- 471 reads
Richard Heinberg on KZYX's The Party's Over (transcript)
Transcribed by Barry Silver
EC: OK, we're back. The sound of the highway that may become a thing of the past. So, welcome back to The Party's Over. Last week we spoke about local food production for local consumption, and slow food. Today, we're going to discuss more of the "banquet of consequences" as oil supplies dwindle. We will actually not go into a discussion of alternative energy in this hour. There is already an excellent program on KZYX, which airs every second and fourth Friday morning at 9am, and it's called the "Sustainable Energy Show", with expert and wonderful, very knowledgeable person, Doug Livingstone. I invite you, if you haven't already, to tune in to Doug Livingstone for that. We're not going to duplicate his efforts, even if we could, and so I suggest you tune into to his show for the latest on that topic about alternative energy.
We have with us, today, Richard Heinberg, and I'm so happy that he took the time out from his busy schedule in order to come on the show with us. Richard Heinberg, of course, wrote "The Party's Over" - the title of which we stole for this show - and I hope he forgives us for that. It's a very appropriate (and it's fun) title, even though it's a very serious subject. "The Party's Over - Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies" is what he has written, among other things. He's a journalist, educator, lecturer, and musician. He's lectured widely, appearing on national radio and television in five countries. And he's the author of four previous books, including "Cloning the Buddha", "The Buddha", "The Moral Impact of Biotechnology", and "A New Covenant With Nature (Notes on the End of Civilization and the Renewal of Culture". The latter was a recipient of the 'Books to Live By' award of "Body/Mind/Spirit" magazine. His monthly MuseLetter was nominated in 1994 by Utne Reader for an Alternative Press Award, and has been included in Utne's annual list of Best Alternative Newsletters. And you can reach that newsletter by going to www.museletter.com.
Heinberg is a member of the Core Faculty of New College of California where he teaches courses on "Energy and Society", and "Culture, Ecology, and Sustainable Community". He is also an accomplished violinist. He and his wife live in a suburban home that they have renovated for energy efficiency, where they grow much of their own food.
Welcome Richard...are you with us?
RH: Hello! It's great to be speaking with you, and I'm delighted that you used the title of my book for the name of your radio show.
EC: Well, thank you so much. I didn't think you'd really mind, and I did find out that, legally, you cannot copyright titles.
RH: That is correct.
EC: And so I felt - well, I probably should have asked you, but I couldn't have gotten hold of you when I wanted to. Anyway, it may help sell more books, for all you know.
[laughter]
RH: Well, in any case I'm delighted that we can help get the word out together.
EC: Yeah, yeah. Well, Richard, in your book, "The Party's Over", you devote an entire chapter to the "banquet of consequences". And, at the beginning of this chapter, you list some quotes, and, if you will allow me, I would like to read two of those quotes. The first one is by Senator Mark Hatfield, which - he said this in 1990, which is 14 years ago, before the Gulf War - and he said this: "Current debates over where and how to drill for oil in this country soon may be rendered irrelevant by a nation desperate to maintain its quality of life and economic productivity. War over access to the diminishing supply of oil may be inevitable unless the United States and other countries act now to develop alternatives to their dependence on oil." This is at the beginning of your chapter. And then one other quote to - kind of - put this all in perspective of where we are today. This one is by George W. Bush in 2002. And this is what he said: "We need an energy bill that encourages consumption." With that, I was wondering if you would put this is perspective and talk to us - our listeners - about the "banquet of consequences".
RH: Yes, well, in the years since Mark Hatfield made that statement in 1990, unfortunately, we've already become more dependent on petroleum - as a matter of fact, over the past four years we've seen a dramatic spike in the demand for oil - not only in this country, but also in, especially, China; to somewhat less extent, in India. And we really haven't spent to develop the alternative energy resources that we need. Nor have we really invested in the kinds of efficiency and curtailment measures that are needed. And so we find ourselves now in the situation, 14 years further down the line, where the world is running short of spare oil production capacity, and nations like the U.S. and China - and, to a lesser extent, Europe - are starting to circle the remaining oil supplies, eyeing each other warily. And we've already seen the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the building of permanent military bases there, and the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the building of permanent U.S. military bases throughout the area of Central Asia. So, I think we're really entering the oil endgame here, and, unfortunately, I don't think it's going to be the kind of oil endgame that Amory Lovins describes in his book - with that title, "Winning the Oil Endgame" - I think it's going to be, most likely, a game of "last one standing", as I call it in my new book, "Powerdown", in which the main oil consuming nations are going to, essentially, fight over what's left, and that will - I think that fight will, first, be primarily economic but, sooner or later, I think it's going to devolve into a shooting war. It's an awful conclusion to come to, but, right now, especially given the results of the most recent "election", I really see things going in that direction.
