Transcribed by Katherine Baldwin
Man1: From the moment I saw her leaning against the rail, looking out into the night, I knew I had to save her. "Hey Miss! This way to the lifeboats!"
Woman1: "What? On the lifeboats? You're not serious."
Man1: "Why yes, matter of fact, I am. This way, come, we haven't much time."
Woman1: "But the orchestra's just warming up. Why, I came out for a breath of fresh air before the dancing begins. Don't you want to dance instead?"
Man1: "I'm afraid there'll be no dancing tonight. Now, please, come with me."
Woman1: "No dancing? Why you're a dismal fellow aren't you? Of course there'll be dancing! Come inside with me."
Man1: "Don't you understand? The iceberg!"
Woman1: "Why that silly rumor! They'll think of something, they always do."
Man1: "The ship's going down!"
Woman1: "Nonsense, it can't be as bad as all that."
Man1: I had to get her to see reason. "It's bad, believe me!"
Woman1: "You are an alarmist, aren't you?"
Man1: "I'm trying to save you!" Oh, but she had already run back to the ballroom. I quickly made my way to the lifeboats and jumped into the last one, just as it cast-off. I was safe, but I wish she'd come with me.
Caren Black: Come with us now on the Lifeboat Show, where we discuss sustainable living, here on KMUN Astoria, KTCB Tillamook. Community radio, saving your day! This is Caren Black,
Christopher Paddon: And Christopher Paddon,
Caren Black: Embarking on our maiden voyage of the Lifeboat Show. Christopher, could you define sustainable lifestyles for us?
Christopher Paddon: Sure. When we live sustainably, we don't consume more than we produce. On a personal, we don't spend more than we have in the bank.
Caren Black: No credit.
Christopher Paddon: Nope, no credit, no debt, no borrowing against the future. It means, replenishing the resources we use so that future generations will be able to re-use them as well.
Caren Black: But we haven't been doing that, have we?
Christopher Paddon: Well, no, unfortunately not. We've been using up our air, water, top-soil, forest, ozone-layer, in fact, nearly all of our resources, as though we could order a new supply from some other earth.
Caren Black: And of course we can't. But many of us continue to act as though we can.
Christopher Paddon: Exactly, which brings us to the point of the Titanic skit we just did. In the skit, the hero is trying to get the young woman to grasp the situation and do something before it's too late.
Caren Black: But she's not listening.
Christopher Paddon: No.
Caren Black: In fact, there have been a lot of comparisons between our world, our culture, and the Titanic. Using up our resources, like there's no tomorrow, is that our iceberg?
Christopher Paddon: Well, that's a pretty apt metaphor. Problems resulting from our behavior have been building up under the surface for some time. Scientists have warned us of the impending dangers, but people tend not to worry about things they can't see yet.
Caren Black: But now, some of the icebergs become visible.
Christopher Paddon: It has. Many people are still dancing at the ballroom, so to speak, oblivious to what's ahead; and some are aware of our approaching collision with geology, but they want to rely on others to take care of the problem for them.
Caren Black: Let George do it.
Christopher Paddon: Exactly.
Caren Black: Just what is this tip of the iceberg that's now visible?
Christopher Paddon: Well, our iceberg, so to speak, is the end of fossil fuels. We're quite fortunate right now to have with us today an expert on natural gas. Journalist Julian Darley has spent several years researching population and resources; covered the 2003 U.S. Energy Hearings, convened by Energy Secretary, Spencer Abraham; interviewed petroleum investment banker Matthew Simmons several times; and recently published a book on the subject, titled "High Noon for Natural Gas". He founded the non-profit Post Carbon Institute to disseminate information on the potential effects of fossil fuel depletion. Celine Rich is also here, she's the program director of Post Carbon Institute. Julian, Celine, welcome.
Julian Darley: Thank you very much for inviting us.
Caren Black: Julian, we're defining sustainable lifestyles here. Tell us, how do natural gas and sustainable living fit together?
