An Interview with Matt Savinar
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Matt Savinar is the author
of The Oil Age is OVER: What to Expect as the World Runs
Out of Cheap Oil, 2005-2050.
He was trained as a lawyer. He maintains a website with plenty
of information and articles about Peak Oil at lifeaftertheoilcrash.net.
I interviewed him by email
on January 15, 2005. |
Aric McBay: Could you summarize the current Peak Oil situation
for us?
Matt Savinar: If the optimists are correct, we are 10-20 years
from the peak. If the realists are correct, we are peaking right now.
We have no scalable alternatives.
We have no plan on how to reform the banking system so that it does
not require a constantly increasing supply of energy.
We have no political leaders who are willing to tell the public the
truth.
In other words, it doesn't look good.
AM: What does this mean for the prospects of industrial
civilization? What level of technology will people be living at in
50 years?
MS: Optimistically, the average westerner will be reduced
to what you might consider a modern day third world level of existence.
In that case, your best bet is to either be as self-sufficient as
possible or extremely rich - top 1 percent or better. Everybody else
is in deep trouble.
Pessimistically, nuclear war and radical climate change will eliminate
all but a very small portion of the population.
AM: What is your impression of the ability of industrial
"renewables" like photovoltaics or electric windpower to
prevent an industrial collapse?
People tend to think of alternatives
to oil as somehow independent from oil. In reality, the alternatives
to oil are more accurately described as "derivatives of oil."
It takes massive amounts of oil and other scarce resources to locate
and mine the raw materials (silver, copper, platinum, uranium, etc.)
necessary to build solar panels, windmills, and nuclear power plants.
It takes more oil to construct these alternatives and even more oil
to distribute them, maintain them, and adapt current infrastructure
to run on them.
Each of the alternatives
is besieged by numerous fundamental physical shortcomings
that have, thus far, received little attention. I discuss this in
greater detail on my website, lifeaftertheoilcrash.net -- see the
answer to the question "What
about all the various alternatives to oil? Can't we find a replacement?"
Despite their individual shortcomings, it is still possible for the
world economy to run on a basket of alternative sources of energy
- so long as we immediately get all of the following:
1. A few dozen technological breakthroughs;
2. Unprecedented political will and bipartisan cooperation;
3. Tremendous international collaboration;
4. Massive amounts of investment capital,
5. Fundamental
reforms to the structure of the international banking system;
6. No interference from the oil-and-gas industries;
7. About 25-50 years of general peace and prosperity to retrofit
the world's $45 trillion dollar per year economy, including it transportation
and telecommunications networks, manufacturing base, and agricultural
systems to run on these new sources of energy;
If we get all of the above, we might be able to get the energy equivalent
of 3-5 billion barrels of oil per year from alternative sources.
That's a tremendous amount of oil - about as much as the entire world
used per year during World War II, but it's nowhere near enough to
keep our currently mammoth-sized yet highly volatile global economic
system going. The world currently requires over 30 billion barrels/1.2
trillion gallons of oil per year to support economic growth. That
requirement will only increase as time goes on due to population growth,
debt servicing, and the industrialization of countries like China
and India.
So even if the delusionally optimistic scenario described above is
somehow miraculously manifested, we're still facing a full-blown meltdown
of petrochemical civilization.
In short, hoping renewables will keep the age of entropy at bay is
like hoping pissing in the Mississippi river will cause it to reverse
course.
They're great for small scale things. We should be trying to upscale
them as much as possible, but even in the best case scenario we still
have to accept a future where energy is extremely expensive and extremely
scarce.
AM: Sometimes people tell me that "people have been
predicting this for a long time, especially in the 70's, and it hasn't
happened. It's not going to happen now." Why is the situation
different now? Is there anything that could prevent collapse?
MS: The oil shocks of the 1970s were created by political
events. In 1973, OPEC cut its production in retaliation for US support
of Israel. In 1979, Iran cut its production in hopes of crippling
"the great Satan." In both cases, the US was able to turn
to other oil producing nations such as Venezuela to alleviate the
crisis.
Once global production peaks, there won't be anybody to turn
to. The crisis will just get worse and worse with each passing year.