EC: Now, when exactly does the party end?
RH: Well, it depends on how...
EC: When I said exactly, I didn't really mean that.
RH: We're not going to be able to pinpoint any specific day, although I'm sure there are going to be some bumps on the way. I think we're about to see a collapse in the U.S. dollar and, perhaps, in the U.S. economy as a result of that, and this may occur over the course of the next year to 18 months, I would guess. One can only guess about these things. But levels of U.S. debt are simply unsustainable, and last week Alan Greenspan essentially pulled the plug - if you translate his - almost all his obscure remarks into plain English - he essentially told the rest of the nations of the world, you're silly to be supporting this massive U.S. deficit with your investments in dollar denominated assets - you should find something better to do with your money.
EC: Oh boy.
[laughter]
EC: And, of course, the U.S. is not listening to that, either - they're not listening to Alan Greenspan.
RH: Well, no, although it's awfully hard to say what the real intentions of the administration are in this regard - whether they actually want to see the U.S. dollar decline in value for other reasons. It's really hard to say. One has to guess about these things because their public pronouncements are so opaque.
EC: Right. You know, just interject here, I happen to listen to a Conservative - he has a financial talk show. And he was saying exactly what you're saying; and I didn't expect it to come from that quarter.
RH: Right.
EC: And so I think there is a recognition - even among some Conservatives and maybe Republicans - that this is, indeed, a dire situation.
RH: Right. Well, this situation has deep roots. And they go back to the peaking and decline of U.S. oil production in 1970/71. Prior to that, for most of the early part of the 20th Century, the U.S. was the world's foremost oil producing nation. And, in fact, for many decades, it was the world's foremost oil exporting nation. And, when we started to become a net oil importer, that meant that we were becoming more and more dependent on the rest of the world to maintain our standard of living. Now that we're importing over 55% of the oil that we use, essentially the U.S. is hemorrhaging capital with every passing month. And, although the extremely unwise tax cuts in the last few years have certainly added to the problem, the fact is the U.S. has been slowly going bankrupt ever since we peaked in oil production.
EC: Now, in the next 18 months or so, do you want to make a prediction of what's going to happen; how it's going to happen?
RH: Well, I hesitate to say anything very specific
EC: We won't hold you to it.
[laughter]
RH: Yeah, I would guess that the Bush administration now glorying in its ersatz legitimacy, is likely to pull some really dramatic rabbits out of a hat in terms of, possibly, bombing Iran, or widening the Middle Eastern war in other ways. This is likely to have really dire consequences for the entire Middle East, and it's really hard to say how that will play out - one could spin out extremely severe consequences from that, but I don't know if there's any point in that kind of scenario spinning at this point.
EC: Now, as the economy - the physical and the financial economy - I'm going by the chapter in your book because I think it's very well laid out. We have transportation, food and agriculture, heating and cooling, the environment, public health, information storage, processing and transmission, and so forth. All of these are going to be effective, and I was wondering if you would mind just running through some of those to give people a taste of what's to come.
RH: Sure. Well, let's start with - we've already spoken about the economy a bit, so let's move on to transportation. Course, something like 97% of our transportation energy comes from oil, in this country. We do not have a good public transportation infrastructure, here, as the Europeans have. So, as oil becomes more expensive, all transportation is going to become more costly, and that includes, not just people driving to work and driving to the store, but also the transportation that gets the products to the store, that gets the food to the store, that also operates airplanes, and airline companies. I think the airline companies are operating at a deficit right now, as we speak, as a result of high oil prices over the past few months. Unless oil prices decline considerably in the next few months, I think we're going to see consolidation of the airline industry. A number of the big carriers are going to go bankrupt and, ultimately, I think it's going to be very difficult to maintain the commercial airline industry in anything like its current form. At the same time, maintaining our national highway system is also going to become more problematic because, of course, that's an energy intensive process, and road building with asphalt is - that asphalt is basically made from oil. So that process is not going to come to a grinding halt next year, but over the course of the next couple of decades, it's going to become more and more difficult to maintain the highway system.
