Peak Everything, Overshoot, & Collapse

Source: A year on the midieval farm https://www.medievalists.net/2014/06/year-medieval-farm/

Ever since I learned about peak oil in 2000 after reading my grandfather Pettijohn’s memoir (Pettijohn 1984), I’ve wondered what The Plan To Cope with Oil Decline and eventual disappearance was.

In 2024, I came to the conclusion there is not a plan, CANNOT be a plan. This is not a temporary problem like a natural disaster. It is a permanent emergency.  To understand why there can be no plan, read these posts:

1. Raven Rock parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
2. Book review of Lights Out. A Cyberattack. A Nation Unprepared. Surviving the Aftermath

There was a plan, sort of, to cope with oil shortages, but even in 1980 before Republicans became right-wing extremists, they voted against it. Basically the plan was to allocate to agriculture whatever it needed, and leftover oil went to other essential services, and any still around after that to the public.

US Department of Energy 1980 oil rationing plan

At a minimum the government should be working on rationing:

Rationing. Book review of “Any way you slice it” by Stan Cox

It would have to be a permanent emergency plan.  After all, petroleum is The Master Resource that makes all other resources and activities possible, including coal and natural gas (solar, wind, transmission grid, and so on).

There have indeed been plans: Nixon launched “Project Independence” after the oil shock of 1973 to wean the U.S. from its dependence on imported oil by 1980 with kerogen shale oil, hydrogen fuel vehicles, and nuclear power.

When that didn’t pan out, further government attempts were made to find alternatives for fossil fuels, for example (NRC 2009):

• Richard Nixon’s “Project Independence” (1974)
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory (1974)
• Gerald Ford’s “Energy Independence Act” (1975)
• Energy Policy & Conservation Act (1975) to restrict exports of coal, petroleum products, natural gas, petrochemical feedstocks, and supplies of materials and equipment for the exploration, production, refining, and transportation of energy.
• Jimmy Carter’s “National Energy Plan” (1977)
• Department of Energy (1977)
• Ronald Reagan’s “Energy Security” report (1987)
• George H.W. Bush’s “National Energy Strategy” (1991)
• Bill Clinton’s “Federal Energy R&D for the Challenges of the 21^st Century” report (1997)
• George W. Bush’s “Reliable, Affordable, and Environmentally Sound Energy for America’s Future” report (2001).
• John Kerry’s plan: “Kerry Aims to Reduce Foreign Oil Reliance,” Associated Press (2004).

But Senator Lugar pointed out in several Senate hearings, despite Project Independence and other energy plans, the world has become more reliant on the three-quarters of reserves concentrated in unstable regions, where the risk of wars over remaining energy supplies will dramatically increase (Senate 106-930 2000, Senate 109-385 2005, Senate 109-861 2006, Senate 109-860 2006, Senate 109-64 2006, Senate 111-78 2009, Senate 111-105 2009).

Or as Jay Hanson (2004) once wrote: “I am convinced that after the PROJECT INDEPENDENCE fiasco, our rulers reached the same conclusion I have: since no solution exists, there is no point in scaring Joe Six-pack.  It’s kind of like that movie ON THE BEACH where the radiation cloud is coming and nothing can be done about it.  That is why EIA, USGS, Michael Lynch, et al are trying to convince everyone there is plenty of oil and gas”.

And Donella Meadows (2002), lead author of “Limits to Growth”, wrote that “President Nixon’s Project Independence, dreamed up after the 1973 oil embargo, promised that the United States would be free of imported oil by 1980. System dynamicists saw immediately (and later demonstrated with a computer model) that, given the expected lifetime of installed oil-burning furnaces and cars and inevitable delays in finding and gearing up domestic oil wells, that goal was physically impossible. (An amazing amount of political discussion is directed toward goals that are physically impossible.)”