Julian Darley: Natural gas is one of the three main fossil fuels that supplies about 85% of America's energy -- 23% is natural gas. Fossil fuels don't fit into sustainable lifestyles, to use the phrase, at all. Really we should be getting off natural gas because it's one of the big energies which is helping us direct the planet and as long as we stay hooked on fossil fuels and stay hooked on natural gas, we will never be able to move towards anything which looks sustainable or anything that even looks less wrecking towards the planet. I'm afraid the answer is: we should be getting away from it, even though it is the cleanest of the three main fossil fuels. But none the less it's still a fossil fuel, it's still depleting, it's still sending out carbon dioxide, and it's increasingly coming from foreign countries which are being destabilized in the same kinds of ways as oil has tended to do.
Caren Black: Why is it increasingly coming from foreign countries?
Julian Darley: The reason why it is is because America, and increasingly the North American continent, is finding itself using more natural gas, or trying to use more natural gas, than it can produce itself.
Christopher Paddon: So this is why we're hearing so much more about LNG these days.
Julian Darley: And that is Liquefied Natural Gas because gas, natural gas, but any gas is very hard to transport. It's much easier to transport liquids; that's why cars use liquid gasoline. So the thing to do if you want to move natural gas across oceans is to liquefy it. It's an incredibly expensive and tough job to do, but it is done and that is what is produced: Liquefied Natural Gas. As the North American continent decides it can't do without more natural gas and its own natural gas goes into decline, then it must bring in that gas from elsewhere; or use less, which is the sensible thing to do. So that's why Liquefied Natural Gas energy is being talked about, and unless something's done about demand, because production is not going to be increased, it's going to go down, then you will hear evermore about LNG.
Caren Black: OK, then there is a commercial aspect to this though? We're looking at LNG for producing jobs or increasing profits for companies, what can you tell us about that?
Julian Darley: LNG terminals, the re-gasification terminals, which is what's going to be cited in America, in Canada, and Mexico, unless they're stopped. These devices do take people to construct them and to run them, but it's a remarkably small number of people, especially compared to the hundreds of millions that it takes to put in the re-gasification terminals, and compared to the billions that it takes to put in the entire train. The entire LNG train consists of the pipelines in the producing countries, usually poor countries which have been at the wrong end of violence very often; the liquefaction terminals in those countries, which cost the largest amount of money; and then very expensive LNG tankers. You have to have all this and the re-gasification terminal, such as the ones I believe are going to be stopped in the Columbia River, but all over America. So it's a really expensive business. It doesn't produce many jobs, especially not compared to what that money could have done if it had been put into place to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
Christopher Paddon: Well, as you know Julian, we've got an election coming up here rather soon in Astoria area. We're dealing with port of Astoria election, and there's a rather controversial issue with LNG plant siting on lower Columbia, actually four sites. A significant part of the issue around this election hinges on people here trying to weigh the benefits to the community versus the problems or potential dangers from those four LNG plants that are now proposed. What is your expert advice in this area?