So, private automobiles, trucking, road building, and the airline industry are all going to become more dysfunctional as time goes on. I think folks driving are going to notice this pretty soon as prices per gallon of gasoline begin to hike upward. I don't like predicting short-term prices of oil or gasoline because those can be affected by extraneous factors like demand - like if you, if the economy does - is hit hard - then that could reduce our demand for petroleum, and prices could go down for several years, as a matter of fact. But, over the longer term, over the next, say, five to ten years, we're almost certain to see record gasoline prices of $5, $7, even $10 or more per gallon, and as that happens, of course, that will curtail a lot of driving - people just will not be able to afford to drive as much, people will buying smaller cars and getting rid of their SUVs. I predict in five or seven years, if you really like SUVs, you'll be able to go out and buy a Lincoln Navigator or Cadillac Escalade for pennies, and use it as a lawn ornament because no one will be able to afford to drive them.
EC: Right. Yeah, of course. And then, of course, at the same time, while the price of gasoline goes up, so does food.
RH: That's right! Yes, food is the next area to consider here, and it's, in many ways, the most important one because, of course, driving gets us to and from work, but having food to eat is - we're talking about basic survival here. And, of course, our current industrial food system is dependent on petroleum for basic production, running tractors and combines and other heavy farm equipment for transporting food, for processing and cooking food, for packaging food. If we're transporting food at every stage from the farmer to the middleman, and the wholesalers, from the wholesalers to the supermarkets, and then for people to get to the supermarkets and home. So, a typical food item on an American's plate these days has traveled 1300-1500 miles to get there. So, as fossil fuels become more scarce and expensive, this whole industrial food system becomes imperiled. So, it's extraordinarily important that people begin to support their local farmers, to build relationships with local food producers, like CSAs (community supported agriculture is probably the best strategy that I've heard of in that regard, other than people just growing lots more of their food themselves).
EC: We'd like to just take a moment to let our listeners know you're listening to KCYX and KCYZ. This is the show called "The Party's Over". I'm your host, Els Cooperrider, and we're speaking with author and educator, Richard Heinberg - and also the author of "The Party's Over", which has the byline "Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies". We're going to take a few more minutes to speak with - to hear what Richard Heinberg can tell us before we take your calls, so please hold your calls until we have gone through a few more of these consequences - if that's all right with you, Richard.
RH: Sure!
EC: OK, great. I don't know if we want to take some more minutes to go through some of the rest of these - heating and cooling?
RH: Well, heating and cooling are survival matters for people in many parts of the country, not so much here in Northern California - we might get very uncomfortable in the middle of winter if we don't have a source of heat, but we're not likely to freeze to death. That's not the case for people living in New York State, Upper New York State, or Toronto, or a hundred places we could think of.
EC: Most of Alaska.
RH: Most of Alaska, yes. In fact, even places like Saint Louis and Chicago, and on and on and on.
EC: Well, I would say all of Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, even Colorado.
RH: Right.
[silence from 19:00 to 19:09]
RH: ...uncomfortable in the summer without air conditioning, people have become reliant on. And, of course, heating and cooling are energy intensive. If you look at a chart of where our energy actually goes in terms of people's lives, most of us are burning most of our calories/energy in transportation and in home heating. So, home heating is going to become severely impacted, especially by natural gas shortages. Natural gas production has been in decline, here, in North America, for several years, now. We've avoided an all out natural gas catastrophe only because of wet weather. We had extraordinarily mild summers and mild winters for the past three years here. Also, we see some demand destruction - natural gas prices are over twice their usual level for many years. Natural gas is getting much more expensive, and that's driven a lot of users out of the market, including chemical companies and fertilizer manufacturing companies, but we can't rely on mild weather and demand destruction forever. As North American production of natural gas continues to decline, we're going to reach a point - nobody knows exactly when that's going to happen, whether it's 2005 or 2006 - but fairly soon we're going to reach a point where we will see real natural gas shortages, and costs for home heating are going to escalate dramatically. So, it's extraordinarily important that people make their houses as energy efficient as possible, that they insulate their houses thoroughly - and that includes windows as well as attics and walls. So, if you're building a new house by all means use one of these alternative construction methods like straw bale, which provides you with super insulation, and then consider how you're providing heat to your house. Natural gas has been a very cheap way of heating homes, but if you're looking at your future source of heat - particularly in the county - you may want to find another alternative - like if you live on a few acres, and have a little woodlot and back, you should be using your wood sustainably - harvesting your wood, sustainably, and using that.