The Department of Energy (Hirsch 2005) asked Robert Hirsch to come up with a peak oil mitigation plan, and he said you’d want to prepare at least 10 to 20 years ahead of time (at the 2006 ASPO peak oil conference in Pisa Italy he told the audience you’d want over 30 years of planning).  And his five solutions were: more oil!  The “solutions” are very temporary: heavy oil, gas-to-liquid (GTL) from natural gas, enhanced oil recovery, liquefied coal (CTL) and more efficient vehicles. But I explain in When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation (Friedemann 2016) why GTL, CTL, and heavy oil can’t replace conventional oil, and in addition, tar sand production is limited by natural gas and water in Canada (see also Nikiforuk 2010).  Though to be fair to Hirsch, in 2011 he wrote a book called “The Impending World Energy Mess” with advice on how to survive the coming crash.

But then again — in 2008 he wrote a memo to the leaders of the peak oil community asking them not to publicize the dangers of peak oil which said: “The world is in the midst of the most severe financial crisis in most of our lifetimes. The economic damage that has already been wrought is considerable, and we have yet to see the bottom or the turnaround. Against this background, I suggest that the peak oil community minimize its efforts to awaken the world to the near-term dangers of world oil supply. The motivation is simple: By minimizing our efforts in the near term, we may not add fuel to the economic fires that are already burning so fiercely. We are all aware of how disoriented governments and business are right now. Our leaders, leaders-to-be, and best minds are disoriented and seeking pathways out of the current morass. The public is in a quiet panic mode — those who were reasonably well off are less well off, and their options for action are limited. Those that have lost their jobs and/or homes are desperate. Businesses and the markets are in what might be called a free fall. If the realization of peak oil along with its disastrous financial implications was added to the existing mix of troubles, the added trauma could be unthinkable. Like many of you, I’ve devoted my recent efforts to trying to wake the public and governments to the impending horrors of peak oil. As much as that awaking is urgently needed, continuing to press forward now is almost certainly not in the broader interest.Many may be tempted to directly challenge the recent IEA World Energy Outlook. I am among those who were very disappointed. Pressing those concerns at this time might further the peak oil “cause,” but it could well do much more damage than any of us really intend.Please keep up your studies and thinking, because helping the world realize the dangers of peak oil is an absolute must. In the near term, keeping relatively quiet is likely the better part of valor (Ball 2008)”.

It is scary. I’ve spent 22 years looking for a way out, and the only way is back to the past.  In a nutshell, here’s why. “When Trucks stop Running” explains why heavy-duty transportation can’t run on anything but diesel fuel and why batteries, natural gas, liquefied coal, hydrogen and other alternatives won’t work. Civilization would collapse within a month if diesel ran out. I also explain why the electric grid will eventually fail when natural gas isn’t around to balance intermittent energy, since there’s no way to store weeks of electricity to cope with seasonal shortages, nor would a national grid solve this problem, and “renewables” depend on fossil fuel energy for every single step of their life cycle. My second book, Life After fossil fuels, explains why fossil fuels can’t be replaced in key areas of society. Manufacturing needs the high heat only fossils can provide, food for 8 billion people needs finite natural gas fertilizer, and goes over every alternative — hydrogen, solar, wind, batteries, and so on to show why fossils can’t be replaced.

And yet here it is 2022, with world oil peak production likely having occurred in 2018.  Surely there must be some doubts about Plan A: energy independence. Dozens of authors have been writing about why alternatives can’t replace fossils for decades now (i.e. Gever’s 1991 “Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades, Youngquist’s 1997  “Geodestinies”, etc).

So is there a Plan B for the long and permanent emergency?

I looked for plans, and found that most states do have plans for coping with an energy crisis. Since I live in California I looked at their plan first. The 2006 Energy Emergency Response Plan of the California Energy Commission defines its purpose as the state’s strategy for responding to an energy emergency of an actual or potential loss of energy supply that significantly impacts the state. An energy emergency can be caused by natural disasters (such as earthquake, fire, or flood) or geopolitical events such as war, terrorism, civil disturbance, or embargo).

The Plan relies on a free-market approach to control distribution and supply. Government intervention occurs only to the extent necessary to protect the interests of public health, safety, and welfare, along with critical community services and economic operations. During the early stages of an energy emergency, the primary role of state government is fact finding, monitoring, and exchanging information, rather than direct intervention in industry efforts to restore services and satisfy customer requirements.

The state’s response to an emergency will vary depending on the situation. For example, one response to an electricity emergency would involve an appeal to the public to reduce their electricity use. During the early stages of a fuel emergency an appeal for demand reduction will likely escalate the fuel shortage if Californians top off their gasoline tanks in anticipation of an emergency.

