Theories That Claim the Sky is Falling: Doom Science 101

underwater_sculpture.jpgWell, here’s some fun thinking!! It’s certainly new and sparkly, but not in the least bit cheerful. Welcome to the terrordome of environmental science. Today’s post discusses three well-researched and peer-reviewed theories that claim civil society as we know it is doomed to end: Peak Oil Theory, the Olduvai Theory, and a third theory that lacks an official name, but spells out environmental degradation as a mean culprit in the demise of humanity. Sure you’re ready for this? Quick! grab a beer! (Be sure to read my earlier post, Surviving the Economic Downturn, for tips!)

First, a brief summary. All of these theories present a less-than-pleasant view of a problem called “overshoot.” This term is defined by the difference between the population of the earth (our environment) and our environment’s “carrying capacity,” the ability to provide all of the resources that we require to survive.

Peak Oil

If you’re into Armageddon and that sort of thing, check out the website Life After the Oil Crash for a really good time. The intro to the site begins, “Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon.” Righty-o!! The site goes on to explain their heavily researched prediction that our oil-dependent society will degrade into chaos with a decrease in oil production, worsening over time:

Oil is increasingly plentiful on the upslope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.

In practical and considerably oversimplified terms, this means that if 2005 was the year of global Peak Oil, worldwide oil production in the year 2030 will be the same as it was in 1980. However, the world’s population in 2030 will be both much larger (approximately twice) and much more industrialized (oil-dependent) than it was in 1980. Consequently, worldwide demand for oil will outpace worldwide production of oil by a significant margin. As a result, the price will skyrocket, oil dependent economies will crumble, and resource wars will explode.

Peak Oil adherents do not see any new energy technologies on the horizon that could avert the oil shortage. In my *vast* internet research (cough, cough), I came across very few arguments against peak oil. I did find one:

…like believers undaunted by the failure of alien spaceships to take them to Mars on the date predicted, Peak enthusiasts keep moving the date of the oil apocalypse further into the future. In the new, revisionist models of Hubbert’s prediction, the high point in the curve of discoverable oil on our planet will come in a decade or so. Though we have a reprieve, goes the new theory, still, we’re running out of crude, dude! There’s only another twenty years left in proven reserves! Oh, my! “It’s true that there’s only twenty years’ supply left—and that’s been true for the last hundred years,” Lewis Lapham told me … Lapham of Harper’s magazine is the only editor in the hemisphere with hard knowledge of the petroleum market, insight he inherited legitimately: His family helped found Mobil Oil, the back half of what is now Exxon Mobil.

He asked, “Why in the world would oil companies, or any company, announce that there’s lots of its product out there? You’d bust your own market. It’s better to say the cupboard’s bare.” As Lapham noted, we have been “running out of oil” since the days we drained it from whales. OPEC’s big headache before the war shut down Iraq’s fields was that there was way too much oil. We were swimming in it and oil prices stayed low.”

The Olduvai Theory

The Olduvai theory is slightly more broad-reaching than Peak Oil. Its author, Richard C. Duncan, another serious lover of bell curves explains it thus:

The Olduvai theory is defined by the ratio of world energy production and population. It states that the life expectancy of Industrial Civilization is less than or equal to 100 years: 1930-2030. After more than a century of strong growth — energy production per capita peaked in 1979. The Olduvai theory explains the 1979 peak and the subsequent decline. Moreover, it says that energy production per capita will fall to its 1930 value by 2030, thus giving Industrial Civilization a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years. This analysis predicts that the collapse will be strongly correlated with an “epidemic” of permanent blackouts of high-voltage electric power networks — worldwide.

This, as you would guess, leads to ever increasing shortages of all other goods and services and the subsequent decline of civil society, yada, yada, anarchy, the end. For a detailed look at the stages of collapse, one can read the imminently practical paper called the Five Stages of Collapse written by a Russian named Dmitri Orlov who watched the Soviet Union collapse and draws parallels between the USSR of the 80s and the US today. He says:

The US is an oil importer, burning up 25% of the world’s production, and importing over two-thirds of that. Back in mid-90s, when I first started trying to guess the timing of the US collapse, the arrival of the global peak in oil production was scheduled for around the turn of the century. It turned out that the estimate was off by almost a decade, but that is actually fairly accurate as far as such big predictions go. So here it is the high price of oil that is putting the brakes on further debt expansion. As higher oil prices trigger a recession, the economy starts shrinking, and a shrinking economy cannot sustain an ever-expanding level of debt. At some point the ability to finance oil imports will be lost, and that will be the tipping point, after which nothing will ever be the same.

According to Orlov, we’ve already reached the first of the five stages: financial collapse. Yikes, hard to argue with that one.

Environmental Degradation

Moving on to our third theory, the widely espoused argument that environmental degradation in general will be our downfall. From yet another happy place to visit, dieoff.org:

Today, many people who are concerned about overpopulation and environmental degradation believe that human actions can avert catastrophe. The prevailing view holds that a stable population that does not tax the environment’s “carrying capacity” would be sustainable indefinitely, and that this state of equilibrium can be achieved through a combination of birth control, conservation, and reliance on “renewable” resources. Unfortunately, worldwide implementation of a rigorous program of birth control is politically impossible. Conservation is futile as long as population continues to rise.

So, these theories are pretty extreme. Are they TRUE?? Well, that remains to be seen, but they are instructive. They remind us to be humble, to understand that life is fragile, and to tread lightly on the earth. Environmental activism has taken hold for a reason. We do understand that our consumption mentality cannot be sustained, and we do know that energy independence and sustainability are urgent and required for many reasons. Duh pookie is big on population control, here in the US and overseas. I might even go so far as to say that religion is the root problem today, not for its best contributions (love, humility, charity), but for its worst: regionalism, sectarianism, closed-minded thinking, persecution of those who differ in belief, and an adherence to archaic rules, like no birth control, that are impractical and unwise in our present-day civilization.

It seems pretty clear to me: less people, more stuff to share, less strife.

The next installment in the series explores alternative energy approaches and the realities facing the Obama administration.

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December 17, 2008 | Filed Under Future Freak 

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