The evidence of an imminent
peak in global oil production is now overwhelming:
1. Ninety-nine percent of the world's oil comes from 44 oil producing
nations. At least 24 of these nations are past their peak and now
in terminal decline.
2. The entire world - with the exception of the Middle East - peaked
in 1997. The US peaked in 1970, Russia in 1987, the UK in 1999.
3. Global production of conventional oil has essentially plateaued
since the year 2000.
As far as "doom-and-gloom" consider what
widely respected Deutsche Bank had to say about Peak Oil in a recent
report entitled, Energy Prospects After the Petroleum Age:
The
end-of-the-fossil-hydrocarbons scenario is not therefore a doom-and-gloom
picture painted by pessimistic end-of-the world prophets, but a view
of scarcity in the coming years and decades that must be taken seriously.
On a similar note, as noted earlier, the chief economist at Morgan
Stanley recently predicted that we
have a 90% chance of facing "Economic Armageddon,"
while investment banker and Bush-consultant Matt Simmons has stated
"the
only solution is to pray."
Given the credentials of those sounding the alarm the loudest, it
is extremely unwise to causally dismiss this as just more "1970s
doom-and-gloom."
AM: How do infrastructure attacks play into this scenario?
Over the past year, attacks on oil infrastructure of been increasingly
common in places like Chechnya and Iraq. In the past year numerous
small-scale attacks and bombings on electrical infrastructure have
also been carried out by Separatist and Anti-Imperialist groups all
over the world, including in rich countries like the US, Spain and
Canada. On a recent tape Osama bin Laden called for attacks on the
oil infrastructure of Saudi Arabia. Could these attacks trigger an
industrial collapse much early than observers predict, if they become
widespread enough?
MS: They certainly could and probably will.
It's like somebody who is suffering from a disease like cancer who
in addition to having to deal with the effect of the disease, the
treatment, and all the medical bills, then gets bitten by a wild animal
on the way to the doctor's office.
Now they have to deal with the blood loss, possibility of infection,
and additional medical bills resulting from the animal attack.
AM: Do you want to speculate here on what sort of time
frame do you expect to see in terms of collapse? How much time do
people have to get their stuff together?
MS: I try not to think too much about how little time we have as
it causes me a great deal of anxiety.
AM: What are the most
important things that people can do to prepare for collapse?
MS: Probably deal with the emotional aspects first. You can't
learn to grow food, install solar panels, etc. . . if you're a nervous
wreck.
Overwhelming anxiety is a natural response to understanding the ramifications
of peak oil, but it is not a state of mind that allows one to effectively
prepare for an energy constrained future.
AM: The example of "Easter Island" is often used
to discuss Peak Oil and ecological overshoot. As you know, the inhabitants
of Easter Island created a complex, hierarchal society with a great
emphasis on building monumental stone statues. However, when Europeans
first arrived on the island in 1722, the the population had been reduced
to a tiny fraction of its peak, and the island was barren. The inhabitants
of Easter Island destroyed their own forests by using too much wood,
and once the trees were gone the ecology collapsed and streams dried
up, so they resorted to constant war over the dregs of food and wood
that remained, and even extensive cannibalism for food. [See Clive
Ponting's writings
on the subject.] What can we do to minimize violence and warfare
over remaining resources when industrial civilization crashes?
MS: Try telling the average American that he may have to replace
his car with a bicycle. The response you get will likely include:
1. Pontifications that "riding a bicycle instead of driving
a car is the moral equivalent of letting the terrorists win";
2. Admonitions that "you would probably vote for Saddam Hussein
if you could," and
3. Quite possibly threats of physical violence should you ever make
such a suggestion to them again.
When dealing with populations and leaders who are as energy-illiterate
and irrational as we are, I don't know what, if anything, can be done
to prevent a descent into anarchy.
AM: One of my great worries about industrial "renewables"
is that they'll permit some degree of continuation of the actions
of the US military in North America and abroad. It increasingly seems
that they are hoping that this is the case -- for example, with the
military's creation of a hybrid Hummer, or the general recent enthusiasm
for "renewables" within the "National Security"
crowd. How likely do you think it is that the military will attempt
to build and co-opt electricity producing wind and solar installations
to power their policies of invasion and domination? What can we do
about this?