Mainly it is many pages of the actions various agencies will take and which agencies they’ll coordinate with. For example:

• Readiness actions: Monitors international and domestic events. Attends periodic exercises to establish and test emergency protocols. Trains appropriate Energy Commission staff. Updates and maintains a network of public and private sector contacts. Prepares Internal Advisory Reports as needed.
• Verify actions: determine nature, extent, and duration of a potential or actually energy emergency. Coordinate with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, the US DOE, and other agencies as well as private industries. Provide a Situation Report. Use the informal fuels set-aside program to be sure that emergency and essential services have adequate fuel.
• EMERGENCY ACTIONS: the Governor must first issue the Proclamation of a State of Emergency and file an Emergency Order with the Office of the Secretary of State.
• OFFICE OF EMERGENCY SERVICES: Inland Region (Sacramento/Mather), Coastal Region (Oakland), Southern Region (Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center If the disaster is localized within a single region, the Regional Emergency Operations Center (REOC) is activated.

If fuel is short there’s a set-aside program for emergency and essential services only.  There’s a form to fill out in the California Petroleum Fuels Set-Aside Program Applicant Handbook, and one of the agencies will decide whether to fulfill it or not. And the government is not paying for the fuel, the agency asking for it has to pay the market price if granted.  I’d hoped to see the actual services that qualified.  Though you can get an idea from the impressive plan to cope with energy shortages after an earthquake in Southern California, it is impossibly difficult, read all about it here.

And here is a Homeland Security 2017 plan called “Guidance for Developing a Fuel Contingency Plan”. Again, it’s SHORT TERM, for some sort of natural disaster like hurricane.  And basically advises setting up emergency supplies for private and public entities. Here are their concrete recommendations, but these “solutions” are so temporary, here are a few of them:

• Consider increasing or installing onsite fuel storage capability. However, when pursuing this option, remember that storage of flammable or combustible fuels requires compliance with a variety of safety and environmental regulations and may require permits from State and/or local environmental protection and fire safety authorities. Be sure to consider the impact of onsite fuel storage on your insurance premiums.
• Identify additional retail fuel vendors from whom you might be able to obtain fuel during fuel emergencies, ensuring that each retail vendor is resilient with respect to onsite emergency power.
• If your core functions (and their supporting functions) depend heavily on electric power, consider enhancing onsite emergency power generation capability, either by installing a permanent emergency generator and fuel storage tank or by modifying your facility’s existing electrical infrastructure to facilitate installation of a portable generator. If you perform lifeline functions, you may be eligible for Federal support for such changes. Through a program operated in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) known as the Emergency Power Facility Assessment Tool (EPFAT), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) can evaluate the emergency power requirements for certain private sector businesses, develop specifications for an emergency generator that can support core functions, assist in the installation of appropriate transfer switches that expedite connections to a portable emergency generator, and deploy the appropriately sized portable generator during emergencies. USACE will also register the facility with FEMA, making your facility eligible for priority distribution of fuel to support the emergency generator. Details of the EPFAT program can be found at http://www.usace.army.mil/Portals/2/docs/Emergency%20Ops/National%20Response%20Framework/power/EPFAT_Fact_Sheet_21_April_2015.pdf
• Review the National Petroleum Council’s report, Enhancing Emergency Preparedness for Natural Disasters – Government and Oil and Natural Gas Industry Actions to Prepare, Respond, and Recover, to understand the basic elements of petroleum fuel supply chains and their vulnerabilities to disruption and to identify ways to establish effective working relationships with members of your local Oil and Natural Gas community

The Homeland Security document is worth looking at if you’re curious about the details, and has a four page list in Appendix B of other emergency planning documents.

But what about the Long Emergency, the permanent slide back to a wood world?

These temporary emergency plans will become the long emergency plans if the latter don’t exist.

If there were long emergency plans, we’d already have a massively subsidized program to end pesticides (since they are running out anyhow, like antibiotics), replace natural gas fertilizer with compost and regenerative agriculture, converting industrial to organic agriculture, breeding horses and oxen to replace tractors, teaching how to grow food in schools, building very small homes in the interior of the U.S. because 80% of the calories are grown in the interior, but 80% of the population lives within 200 miles of the coast, and so on.  See resilience.org, postcarbon.org, Transition Towns, Permaculture books and websites, local food, Trainer’s simplicity Institute and more for the myriad transition ideas for realistic permanent emergency plans.