EC: As I drove to the station this morning from where I live, I noticed all along it's very sparsely populated, but every little cabin, every little home obviously had a fire burning. And what I'm hoping that people do that sustainably, that people will not cut down, for instance, food trees - such as oaks - because that, ultimately, is what may sustain them when things really get tough.
RH: That's right!
EC: But usually the oaks are the first trees that people will cut down because they make such good firewood. I just wanted to throw that in because it's not a very smart thing to do.
RH: Absolutely. I'm glad you said that.
EC: So, that kind of leads us into the environment. If you will!
RH: Yes. Of course, another problem that we face as a society that's just as great as oil depletion is the problem of global warming, which is, of course, created by the chemical by-product of burning fossil fuels, which is CO2, and also methane and other gases and chemicals as well. Many people when they first hear about the Hubbert Peak, and the fact that oil production is about to begin its historic decline think, well, maybe that will help us out of the climate change dilemma. Actually - unfortunately, I think that that's - there's unlikely to be any immediate silver lining in that regard because there's still a heck of a lot of oil in the ground - we will be burning it at decreasing rates, but that doesn't mean it's all going to go away tomorrow. Also, there's the strong likelihood that this country - other countries will begin to turn more to coal to replace the energy input for petroleum. And, while Hubbert's analysis of coal production for the U.S. shows that we're likely to see a peak in coal production within about 20 years - so it's not a situation where we have hundreds of years of coal - nevertheless, that's going to put a lot more CO2 and other noxious chemicals into the atmosphere. So, there's no real silver lining here for the environment, and, as a matter of fact, much of our environmental work that keeps our environment as clean as it is is energy intensive; in other words, waste disposal, collection of toxic chemicals - those sorts of processes - all rely on transportation and energy in one way or another. And I'm concerned that as energy becomes more expensive, we'll just start doing a poorer and poorer job of environmental clean up.
EC: Yeah, that's a real big concern of mine, as well. And I think it should be everyone's concern. We are - let the listeners know you're listening to The Party's Over, with Richard Heinberg, who wrote the book called "The Party's Over". Your host, Els Cooperrider. We're kind of going over a list of what Richard Heinberg calls "the banquet of consequences" as the world's oil supplies dwindle. And we've covered a few of them, and, of course, there's a lot more - there's public health. Maybe - Richard, maybe if we can talk about public health, and then maybe population. I was very interested in what you had to say about population, that with the present population of six billion, today, the ultimate carrying capacity - from all the different predictions and so forth - would only be two billion. And I think this is an astonishing figure, of course, and that that causes a lot of reflection, and I was wondering if you would mind talking about public health and population, and then maybe we'll open up the phone lines for folks to ask you questions.
RH: Yeah, well, already public health is becoming more challenged, shall we say, around the world because not enough investment is going into it, and a number of public health officials are very worried that, even this winter, we may see an outbreak of a new strain of flu virus that could be pandemic and cause many millions of deaths. Well, this kind of worry, this kind of problem, is only going to increase, as energy becomes less available because there will be less energy to go into public health. Hospitals and research facilities are among the most energy intensive kinds of buildings or enterprises that we have. The fact that health care is so incredibly expensive at hospital stays, so incredibly expensive in dollar terms, is some indication of the energy intensive nature of the enterprise, as well. So, I think it's important that we find, become acquainted with less energy intensive ways of taking care of ourselves, both in normal times and also in times of emergency. People should get "Where There Is No Doctor", for example, so that they are personally acquainted with methods that they can use in emergency situations to take care of themselves and people that they know.
EC: Who wrote this book, "Where There Is No Doctor"?