Julian Darley: Well it's a very complicated issue, in this sense there are multiple levels on which this thing shouldn't happen or which these things shouldn't happen. One is clearly the safety. There are very important safety aspects. That issue is extremely important, for those living in the area that is of the highest significance. The industry's answer to that has become, and it's one that's just come on stream in the last couple of months, is to put things many miles off-shore, even a hundred miles off-shore in the case of Louisiana. So a hundred miles away, I think there's very little doubt, if there was an explosion it wouldn't affect people a hundred miles away. I mean, they're serious, but they're not that serious. Yes, it's an important issue, but if you push that -- and one should push it to stop them happening inbound, it doesn't do anything to stop them happening off-shore. You have to use bigger arguments, and the bigger arguments are around the fact that the natural gas itself is going to come from faraway places, often in Africa and in the Middle East and in other places which may well not be friendly towards the U.S. That is going to cause them problems because once you hook yourself into natural gas; it's a very long-term thing, often requiring 20-30 year contracts. You will then find you are then dependant on these other countries, and that will invite military, up to and including military occupation, if not other forms of coercion, trade coercion and so forth. This is one of the reasons: it has very nasty geo-political consequences and doesn't do anything to reduce your demand on fossil fuels either. So that's at least two of the very significant reasons. There's a third one, and that is the fact that there may be an enormous economic recession, as global oil peak starts to really bite in, possibly starting in 2005, 2006. The whole world economy and the world economy will start to go into decline, and that will reduce the demand for natural gas on a number of fronts, including from electricity producing. So from a commercial aspect, it may well be the people who've invested all this money into LNG terminals may find themselves with dire great white elephants that never actually get used. It's happening with the gas-fired power stations which have already been built. An increasing number of those are never seeing any serious commercial use and are tending to bankrupt the companies that have done it.
Christopher Paddon: Because the capital investment involved in this whole LNG chain you talk about is quite substantial.
Julian Darley: As I've said, the LNG train can range anywhere between 3 billion and 10 billion dollars. The re-gasification terminals are often in the hundreds, well they are, in the hundreds of millions. The ships, currently, are running at around 100-150 million dollars for each ship, and each ship can contain about 2 billion cubic feet which is about 1/30 of the daily demand of the U.S. So if you were to supply entirely the U.S. by these things, you'd need 30 arriving every day. They take up to six days to unload, so you can just imagine this is not a quick process. You'd need a vast number of these things, and so the amount of capital out there, as you suggest, are absolutely enormous. This has the potential to bankrupt companies quite easily if the returns don't come in large enough and long enough. So if the economy takes a big down-turn, as I think is highly likely, the commercial side of this may go completely against this. So that's a very interesting -- straight commercial, just a rude market mechanism could well turn the tide against this, sooner rather than later.
Christopher Paddon: And also the window of opportunity here from a profit standpoint for these LNG developers is rather quite narrow, wouldn't you say?
Julian Darley: Well, a complex question in a way. If all 55 being slated to be built in North America were built today, they would undoubtedly produce some kind of a glut -- if there were the gas to fuel them. So I suppose the window of opportunity is that gas prices are high, and I believe they will remain high and get higher still, I mean there'll be bumps on that route. But those that get in now, assuming there isn't a giant economic crash, those that get in first or get their plants built early on, provided there aren't these other economic effects, which I think are highly likely, then they would stand to make very good profits. But there are a lot of risks which I'm not sure they've evaluated yet, because I suspect that most of these companies aren't prepared to admit that global oil peak is happening/about to happen. That's going to change the sums on everything, including LNG.
Christopher Paddon: Well maybe you could expand a little bit more on this global oil peak that you mentioned. Probably to a lot of our listeners this is a term that they're just starting to hear about. Could you, briefly, describe what that means?
Julian Darley: Yes. Global oil peak is the time at which, after global oil production has risen for about a hundred and fifty years, more or less non-stop, a couple of bumps in the 70s for geopolitical reasons, you reach a stage when you're about half-way through your reserves, be it a small reserve in a country or the entire world reserves. Round about half-way through, you reach a peak of production and, more or less, no matter what you do you can't increase out-put anymore. You may be able to get to a plateau, I think we're just around that stage now of peak plateau, and then after that you go into inexorable decline. When oil goes into decline, not only is energy itself very special because energy makes everything else happen, there are no real substitutes for certain kinds of energy and oil is the most particular form of energy I believe, and that's why it's used in almost 100% of transport.
That means less molecules are going to get moved around because less oil is being pumped out of the Earth, less molecules, less stuff, that means less economic activity. There are many other reasons why, connected with oil, but that in itself demonstrates that there will be less economic activity and we will go into global economic contraction fairly soon, once oil decline sets in. So this is the wider kind of picture that we're going to be seeing a huge energy shortage coming along, with the decline of oil, as well as economic contraction. That is also going to turn ever more pressure onto natural gas because in some respects natural gas can substitute for oil; not very easy in certain respects--
Christopher Paddon: So it's being considered sort of a stop-gap measure.