We’d also have a farm bill that rewarded small farms. After all, in the future 80 to 90% of us will need to be farmers as we were before fossil fuels (or better yet reinvent the societies “Dawn of Everything” cites where cultures rotated between hunting/gathering and growing food and other alternatives (Graeber 2021).  In the U.S. farms declined from 7 million farms to 2 million in the 20th century (USDA 2022), mainly because most subsidies go to large farms, and economies of scale favor farms with the most gigantic tractors.  But farm equipment runs on diesel — that isn’t going to last…  Globally, 1% of farms operate 70% of world’s farmland (Watts 2020, Anseeuw 2020). This concentrated ownership leads to destructive monocultures, soil erosion, aquifer depletion, and deforestation.

But we’re not doing that.  So if there are realistic long emergency last minute plans, they’re hidden from public view at Homeland Security and/or within the U.S. military, because they’d be too scary for the public.  I’ll let my imagination run wild, perhaps these plans discuss how national guards and the military forces would prevent mass migrations, set up massive tent cities in agricultural regions, evacuate those under 40 who volunteer to harvest crops, breed horses, and transport crops via horse & bicycle to nearby towns and cities once muscle power was more available than petroleum, and to train them in organic farming.  Food rationing. Soup kitchens. Breadlines and more…

Or perhaps the plan is war to gain access to oil. Again, that’s not a long-term solution, just a Last Man Standing strategy. Which is why there’s so much propaganda about renewables — no worries if fossils decline!

Originally the plan may have been to befriend oil nations, as FDR did with Saudi Arabia in the 1940s (Rundell 2020) offering to defend them in exchange for oil if we needed it (but we haven’t had to import much from them due to Alaskan, South American, and other sources of oil).

But can we protect Saudi Arabia? No one anticipated the rise of China, with the largest blue navy in the world today. Plus they control up to 99% of many rare earth and other scarce minerals in every step of the chain from mining to finished goods. Nations that also have rare earths often sell them to China because they don’t have refineries and end product factories.

Many nations have nuclear weapons unfortunately.  Even a small war between Pakistan and India would kill billions of people as the ozone layer grew thin and nuclear winter ruined crop production for ten years on most of the planet.  A nuclear WWIII could drive us and millions of species to extinction in that case (Bardeen 2021, Coupe 2021, Jägermeyr 2020, Mills 2008, Robock 2011, Scherrer 2020).

And yet the U.S. is thinking of using small tactical nuclear weapons, despite the risk of escalating the conflict tipping the launch of the big guys, the ICBMs and submarine missiles that can take out whole cities. The U.S. Navy has already deployed an 8 kiloton warhead on a Trident submarine, the big guy missiles on board are 90 to 450 KT in comparison (Kaplan 2020). China and Russia have these too.

Or maybe the plan in the U.S. is for everyone to kill each other to get back to a carrying capacity of 40 to 100 million people (Pimentel 1990).  U.S. civilians and police departments have at least 20 million assault rifles.  And overall there are 393.3 million guns, 120 for every 100 people.  Or perhaps 434 million according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s largest trade group.  No one knows for sure because the government doesn’t keep track of the number of guns in circulation.  Gun ownership is bound to go up. Mass shootings have been a real boon to the gun industry, every time someone goes postal gun sales go way up (Busse 2021, Callcut 2019).

Or let’s get really crazy – perhaps The Plan in a nation, could be any nation, or by the elites, as Jay Hanson speculated in energyresources, to create or allow a pandemic to spread.  Jay thought the elites would do this to make oil and other resources available so they could still get around in their private airplanes and yachts to visit their numerous luxury properties.

The simple answer about what The Plan is for fossil decline is probably there isn’t one, can’t be one. As Graff (2018) points out in his book about the government’s plans to carry on with democracy after a nuclear war with Russia that it’s simply impossible to build underground cities and bunkers to house every American in case of a nuclear war and stockpile them with years of food.  The plan now is to let a few hundred top officials escape to a few safe places dug under mountains with years of food stockpiled inside.  That’s why government plans for “How to Build your Own Bomb Shelter” were published.

