The singular century of abundant energy

We're in a pickle. We're importing more and more people from low-consuming countries into America, where they will live at higher consumption levels. Higher consumption necessitates the use of more environmental resources and of course, more energy.

We're running out of both. No one likes to talk about or even acknowledge the existence of the problem. That seems to be the nature of human nature. But the problem won't go away.

NPG published an excellent overview article by Walter Youngquist: The Singular Century. It's relatively short and is well worth reading and passing on to others. Here are some excerpts:

There are major turning points in human history. Of special importance have been the transition from a hunter/gatherer existence to a settled agricultural economy, and the beginning of the Industrial Age which transition continues. These turning points have for the most part resulted in an improvement in the welfare of humanity. But this century will be the singular century in the definition of it “being like no other” with the coalescing of events that become in total the greatest turning point for mankind...

There will have been three great revolutions in human history. The first two have already occurred. The agricultural revolution whereby humans abandoned the life of a hunter/gatherer in favor of settled agriculture which has gradually intensified to support more and more people. This transition took many centuries. Human numbers increased slowly so that about 10,000 years ago world population was only about 10 million. The Agricultural Revolution resulted in a great increase in population. By 1750 there were approximately 800 million people. The Industrial Revolution, generally dated from the time when coal in Great Britain came into widespread use to power machines, expanded as the advantages provided by coal, and later oil, became evident...

The widespread uses of oil have allowed relatively few people on farms to provide for many others who have moved on to cities. There they could engage in a great variety of activities, one notably being the development and great expansion of medical expertise. This in turn, along with ample food supplies, resulted in world population increasing to the now 7.3 billion and still growing...

In this Third Revolution a larger, and for a time at least, a growing population, will have to live indefinitely on renewable resources, most critically energy resources, which even in total can only replace a small amount of nonrenewable resources which are the major support of civilization as we have it now...

Energy sustainability will be more difficult to achieve for it will initially have to contend with a much larger population than in the past. That population, projected by the United Nations to be 11 billion people by 2100, is unlikely to be sustainable on renewable resources. Population will be in an “overshoot mode” for a brief time as it exhausts the great inheritance of fossil fuels and borrows unsustainably from the future by degrading and losing topsoil and depleting both surface and groundwater supplies. Energy is the key that unlocks all other natural resources. Without energy nothing happens...

Although it may be hard to visualize at the moment, the oil industry is beginning to enter its twilight years. The North Sea oil production for both Norway and the United States has peaked and is now declining, as has oil from the largest North American field, Prudhoe Bay. The world’s largest field, Ghawar, of Saudi Arabia, has its production now sustained by the injection of more than seven million barrels of sea water a day...

At the end of this century the oil industry as we have it now will no longer exist...

Fossil fuels will be used as long as it is economical to use them. Their decline in availability and higher cost this century will permanently change the course of humanity, an event with no parallels...

Water is more valuable than oil. Humans lived for thousands of years without oil but they could not exist without water. But now nearly everywhere surface water supplies, the source of most of our water, are either being overdrawn or polluted or both...

As a geologist, at one time involved in both oil and mineral exploitation here and abroad, when I view these coalescing trends of demands on Earth resources by the now 7.3 billion people, with the projection of 11 billion by the year 2100, that this is the singular century becomes ever more clear. I am unable to think of some mitigating circumstances to this dilemma. A common public answer is that “scientists will think of something” but thus far this has not happened. You cannot “think” resources into existence beyond what now exist. This will be the century when total demands on Earth resources will exceed what the Earth can provide...

The continued migration of people from impoverished countries testifies to this fact, and can only intensify as populations increase and supporting basic resources of oil and fresh water are depleted...

But population growth cannot go on forever. It will stop from one of two causes: a decrease in birth rate or an increase in death rate. What is needed is a concerted effort by all people to stop population growth by a reduction in the birth rate to a population the size that can live sustainably on renewable Earth resources...

But this adjustment to living within the new paradigm of the resource limits of a finite Earth is inevitable...