Transcript Rebuilding Mass Consumption – Context

Rebuilding Mass
Consumption – Context
Post World War II
-fear another Great
Depression
-demobilization
-radicalized labor
-power of Communist
parties
Answer: Consumption is the
opiate of the masses
The World View
“Our enormously productive economy …
demands that we make consumption our
way of life, that we convert buying and
selling of goods into a ritual, and that we
seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego
satisfaction, in consumption. … We need
things consumed, burned up, worn out,
replaced and discarded at an ever
increasing rate.”
Rebuilding Mass
Consumption - Tools
Keynesian short-term demand
management
- “consumption function”
- contra cyclical policy
Fixation on Competitive Growth
(USSR)
Maintain income, consumption
levels through
- military spending
- road building
- subsidized housing and
suburbanization
- consumer credit
- low oil prices
Advantages of Oil
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
Historically easy to
access
Easily transported
(liquids easiest)
Energy density (40 kw
hrs per gal)
Refineable into several
fuels
Variety other uses chemicals, etc.
Continuous flow
production methods
Demand for Gasoline
• Number of cars
(wartime expansion)
• Low mileage
• Distances traveled
growing
• Destruction of public
transport
• Military demand
Refining Petroleum
The Petrochemical
Revolution
Year
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
Today?
% Petrochemical
US
Europe
0.01
0.0
6.0
0.0
21.0
0.0
50.0
4.0
88.0
58.0
96.0
75.0
99.7
Price Trends
1947-59 traded commodities up 300% overall
oil from $2.17 to 1.79 down 38%
1951-64 WPI up 4%
inorganic chemicals up 20%
synthetic organics down 15%
1957-67
CPI up 13%
Dupont Corp Sales Price Index down 15%
The Cost of Oil
•
•
•
Extraction
(financial cost)
Replacement cost
of natural capital
Ecological cost of
production & use
Greenhouse Gases: Since
Industrial Age
Gas
CO2
Methane
NOx
CFCs
Sources
fossil fuels
burning jungle
agric., gas leaks
deforest.
chem. fert.
fossil fuels
refridgerants
Increase
35%
100%
12%
4% p.a.
Power
1
30
200
10,000
Acid Rain
SO2
Volcanoes
NOx
5-10%
Swamps etc.
Coal, petroleum
(refining & use)
90-95%
100 m tons p.a.
Effects:
Dead lakes
Stunted forests
Falling crop yields
Poisoned drinking water
Corroded buildings
Damage to automobiles
Ozone Depletion: Causes
Culprit
Methane
Natural
swamps
Nitrous oxide
Halons
microbes
--
Human
gas leaks (T)
rice paddies (P)
ruminants (A)
fossil fuel
refridgerants
Chemical Toxification:
Origins of Toxic Waste
Petroleum and
offshoots – 70%+
Metal refining
Pulp & Paper
Nuclear
Military (chemical
and nuclear)
Nature and Toxic Waste
Normal breakdown
process
-dissolution
-evaporation
-biodegradation
-photo-degradation
-natural acids
Synthetic Organics
Feedstock: fossil fuel
Limited water solubility,
fat affinity
Toxic, carcinogenic,
mutagenic
Very slow to degrade
sometimes impossible
always difficult
Breakdown products
sometimes worse
The Core Dilemma
Maintain the carbon
economy
- more poisons
- worse climate disruption
Run out of oil?
-economic and financial
catastrophe
-famines, population crash
End of Oil?
oil as energy-matter
supply rising 1930s  2005,
2010, 2020?
as energy-matter up, GNP up
when oil supply stops growing?
technological shifts
energy substitutions
economies in use
what if they are not enough?
Key factor: energy profit rate
Symptoms of
Conventional Oil Crisis?
1. Global discovery rate peaked in 1960s
2. 90% conventional oil already found?
3. Main producers (S.A., Russia, Mexico
etc.) near capacity or beyond
4. Wave of industry mergers
5. Global demand growth 2000-2040 est.
60%
Oil: Conventional v.
Unconventional?
Stage IV: Synthetic Oil
1) Shale Oil (kerogen)
Production
- Mine kerogen
- Transport to refineries
- Heat to 900 F
- Add H
From where?
-
Coal, oil?
Elecrolysis water?
where is electricity from?
Problems
- Massive water use
- Low net energy
- Waste disposal
more than original
groundwater pollution
Oil Shales
The Raw Material
The Process
2) Oil Sands
(Est. Athabasca 1.7 t. bbls)
Strip mining (75 metres overburden)
Hot water, steam stips thin oil coat
from sand
Add naptha or natural gas condensate
to tar to upgrade to liquid
Oil Sands (continued)
• Recoverable only 300 billion
• Energy profit rate half conventional oil
• Greenhouse emissions far more than conventional oil
• Garbage enormous
-2 tons sand per bbl oil
-destroys hundreds of thousands of acres
-displace native population & destroy forests, wildlife habitat
-huge water use
2-1/2 bbl liquid waste per bbl oil (tailings pond 22 sq km
circumference)
To replace world conventional, 70 Syncrudes with tailings
pond = Lake Ontario
With this result
Stage V? Return to Coal?
Energy profit rate already < 1?
Cost of liquefaction
Huge cost to restore old production
Pollution far greater than oil production
Much dirtier in use
But massive subsidies, esp. US
(US the “Saudi Arabia of coal”!)
A New Coal-Chemical
Revolution?
World Coal Distribution
US: The “Saudi Arabia of
Coal?”
90% burned to produce
electricity
Pollution controls – taller
chimneys!
Acid rain problem  legislation,
scrubbers
Only partly successful
-still big problem certain areas
-US soils so degraded no longer neutralize
-additional problem mercury (it cycles up,
down)
Switch to Western coal
- lower S
- open pit, surface mines
- heavily mechanized (i.e. no
unions)
BUT - younger coal, lower energy
per unit
Modern Deep Mine
West Virginia Mountain
Top Removal Coal Mine
Wyoming Open Pit Coal
Mine
US Coal Solution?
-modern tech
less SO2
less NOx
less mercury per unit
BUT more CO2!!!
Skyrocketing Price of
Fossil Fuel - Impact:
-on
-on
-on
-on
-on
-on
GNP
distribution of income and wealth
stock market
real estate market
automobile culture
agriculture
In The New Millennium:
Techno Optimism
Energy: solar-hydrogen replace fossil
fuel?
Matter: synthetic biochemicals replace
petrochemicals?
i.e. a new hydrogen fuelledbioengineering age?
In The New Millennium:
Economic & Political Reality?
• Stuck with carbon economy
• Some window dressing for PR
• Slow motion disintegration at first
climate disruption
chemical pollution
steadily climbing oil prices
all well before oil runs out
• Then precipitous drop oil production
• With what consequences?
Petrochemical Age &
Economic Growth
Based On:
Human Ingenuity?
Magic of the Market?
Faith in God?
No! Bio-Geo-Chemical
Fluke!
Unsustainable, not
repeatable
The World in 2100?
• A much smaller population
• With much lower per
capita C
• Far less mobile
• In small communities
• Using old solar flow
technologies
• In a physically degraded
world
• With much less biological
wealth