RH: I don't have it in front of me right now.
EC: They can probably get it on the Internet.
RH: Absolutely. The title is "Where There Is No Doctor". And also, things like herbalism, becoming acquainted with the medical uses of herbs that you can grow in your own garden. Then you wanted to talk about population.
EC: Well, yeah, I do because this issue's been around, at least...When I was at Berkeley, as a freshman, in the 60s, I took a course, and a professor talked to us - it was about population and environment and all that - and it seems like, what I've seen over the past 40 years is that people basically ignored this whole issue, and it's one of great concern, and even people who consider themselves staunch environmentalists have basically ignored it. It's something that's become a bit of a taboo subject for some reason.
RH: Well, the reason actually is not that hard to figure out because reproduction is a basic human right, and so population control and human rights are not always easily compatible. Now, of course, the best way to reduce the rate of population increase is to provide better education, and higher economic and political status for women in poor countries. There's no question about that. After some time, the rates of population increase that we're experiencing right now are really dramatically unsustainable, and if there is any way to reverse that trend, quickly rather than slowly, we have to find those ways of doing it. I'm not talking about killing people off, of course. Although, there are some people who believe that, in fact, some of the secret rulers of the world have plans in that regard, and I have no idea whether that's the case, so I'd rather not speculate about it, but certainly there are lots of rumors flying. Currently, population is...Even though rates of population increase are declining - and this is especially true in Europe and the other industrialized areas of the world - overall we're still adding people at a prodigious rate. We past 6 billion back in 1999, I believe it was, and we've added about 400 million people since then, which is equivalent to the population of North America. So, we've added a North America's worth of population in just five years, but we haven't added a North America's worth of resources and support infrastructure. That's some gauge of the nature of the problem.
EC: Now, I recall reading in your book that if every woman of childbearing age had an average of 1.5 children, in a hundred years, we would reduce the population to 2 billion.
RH: That's right! And essentially that is what we need to do because as fossil fuels run out - again, it's not going to happen in a day, or a week, or a year - this is a slow process - but, as that happens, the carrying capacity for human beings on this planet is going to decrease. We have added temporary carrying capacity by way of long distance transportation, by being able to transport resources and manufactured products from places where they're abundant to where they're scarce, and by chemical fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides, the green revolution, and so on. Using all of these temporary strategies, we have been able to increase the Earth's carrying capacity quite dramatically. But, as fossil fuels dwindle, much of that carrying capacity is also going to evaporate. So, if we don't prepare for that, then nature will simply take care of the population problem for us, but we're not going to like how nature does it.
EC: Absolutely not, no. Impending famine, disease. No, we don't want that. All right, folks, if you would like to call in and ask a question of Richard Heinberg, you can do so by calling 895 2448 or 1-800 499 7117, and let's take a call. Hello caller, you're on the air.
C1: Oh, good morning. Would you care to delve into the - what's going to happen with the falling dollar. I'm really curious about that - for the average person. Thank you!
EC: Thank you.
RH: Yes, it's really hard to say very much about that. I think the value of the dollar has already slid by about one third over the last six months or a year. And we can see a further dramatic decrease in the value of the dollar. That will make imports much more expensive. So, going to someplace like Wal-Mart and buying stuff from China, you will find that you'll be paying more for those imported goods. Now, theoretically, this could support U.S. exports - the problem is, the U.S. is not exporting that much anymore, even agricultural exports from the U.S. are starting to dwindle. So, again, it's hard to see much of an upside from this. Interest rates are necessarily going to increase, so if you have any credit card debt whatsoever, find some way of getting out of that credit card debt. If you have an adjustable rate home mortgage, get out of that adjustable rate mortgage and into a fixed rate mortgage, because we are going to see dramatic interest rate hikes.
EC: Oh boy. We have another call. And, hello caller, you're on the air.
C2: Hi Els, this is Doug Livingstone.
EC: Hi Doug!
DL: In terms of solutions, you were talking about the energy involved in our food, and my understanding was the fossil fuel energy that went into the pesticides, herbicides, and mostly the fertilizers of our traditional crops, is even more energy than the energy associated with transporting over a thousand miles, etc. It's true, and doing organic farming, organic gardening, supporting organic gardeners, and organic restaurants and breweries.
