth, and the implication is that we are already using most of the world's arable land to full capacity.

When oil and natural gas depletion start to bite, it will be less and less possible to meet the world's food needs within the current patterns of consumption. The first casualty will probably be meat consumption, as we try to produce more and cheaper calories from lower levels of input. Next in line will be our long supply chains - food produced far from where it is consumed - and packaged foods will start to go. While all of this sounds like a good thing (and it is), the changes won't stop there. As fuels continue to deplete, the only recourse (as we will see before then with personal transportation) is conservation. Unfortunately, unlike transportation, where conservation will impact mainly our quality of life, conserving caloric intake is only possible up to a point, past which it impacts our very ability to stay alive.

Climate change, peak oil and population growth eventually all twine together, to blow the horn that will summon Mother Nature's Chief Surgeon - Dr. Famine.

To paraphrase Tiny Tim, "Merry Christmas, and God help us, every one."

[Dogmudgeon]

6. And it's not just the "energy gap" -- it's climate, too

The agricultural "breadbasket" areas have been stable for at least 6000 years -- as stable as the climate, but not more so. In both warming and cooling scenarios, these areas would become unstable, unpredictable producers, and probably relocate.

For several centuries, the world may have no large, dependable crop-growing areas that can feed billions of people.

--p!

[Boomer]

7. What everyone else has said, plus...

We've plundered the rich top soil in the best areas of arable land. This is especially true in North America, where fertile land took hundreds, if not thousands, of years to build up. We've farmed that land so extensively (and inefficiently) that much of that soil now needs oil-based fertilizers to maintain high productivity.

So when oil support begins to drop, we're not back where we started when the land was first tilled; that land is gone. Farmland would have to lay fallow for generations to recover a fraction of its former resources, and that's just not going to happen. So land will continue to be farmed, despite falling productivity, and there won't be enough produce to go around.

One of the few "blessings" of the Bubonic Plague that swept through Europe was that it reduced the population at a time when it had reached the limits of arable land throughout the continent. Agricultural productivity was low, and there was little variety as people struggled just to grow enough staple crops to survive. The loss of one-third of the population resulted in the abandonment of entire townships and farmland going fallow for decades. Agricultural yields increased, and the variety of foods also increased, resulting in better nutrition.

So, at the other side of famine and disaster, assuming humans make it to the other side this time, life will improve for the survivors. But then we'll start the process all over again as human populations rebound and begin to outstrip resources.

We never learn.

[GliderGuider]

8. That's the problem with overshoot

When the population in question begins to fall, so many of the resources that it required have been used up that it continues to drop well below the original carrying capacity.

Consider that if our civilization does falter significantly as a result of all this, whatever society regrows to take its place will not have cheap oil to fuel its rise. While they may curse our memory, Gaia might appreciate that.

[Boomer]

9. I find that comforting

As a species we're too clever and not very wise, so we can't ever be trusted to prosper without that overshoot. I'm rather relieved by the thought that we'll never again achieve this level of ascendancy over the earth.

We're going to fall very hard and much further from our current standard of living than most people, even on DU, are willing to contemplate. The problem is not only that have we exploited the most easily accessible oil reserves, but we've done the same for all the other resources that we use.

It now takes lots of energy and high technology to continue mining the energy sources, minerals and metals that are the basis of our infrastructure. After a period of turmoil in which oil becomes increasingly expensive and eventually scarce and populations are decimated by famine, diseases and recource wars, our high tech culture will unravel at the seams.

There won't be any recovery from that fall without high tech machinery, and that machinery will be beyond our ability to operate. How many people know how to forge a bronze sword by hand, even assuming we could GET the elements for bronze.

Our descendants will be rooting through landfills to recover what we throw away with such ease.

[GliderGuider]

10. Read "A Canticle for Liebowitz" - one of the very best works of post-apcalyptic SF

The early and middle sections of the book are an excellent illustration of what such a fallen civilization might look and feel like. They indeed spent a lot of time recycling the metals from the old ruins. The author, Walter Miller, didn't clue into the loss of fossil fuel energy though, and what that would mean for the recycling effort. He did understand the implications of the loss of technology for a large population.