Julian Darley: Oh some of the oil companies are already saying, including Shell, that they are switching to natural gas. That's where they see the future. Then the next big question is, is there so much natural gas out there? That's another huge question and there's an increasing sense among some analysts that the great reserves, particularly in Russia, just may not be there. So not only are we not getting away from fossil fuel by going to natural gas, we may be switching to one which itself is soon going to peak or certainly not rise very much beyond where we've got now, and is once again in countries which are either playing very interesting games like Russia, with the U.S., or else they're in countries which flat just don't like the U.S.
Caren Black: You're listening to Caren Black
Christopher Paddon: And Christopher Paddon
Caren Black: On the new Lifeboat Show here on KMUN KTCB community radio and we're talking with author Julian Darley. I want to bring us back to the local election and the local question, just for a minute. We've gotten the bigger picture here; let's look at the narrower picture, the local picture. In terms of jobs, then, you're talking about the amount of money these plants cost to build, but does that money come into the local economy where they're built, or is that spent along the way where the ships are built, and where the gasification and re-gas-- Where does that money go? Is that hundreds of millions of dollars going to come here to Astoria, or is that somewhere else?
Julian Darley: LNG is a form of big energy, as I said at the very beginning; I believe big energy is what we're using to destroy the planet. LNG is very much a kind of big energy, just like nuclear, just like most oil and coal. This is big energy. Big energy means big corporations, and big corporations see to it that very little of the money ever reaches the community. The money comes in to the corporation and its sucked up to the top of the corporation, where it goes into the global financial markets, into the foreign exchanges, and as little as possible ever reaches the community. This is a standard technique and it will be the same with LNG. One technique, of course, is to bring in foreign labor. Another thing is to off-shore as much of the production -- the steel production, I have no doubt that the huge containers that will be used for LNG, they can easily and probably will be made off-shore in South Korea, in China -- basically where ever it's cheapest to make them and bring in the parts. They will undoubtedly be in the final stage assembled, or they can be assembled locally, but the whole idea is to use the smallest amount of the cheapest possible labor, under the worst possible safety and environmental and human circumstances to minimize the amount that's spent on labor so the profits can be maximized, and that has been the story of globalization. It's been, I'm afraid to say, the story of the capitalistic system that we have ever since the beginning. That's always been the problem of this particular economic system, is that you can't control most of the other factors except for labor, and so you drive the labor costs down as low as possible and that's why we have off-shoring and outsourcing and so forth. Unless a miracle will suddenly happen, and I think there's zero likelihood of that, you will see that LNG is the same thing as every other kind of big energy, big corporate activity, the minimum possible labor, the minimum amounts of money remaining in the community; meanwhile, the trick is always, you internalize benefit and you externalize the draw-backs and the risks and the costs onto the public, onto the locale, onto the community. A classic for-instance is if there're any problems, you dump it and leave, leaving the community with all the horrible problems to clean up.
Caren Black: Thank you. We're listening to KMUN KTCB community radio.
[Music]: Do not forsake me, oh my darlin', on this our weddin' day. Do not forsake me, oh my darlin', wait, wait along. The noonday train will bring Frank Miller...
Caren Black: And we're hearing Tex Ritter with the theme music from High Noon, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. In this classic film, Cooper plays a sheriff who must face the town's enemies alone. Julian Darley is here with us today on the Lifeboat Show, and Julian you chose "High Noon for Natural Gas" as the tile for your book. Do you sometimes identify with Cooper, getting the word out about natural gas depletion without much help from the mainstream press or other journalists?