EC: Yes, of course!
DL: It's the best thing to do. I love to emphasize solutions.
RH: Absolutely. You know, we will all be growing all of our food organically in a hundred years.
DL: We won't have that much choice.
RH: That's right! We won't have a choice, so we might as well get in ahead of the curve. And, you know, once you've been growing those chemicals, it takes a few years to make the transition. Typically, it takes about five years for a farmer to make the transition from chemical to organic agriculture. So, the sooner we begin that transition, the better off we'll be.
DL: Think about it. You're killing almost all of the petroleum involved in it by going with a local organic gardener.
EC: There you go. You know, I'd like to let the listeners know that Doug Livingstone who just - is on the line, who just called in - is the person who has this sustainable energy show. Doug, right?
DL: Yeah! Second and fourth Fridays.
EC: Second and fourth Fridays, and it's a good compliment to this show - that's why we're not going through all that because, Doug, you do a great job of that, and I always catch your show, and so, yeah, thanks so much for what you do, and...
DL: Thank you, Els.
EC: All right.
RH: Thanks Doug. If I could just say a word about community radio. I think it's extraordinarily important what you folks are doing there because communities need good information. What I've been saying over the past hour is not the usual cheery stuff you're likely to hear over the television, or whatever, and I realize that. I know people need messages of hope and so on, but people also need just good solid information, and we're not getting much of that through the regular media.
EC: No, we sure aren't.
RH: So, community radio stations like yours that are serving local people and giving them the information they need to know, I think are an extraordinary asset, and I hope the folks who are listening will help support you in doing that.
EC: Yeah, thanks for that plug. I hope everybody calling in is certainly a member. OK, we have another caller. Hello caller, you're on the air.
C3: Hi, I wonder if your guest could comment on the concept that as the oil supply goes down, it can be purchased only by the wealthy, turning everybody else into a kind of localized, subject population for which the democratic processes don't necessarily apply, because they can't move around enough to bear any influence with the government.
EC: Good question. Thanks so much.
RH: Yeah, I think your question is almost self-explanatory. We're already seeing events moving in that direction, and as oil becomes more expensive, I think we'll see more of that. I think the plan is to completely disenfranchise the vast majority of the population. What we have in this country right now is really just a sham democracy at this point, except, I'm sure, there are many local elections that are still legitimately held. But the national election that we just saw - I think the evidence is mounting pretty clearly that it was a seriously flawed election - and that unless we can somehow get all of those electronic voting machines out by 2006, it looks to me like the next election is just going to be a slogan as far as the U.S. is concerned, and we'll have no real basis in how we do things.
EC: Hear, hear! Hello caller, you're on the air.
C4: Good morning. Thank you so much for a fabulous show and for both of your work. I wonder if Richard would comment on how he sees the hierarchy within industries that are dependent on petroleum, and I'm thinking of the obvious road-related ones, places where people think of petrochemicals, as compared to the fertilizer and agricultural industries. And then the plastics industry, and how do you think that hierarchy will shake down, and if you think that there're areas where there will be greater expense, and then I'd like, if you would, to go into plastics a little bit, and how you see this affecting anything from hospitals to drip systems, and whether or not you think it'll have a significant influence on whether or not drip irrigation remains a really viable, efficient...
EC: All right, thanks for your question.
RH: Well, most of our petroleum goes to transportation, most of it we simply burn up. There are a lot better uses for that precious substance, for that precious resource. We should be keeping almost all of it in the ground and using it very, very carefully, and in small amounts for really important uses - pharmaceuticals and maybe some plastics. But, of course...I guess the point I was getting to is that the proportion of oil going into plastics production is not huge. I think something like two thirds of oil is just burned immediately for transportation uses. So, the price hikes for fuel are going to be more dramatic than those for plastics, because a lot of the cost of the plastic is not just the feedstock, but also the manufacturing process, and so on - which, of course, is also energy intensive, but, still, I think that the price hikes are going to be somewhat less dramatic for other petroleum products than for fuel itself.
