Book Review by qpooqpoo

The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies

by Richard Heinberg

Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2005.

"The analysis needed today must take into account ecological principles, energy-resource constraints, population pressure, and the historical dynamics of complex societies."¹

This book hasn't aged well. Many people will remember the time when "peak oil" was a thing. It had its hay-day in the first decade of the 21st century: a group of scholars, amateur researchers and writers converged in a "movement" over their belief that industrial society was nearing collapse or sharp decline because of depleting oil (or access to oil), to which industrial society was overwhelmingly and inexorably dependent. Industrial society was running head-on into limits they told everyone-specifically ecological and technological limits (the amount of remaining geologic oil, and the ability to efficiently access that oil), and it would soon begin its death throes as all aspects of the industrial system that were dependent on cheap and abundant fossil fuel energy would begin to shut down; the cost/benefit ratio of oil extraction would no longer make it worth the effort. However, the "movement" has died out: Peak oilists still exist, but they're hard pressed to give interviews. Most of the "institutes" and organizations they founded have floundered or else cease to exist; many of them won't comment on the matter at all. Many have shifted focus to environmental damage and ecological limits in general. Others still cling to the notion, but the decisive moment is shifted further out into the future: they'll still tell you it's near; pushed off into some vague future. So, what happened? In short: technology continued to advance. Namely, the peak oilists based their notions on a faulty understanding of technology and its inter-relation with society at large. They did this partly out of naïveté about the fundamental nature of the techno-industrial system, and partly due to unconscious desires—born of legitimate ecological concerns over the destruction of wild Nature—that the industrial system should soon collapse.²

Both the discovery and the rate of extraction of oil are greatly dependent on technology. Technology is the independent variable. A single quote illustrates how Heinberg overlooks this fact:

"As we have to drill deeper to find oil, and as we have to move into more difficult and expensive areas in which to operate, the ratio of [energy] profit to energy expended declines."³

This outlook is typical of peak oilists. It's their most significant commonality:

"Technology cannot change the geology of the reservoir, but technology (in particular horizontal drilling) can help to produce faster, but no more... "⁴

This perspective seriously overlooks the way in which technology changes the efficiency of energy extraction through time, and the way energy demand changes along with increased technological efficiency in general. Demand evolves due to changes in the efficiency of the industrial system's use of this energy. This changing demand due to changing efficiency in oil use corresponds with changing efficiency in oil extraction—the technological system is an integrated whole and the systems that allow for more efficient use are interconnected with the systems that allow for more efficient expansion. The net result is that the total price to profit ratio of oil extraction can more or less remain the same provided that the technological system is able to continually advance in efficiency. In this respect, while it may certainly run hard up against limits that threaten its expansion into, and transformation of, the natural world (and indeed it is currently experiencing serious social and environmental problems threatening serious destabilization), there is no reason to believe it will hit serious barriers as abruptly as the peak oilists believe.

To better visualize this process, let's take a look at some specific examples. The more efficient the industrial system becomes in extracting a resource, the quicker it moves to extract that resource. The search, extraction, storing, processing, and transportation of oil—the entire cycle from ground to gas-station pump—becomes more efficient as efficiency within the entire system increases. There are opportunities for efficiency in all areas, including areas which are as yet unknown, even radical and novel techniques allowing subtler and more profound capacities. These are, among other things: improved techniques of radar and 3D mapping, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, techniques of chemical processing, techniques in engineering (more fuel-efficient engines and improved transmissions, more efficient logistics and supply chain mapping and coordination, computer-aided navigation), etc., etc. All the while, human behavior and human resources continue to be more efficiently regulated as the technological system advances, as with techniques of surveillance, behavioral conditioning, organization, education and propaganda, etc. As the technological system has grown, it has allowed for the more efficient extraction of oil and its more efficient use—maintaining a level of energy availability which is stable enough for the system's continued growth.

There is enough oil and coal in the ground—simply in existence—to supply enough energy at current usage rates for many hundreds of years. This is bad enough for the people who rightfully understand that the industrial system must soon collapse if there is to be anything left of the planet, let alone human freedom and dignity. Nevertheless, we must also keep in mind that this process is not limited to one set of natural resources. Providence didn't simply declare that oil, coal, uranium, etc., would be the only raw materials to confer energy to industrial society. As the technological system grows, there is no reason to believe that this trend of resource discovery and extraction won't continue, and there won't be other—as yet inconceivable—“resources” of the earth that can be utilized for energy.