Julian Darley: Yes, I hadn't actually thought of it like that. I was thinking of it more in terms of the people facing a difficult decision, which I'm afraid they put off and landed onto one man. There are a few of us out there, so I don't feel quite as alone as poor old Gary Cooper. I certainly don't believe in using weapons to do the job either, so as I make the point, this is a very unfortunate solution, reaching for the gun and I certainly don't do that, nor would I do that. It is pretty difficult trying to get the word out, both on natural gas in North America and in Britain where it's also a problem, in Ireland, many of the other countries in fact-- Many other industrial countries are facing natural gas difficulties, so are some of the countries which are less industrialized but are determined to become more so, including India and China. So you've got many of these new giants coming along who are also wanting this. Again, getting the word out on peak oil, it is starting to come out now, after all, a congressman has spoken about it; some politicians in Australia, in New Zealand, I think; I think in Sweden--
Caren Black: We were in Rolling Stone.
Julian Darley: Jim Kunstler has just written about it in Rolling Stone. His new book "The Long Emergency" is entirely about this, and I'm afraid the havoc it's going to wreak. So it's starting to change now. The sad thing is, it's starting to change, it looks like, at the very moment that peak oil is arriving, 2005 and 2006, and really, as reports to the Department of Energy in the last two months have suggested -- and any sensible analysis will also back this up -- is it takes decades to prepare for suddenly going in to energy decline when you've been used to expanding energy sources for so long. The industrial system absolutely depends on it; so does the money system, depends on expanding economy.
Christopher Paddon: So we're going to see a mad scramble here in the next few years.
Julian Darley: I fear you're right. It's hard to see how that won't be the case.
Caren Black: O.K. Celine Rich is with us as well, she's program director for Post Carbon Institute, and you're the contact person that we work with in the outpost. What can you tell us about how people are preparing for what seem to be some of the major lifestyle changes ahead for all of us?
Celine Rich: Well, one of the first things that people are doing is informing themselves, as well as working with other people in their communities. These outposts will belong to a Relocalization Network which the Post Carbon Institute will help them with communication tools like web-sites and listserves and this sort of thing.
Caren Black: So our outpost here could actually network with one in another -- What are these other countries that the outposts are in?
Celine Rich: Oh they're in the United States, Canada, England, Australia
Caren Black: Great.
Celine Rich: And Sweden, we've got one in Sweden.
Caren Black: And Sweden, so we've got five actually. Great, and these are all available on your website at postcarbon.org
Celine Rich: postcarbon.org Yeah.
Caren Black: Right, so the websites post there as well as ours does.
Celine Rich: Yes.
Caren Black: And all the other ones are listed and so you can get a direct link from postcarbon.org directly to any of the webs-- Excuse me, not websites, but outposts.
Celine Rich: Yes, you'll see links to all the outposts and as each group designs their websites, the link will go up.
Caren Black: Great. Again, this is the Lifeboat Show, and I'm speaking with Celine Rich. Celine, as we began talking about the outposts of the Post Carbon Institute, you called them a Relocalization Network. Relocalization is a key term, isn't it? Would you explain it for us?
Celine Rich: Global relocalization has two parts. First of all, the global part, which we hope to create a network of communities, like Astoria, who are trying to relocalize their economies. That would be developing things from within rather than outsourcing things from far away.
Caren Black: In sourcing rather than outsourcing.
Celine Rich: That's it. We hope that in the long run this will lead to developing a parallel public infrastructure, and that's a closing of the loop of the money, energy, and food so those are all sourced locally. In amongst that is the community supported manufacturing so things are made locally so we can buy local things made by local people with local materials.
Caren Black: And local money.
Celine Rich: With local money. Our forthcoming book "Relocalize Now!" outlines a whole program of activities that communities can begin with.
Caren Black: Caren Black here, talking with Celine Rich on the Lifeboat Show. Stay tuned for Lost Highway from ten till noon, right here on KMUN 91.9 KTCB 89.5 community radio. Back to Christopher Paddon and author Julian Darley.