Now, some of those products we can find other substitutes for. There are some kinds of plastics being made now with cornstarch and other kinds of vegetable matter, and, of course, wherever we can use those alternatives we'll be much better off. But, ultimately, we may find ourselves going back to using leather for gaskets, rather than rubber and plastic, or things like that. We'll have to find lubricants made - and people are starting to research lubricants made out of vegetable oils rather than petroleum.
EC: Great. OK, the phones are just ringing off the hook here - let's see if we can get a few more callers in. Hello caller, you're on the air.
C5: Hi! Your guest is talking about energy, and agriculture was one of the things that was mentioned. I've heard that there's been several resource limiting things that've been mentioned for the coming century - oil is one of them, water is another one, and another one that you don't hear very much about, but the bio-intensive agriculture people talk about it, which is that they're expecting a crisis to occur with the quantity of topsoil available - soil loss. And, as part of that discussion, they talk about how the organic agriculture - as is practiced commercially in this country - is not actually any better - in fact, it maybe a little worse, as far as loss of soil. That I found a little puzzling, but I presume it's because there's a lot of transportation involved, and that some of the materials that go to make compost are actually produced by non-organic methods, and then transported to the organic farms. I don't really know how all that works. I'm curious on that topic, though, because if we're going to save energy by going to organic agriculture, we're going to need a form of organic agriculture that actually really is energy independent, and I wondered if your guest had any ideas on this.
RH: Well, with this question you have to think systemically with all these things. Like, if we're going to replace chemical nitrogen fertilizers with natural sources of nitrogen, that means lots of animal manures; and, of course, raising animals is extremely energy intensive, water intensive, and so on. So, when you start examining the system, as a whole, it's easy to understand how the folks at Ecology Action came up with that kind of analysis - and, by the way, you in Mendocino County are extremely fortunate to have that resource there locally - the organization, Ecology Action - which has done some of the best research on sustainable...
EC: John Jeavons?
RH ...agriculture anywhere in the world.
EC: Yup, you're talking about John Jeavons.
RH: Yes.
EC: Yup, definitely, we are lucky, here, in Mendocino County. OK, caller, you're on the air.
C6: Hello?
EC: Hello.
C6: Yes. The studies I've seen on alternative energy indicate that it could only supply a small fraction of what we currently consume. So, it could never be a total replacement for petroleum, in that respect. But that always leaves the nuclear possibility - and other nations in Europe are more heavily dependent. We have an anti-nuclear culture in this country - pretty widespread, I think. But, does your author there agree that solar/wind is limited. I'll take an answer on the air.
EC: Thank you so much.
RH: Well, we can grow our solar and wind capacity dramatically from what it is now. However, I think we will not be able to produce energy on the level we are doing now, with solar and wind, for a number of reasons: these are intermittent energy sources, and, then, if we go to some kind of storage system, like hydrogen, that will entail all kinds of inefficiencies and loses along the conversion, which means that we'll have to expand the energy production infrastructure that much more to make up for those loses, and so on. So, ultimately, we have to look, not just at the supply side solution to oil depletion, we have to look at the demand picture, we have to dramatically increase our demand for energy. I think we need to look there, first, more so than for the supply side. I'm a passionate advocate of the renewable alternatives, but I think we do need to be aware that there are limitations there. And the biggest limitation is just simply the fact that it's going to take decades to build up that scale of production capacity, and also hundreds of billions of dollars in investment. So, oil depletion's not going to wait while we do those things, it's happening as we speak.
EC: Well, with that, I think we can no longer afford to take calls because we are up to the end of the hour now. Richard Heinberg , I would like to thank you on behalf of all of us here in Mendocino County for the work you do, and especially, of course, for coming on the show with us this morning. I think we worked you pretty hard. It was - I just wonder if you'd be willing to come on a subsequent show.
RH: Yes, absolutely.
EC: Because there's so much to cover, and, of course, people can, kind of, see what you're doing by going to your MuseLetter, right?
RH: Yeah, that's www.museletter.com.
EC: And that way they can find out what you're up to, and what people are talking to you about, and so that would be a wonderful thing for people to do. www.museletter.com Again, Richard Heinberg, author and educator, and, of course, he wrote "The Party's Over". Thank you so much for coming on the show with us. We're very, very appreciative.
RH: Well, it's been a pleasure, Els. I look forward to doing it again soon.
EC: That's great. Thank you so much. Bye, bye!
