http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/INTERVIEWS/RICHARD.HEINBERG/
Q2. What do the critics of oil peak say?
JD: In your book you discuss some of the critics of Colin Campbell, Laherrière, Youngquist, and all the rest of them. The critics are called cornucopians. You call them that and various other things - flat earth economists, so forth. What are the arguments of these cornucopian critics? And perhaps you can tell us what a Cornucopian is. And why do you personally view their arguments as misguided?
RH: Right, well of course the word cornucopian goes back to the mythical cornucopia, the horn of plenty, from which all good things emerge. And, Cornucopianism is actually not confined to a few critics of Hubbert, Campbell, Laherrière and those people. Cornucopianism is the dominant ideology of our modern world. It is taught in every school of economics. It is the subtext of every political speech. And virtually, we are soaked in this point of view. The assumption is the economy can grow forever. Human population can grow forever. And we will never actually meet up with any physical limits to the growth of our economy or population. Now again, a few moments thought should point out the absolute absurdity of that way of thinking. But some how it has weaseled its way into our dominant ideology, primarily through the field of economics.
In economics, of course we look not at resources per se, we look at how resources are mediated by money. And money, of course, is something that can be created infinitely and indefinitely. Money is created through the making of loans, and banks create money all the time. So there is no physical limit to the amount of money that can be created. So economists assume that if there is enough money to go around, then when one resource actually starts to become scarce we can just substitute another resource for it. It’s the magic of the market that leads the perpetual growth; the order of the day for eternity.
It’s a very happy way of thinking. And it is a way of thinking that says - that just as our way of life is more opulent and fast paced than our parents and our grandparents, our children’s way of life will be even more opulent and more fast paced, and on and on to infinity. Of course technological changes fed into this too. We developed all kinds of new technologies generation after generation – from the radio, to the television, to the computer, to the cell phones, and so on. And so if technology can continue to become more complex and effective and powerful into the future, where is the limit to that? Where is the limit to human ingenuity? So these are the arguments of the Cornucopians.
Specifically with regard to the oil issue, Cornucopians say ‘Well, we just haven’t looked in all the right places. Surely there is much more oil than we have discovered yet. And we can of course substitute other things for oil. We can substitute coal and natural gas. When we run out of those, we can substitute wind and solar and hydrogen and so on.’ Some of them even say, ‘We are not running out at all. If you look at the reserve figures, reserves of oil are growing in many cases and we are developing new technologies to extract oil more efficiently. So in a particular oil well where using old technology could only extract maybe 20 to 30% of the oil, now we have new ways of accessing maybe 40 to 50% of oil from that same reservoir. So that should keep us going for decades longer until we figure out some real, ultimate solution to the energy crisis. Like fusion for example, or some kind of exotic, free energy devise.’ This is all, again, happy thinking. It puts a smiley face on our thoughts about the future. But when we actually get to looking at the real figures, it is not so simple.
Looking, for example, at oil reserves and oil reserve growth, as Colin Campbell has done. Looking at it closely, one discovers that much of the reserve growth that has been reported is actually political. Back in the 1980s, OPEC changed its rules to say that the amount of oil it would permit countries to export would be based on the amount of reported reserve those countries had. So countries were motivated to increase their reported reserves in order to increase their export quotas, so they can make more money. Immediately when this rule was made, every country in OPEC reported dramatic increases in reserves, in some cases increases of up to 100%, when no new discoveries or few new discoveries actually had been made. These were purely hypothetical, political reserve increases. And yet, the Cornucopians take them at face value. So all of that oil is actually there, waiting to be extracted.
And the United States Geological Survey has bought into this way of thinking entirely. I suspect there is political motivation there as well. USGS has been wrong consistently about future oil production, going back to the days of M. King Hubbert. They were a critic of Hubbert’s Curve from the very start. And they failed to foresee the US oil peak in 1970. Actually they were taken to task by Congress for that. So the US Government’s official cornucopianism has been pretty well dedunct already in the past, and yet the USGS continues to sail onward predicting billions, trillions of barrels more oil than probably actually exists.
>From: Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: [lbo-talk] Is There Anything To This Peak Oil Business?
>Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 10:47:04 -0800 (PST)
>
>Recently, an excitable lefty friend, a woman who
>believes that capitalism, at least as presently
>configured, is a decade or so away from the grave,
>introduced me to the idea of 'peak oil'.
>
>I've read the articles and followed the web sites (use
>link below for Google results) but still don't feel
>confident to say whether this is darkly wishful
>doomsday hype or a real analysis hidden behind some
>unfortunately overcooked imagery.
>
>Of course, common sense tells us that oil is not
>forever. Still, is the peak oil-ist description of
>the problem on-target?
>
>Anyone have informed thoughts?
>
>
>DRM
>
>
>link -
>
>http://tinyurl.com/v8an
>
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