Christopher Paddon: So Julian, could you talk a little bit more about some of the alternatives that we have available. If we're not talking about big energy, what else can we do?
Julian Darley: In order to say no to big energy, as we must, and indeed, big energy will start to say no to us since it all comes from nature and we can see we're moving into the downward decline side of the great energy and economic expansion that we've seen in the last few hundred years. So as this happens, we've simply got to transition away from big energy as fast as we can. There are two prongs, if you like, two parts of this strategy. By far, the most important part of the strategy of moving away from big energy, especially very quickly, is to reduce energy demand. Part of that is undoubtedly going to be in reusing things and repairing things.
Caren Black: That reminds me of the "reduce, reuse, recycle". Can you comment on that, as that's something we've all heard?
Julian Darley: Yes, well we should stress the reuse part; we should stress the repair part. Recycle, which is something we've become familiar with in the last 20 or 30 years, it's interesting, but it often takes quite a lot of energy; it can take a great deal of energy in that recycling process, especially in terms of plastic and paper and glass and steel and so forth. Yes, it's better to recycle it than to throw it away, but much better not to have demanded it, not to have consumed it in the first place. This is one of the things that we're going to have to get used to. As you start to relocalize, which we've been talking about, it starts to make it possible to demand less because what you do use, and we will continue to use things as all creatures on the planet do. As you use local things, then the whole system starts to work almost-- it will start to work naturally on its own, increasingly so.
It will become less of an effort, although it will be a little difficult in the earlier stages. We don't have time to start reducing our energy demand and start trying to produce our own local energy. We're going to have to do these things in parallel, because we just haven't got enough time now because oil peak is happening upon us as we speak. So we will need to find renewable energy sources. We know of the three standard ones, which are perfectly reasonable. Let's say small hydro, micro-hydro, not big hydro; wind, especially small wind; and solar photo-voltaics. In amongst that some people will also stress passive solar, which is also very important; that is to say, retrofitting houses to use less energy in the first place. Just to turn to the actual production of energy, when we talk of renewables, we must realize that most of what we talk about, except for bio-mass which takes land which we're going to be short of and we're going to need that for returning to forests and for making food for ourselves, when we talk of renewables, we mostly talk about making electricity. Now electricity is something we've come to be very dependent on, and we do need to find a substitute for the big electricity providers, and that is what we have in the shape of wind, wind turbines, various sorts of those, and also solar voltaics. There's a strong positive element to this, I believe. The most positive element about this, is we should be making these energy harvesting devices locally, especially the easiest ones to make are micro-hydro turbines and wind turbines, and this should be a source of building up local skill; it can be and I think it should be and it will be and all sensible communities will think about how they can be in charge of their own energy generation - not just buying these devices from South Korea and Japan or wind turbines from Denmark which really only benefits those foreign counties and is another form, in effect, another form of outsourcing. What we should be trying to do, as I've already said, is in sourcing, relocalizing, bringing manufacturer, bringing the making, bringing the production of everything, frankly, that's a necessity, and energy is a necessity for all creatures. Bring that back and do that in the locale.
Caren Black: And Julian Darley and Celine Rich from the Post Carbon Institute, Julian Darley is author of "High Noon for Natural Gas", have been our guests today on the first premier Lifeboat Show. Thank you for being here.
Julian Darley: Thank you for the chance of talking to concerned citizens in Astoria.
Celine Rich: Thank you very much, we've enjoyed our time here and good luck with the Lifeboat Show.
Christopher Paddon: You've been listening to the Lifeboat Show. I'm Christopher Paddon with
Caren Black: Caren Black
Christopher Paddon: Here on KMUN 91.9 KTCB 89.5 coast community radio. Be sure to get on board with us again next month, and the third Monday of every month. That's Monday morning June 20th at 9:30 am, for the second edition of the Lifeboat Show. Now, stay tuned for Lost Highway. We'll leave you today with our theme, James Horner's music from the movie Titanic.
[Music]
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