You’re on your own. Though the Mormons will probably do best, they are expected to stockpile a year of food in their homes, and the Mormon church owns more farmland than any other entity.

Ultimately, since we’ve harmed the planet in so may ways using the tremendous power of fossil fuels — eroding topsoil, emptying aquifers, pollution, toxic chemicals, and changing our climate so much food production will be less in the future, the societies that emerge after collapse may be very different from what we know today. For example, depend on agriculture only part of the year and move between places seasonally.  Be ruled by city councils rather than autocrats, and have far more individual freedom as Graeber and Wengrow’s document in their wonderful book “Dawn of Everything“.  This book gives me tremendous hope about the future.

Small to mid-sized cities should make their own plans for the apocalypse

So how useful is this study? The town studied was Palmerston North New Zealand with 91,000 people, surrounded by farm land and few other towns nearby.  Auckland is 511 km/318 miles north, so perhaps not easily overwhelmed by urban invaders.

Abrupt global catastrophes—such as nuclear wars, extreme pandemics, or solar storms—could severely hamper global trade. Shortages of resources like liquid fuels could disrupt food production and transport, possibly leading to famine. Prior research has suggested that this impact could be mitigated by urban agriculture, which includes such approaches as home, community, and rooftop gardens.

Explained at phys.org: After the apocalypse: Urban and near-urban farming may be enough to sustain mid-size cities

References

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-EB-2068

Bardeen CG et al (2021) Extreme Ozone Loss Following Nuclear War Results in Enhanced Surface Ultraviolet Radiation. JGR atmospheres. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JD035079

Busse R (2021) Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America. PublicAffairs.

Callcut RA et al (2019) Effect of mass shootings on gun sales—A 20-year perspective. J Trauma Acute Care Surg.

Coupe J, Stevenson S, NS Lovenduski et al (2021) Nuclear Niño response observed in simulations of nuclear war scenarios. Communications Earth & Environment.

Friedemann AJ (2016) When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation. Springer.

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Hirsch RL, et al (2005) Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, mitigation, & risk management. Department of Energy.

Jägermeyr J et al (2020) A regional nuclear conflict would compromise global food security. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences..

Kaplan F (2020) The Senseless Danger of the Military’s New “Low-Yield” Nuclear Warhead. Slate.com

Mills, M.J.  8 Apr 2008. Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences vol 105:14:5307-5312.

Nikiforuk A (2010) Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent. Greystone books.

NRC (2009) America’s Energy Future: Technology and Transformation. 2009. National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, National Academy of Engineering.

Meadows D (2002) Chicken Little, Cassandra, and the Real Wolf. Formerly at http://www.wholeearthmag.com/ArticleBin/228.html and post 27238 in energyresources.

Pettijohn FJ (1984) Memoirs of an Unrepentant Field Geologist: A Candid Profile of Some Geologists and their Science, 1921-1981. University of Chicago Press.

Pimentel D, Pimentel M (1990) Land, energy, and water: the constraints governing ideal U.S. population size. The NPG forum. PMID: 12178968

Robock, A. 2011. Nuclear winter is a real and present danger. Nature 473: 275-6

Rundell D (2020) Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads. I.B. Taruis.

Scherrer KJN et al (2020) Marine wild-capture fisheries after nuclear war. PNAS. http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/NuclearFishPNAS.pdf

Senate 106-930. July 20, 2000. Energy and agriculture. U.S. Senate.

Senate 109–385. November 16, 2005. High costs of crude: the new currency of foreign policy. U.S. Senate Hearing.

Senate 109-861. March 30, 2006. The Hidden Cost of Oil. U.S. Senate hearing.

Senate 109-860. May 16, 2006. Energy security and oil dependence. U.S. Senate hearing.

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Senate 111-105. July 16, 2009. $150 oil: Instability, terrorism and economic disruption. U.S. Senate.

USDA (2022) Farming and Farm Income. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/

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Alice Friedemann  www.energyskeptic.com  Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”.  Women in ecology  Podcasts: WGBH, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity,  Index of best energyskeptic posts