MS: I share your concerns. We did, after all, have atomic
bombs before atomic energy.
I don't know if anything can be done to stop it.
AM: The longer the current industrial system is in place
the more human and ecological communities it will destroy, particularly
in unindustrialized countries. We depend on the communities of life
for our long term survival and well-being. That means that in the
long term, the sooner global deindustrialization happens the better.
And yet, were civilization to collapse now it would cause some degree
of violence as well, particularly for people in industrialized countries
(who are more dependent on it). How do we balance the need for collapse
to happen soon with fears of the violence that may happen during collapse?
MS: The longer I'm aware of these issues, the less I tend
to think about such big picture issues as there is little I can do
to effect the speed of the collapse outside of make my own preparations.
AM: I often think of the children who will be born after
industrial collapse. What would you want to tell them about the events
of our time? Are there any warnings that you would give them?
MS: I think the initial generations (say 25-50 years from
now) will be quite angry with us for squandering so much.
They will see, for instance, that the richest person in town has
access to all the food and water he wants while everybody else scrounges
and struggles to survive.
When they realize that everybody in the town used to live as the
rich man did, you can see why they will be quite upset with generations
who lived 1850-2025 for squandering such wealth on useless crap and
wasteful living.
250 plus years from now, they will likely tell stories and myths
about us as nobody will have had access to the energy necessary to
operate machinery for generations.
Somebody might find the blue prints for an SUV or an IPOD and attempt
to build one from wood. When it fails to work as the ancient texts
described, they will be clueless as to why.
The survivors of Easter Island had no clue how the statues got built.
Even to this day, we don't know how the islanders did it as we can
barely duplicate their efforts even when aided by heavy machinery.
The same is true for the pyramids in Egypt.
As far as what I would tell them, that is hard to say as they won't
have the same cultural reference points you and I have, all of which
are the product of petroleum culture.
I would have to put the message in terms they are likely to understand
which are likely to be what we might consider "primitive"
by today's standards.
When you think about it, the word primitive as it is typically used
really means "energy-poor" which our descendants most certainly
will be.
Our descendants may read about the "Markets" and think
they were our gods. The gods of transport were Ford, GM, Toyota, while
the gods of information were IBM, Apple, Dell, etc. . .
These gods belonged to these larger gods called the "S and P
500" and "Nasdaq."
The gods produced these magical machines called "cars"
and "computers" and "radios" and so on . . .
Every morning, the people would go the machines produced by the gods
to find out if the gods were happy or angry with the people.
They would then turn to their shamans and gurus, such as Alan Greenspan,
in hopes that the shamans and gurus would figure out how to make the
gods happy again.
Sometimes a god would fall from grace and wouldn't be able to associate
with the other gods. This is what happened, for instance, to the god
called "Enron" and his disciples, Ken Lay and Ken Fastow.
Other times, a god's personal representative would be installed into
positions of power among the people. The god called "Halliburton"
was known for this practice.
The men in the society loved the god named "Pfizer" who
would give the men a form of manna called "Viagra."
They men also loved the gods named "Coors", "NFL",
and "Hooters."
Some of women in the society were obsessed with gods named "Gucci"
and "Revlon."
Then there were some gods who were very powerful but very secretive
and mysterious. The god named the "Carlyle Group" was one
such god. The "Saudi Bin Laden Group" was another.
We still have some ancient texts about the "Carlyle" and
"Saudi-Bin Laden" gods. It is believed these were originally
the work of the philosopher "Moore."
The gods fed on this stuff called "Brent Crude." When the
people were no longer able to provide the gods with their food, the
gods became very angry and began to abandon the people.
The first gods to abandon the people were the gods of flight, such
as the gods named "Delta" and "American" and "TWA."
As the supply of crude dwindled, more and more of the gods abandoned
the people. The people begun to fight for whatever crude was left.
In one particularly destructive battle, some of the people connected
to the "Bin Laden" stole the machines of the gods of flight
and used them to attack the temples of the gods of finance, commerce,
and warfare.
This ultimately plunged the world into a series of battles called
"terror wars."
Some people thought the wind or the sun or maybe even plants would
provide a replacement for the crude, but by the time they realized
this was just a fantasy, it was too late.
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