The greatest concern is that this process of transformation of the earth and humans should continue unabated, such that nothing in the natural and wild world is left free of technological disruption. The sum total of all the competing and interacting systems artificially exploiting more and more resources is already devastating for nature and humanity, in the future it will be catastrophic. As described by Kaczynski in Anti-Tech Revolution, Chapter Two:

"Like biological organisms, the world's leading human self-prop [self-propagating] systems exploit every opportunity, utilize every resource, and invade every corner where they can find anything that will be of use to them in their endless search for power. And as technology advances, more and more of what formerly seemed useless turns out to be useful after all, so that more and more resources are extracted, more and more corners are invaded... "⁵

The peak oilists' failure to fully appreciate the technology problem is likely due in part to psychological denial, and partly due to education and propaganda (in the technological system, thinking about technology itself is for obvious reasons discouraged; the thinking itself is perverted or the focus on technology is distracted or diverted). But their failure to appreciate the technology problem is also a predictable side-effect of certain historical ideological currents. While the industrial system was still in its infancy, during the period of Adam Smith and, later, Karl Marx, it appeared as though technology had at its disposal unlimited resources. At the very least, most people didn't bother to think seriously about long-term implications for resources. Thus, we have the "cornucopian" mindset:

"For decades most economists have been united in proclaiming that resources are effectively infinite... humanity is growing a measurably brighter future with each passing year as it reproduces, transforms its environment, invents new technologies, and consumes resources." (p. 134).

But as the industrial system advanced well into the 20th century, and its negative ecological effects became widely known, we began to hear:

" ... from ecologists, petroleum geologists, climatologists, and other scientists who tell us that resources are limited, that the earth's carrying capacity for humans is finite, and that the biosphere on which we depend cannot continue to absorb the rapidly expanding stream of wastes from industrial civilization." (p.134).

Thus, a particular mental construct developed, which ultimately formed the rough intellectual framework for "environmentalism," that being: technological civilization is a phenomenon apart from nature and is pushing up hard against it. Technological civilization had to learn to live in harmony with nature, or else nature would be destroyed, and take with it civilization, much like a parasite killing its host. Because destroying technological civilization to save nature was never considered, the goal was to "plan," "organize," "control" civilization, such that it lived in "harmony," or "balance," or "sustainability" with nature.⁶ But this perspective overlooks a crucial point: technology transforms wild nature to suite its needs, always. Technological civilization need not necessarily run hard up against natural limits, because the technology itself has the capacity to bend and alter these limits; to transform nature and society in such a way that the transformed society can continue to be sustained (at least in the short term) by a transformed environment. Running out of oil? Adapt by transforming more of wild nature and controlling more human behavior: more desert ecosystems converted into solar farms, more and more corners and crevices of the earth's crust invaded and exploited by more efficient extraction, more natural bio-matter is farmed and converted to "biofuel," more education and propaganda conditioning humans to act and think more efficiently and to adapt to the new technological environment etc. etc. The old paradigm thus fails to consider the evolutionary dynamics of the industrial system, and the nature in which it transforms wild nature to suit its ends.

Our current social system (determined by our level of technology) provides the mechanism by which this adaptation can most efficiently take place (currently, the free-market economy and price signals, but perhaps a more efficient system for technological growth and adaptation will evolve to supersede it).

Unfortunately, the full realization of this process, and what it implies for continued technological growth, is still lost on (or ignored by) the vast majority of environmentalists: In their minds, either the day of doom continually recedes beyond the horizon, or industrial civilization is truly making progress on the promise of living in harmony with nature. Thus, the old paradigm is maintained. A systematic awareness of the techno-social system and how it evolves and interacts with nature and society is bypassed.⁷

It may happen that the industrial system runs up against serious difficulties and it begins to break down. But it is not certain that these difficulties won't be resolved before human society is so transformed that no freedom or dignity remain, and all wild nature ceases to exist—what remaining “nature” that exists being fully subordinated by the system as just another resource. The more challenges the industrial system faces, the more it will work to push through those challenges to maintain itself, even if that means it has to sacrifice more of Nature and humanity. It is already driving like mad to "transition" into a "sustainable" system away from fossil fuels, and the more it's threatened by natural obstacles, the more vicious and extreme its attempt at transition will become. Those of us who understand that the industrial system is a colossal evil that cannot be reformed can't afford to sit around and hope that it breaks down in the face of natural hurdles. We must do our best to force it to collapse sooner rather than later, so that wild Nature can recover.

Facing the problem of technology head-on, and being rational in our calculus, is psychologically painful. It would be (relatively) more comforting to think that the natural world would soon impose hard limits on the growth of the industrial system, such that the latter would be forced to either seriously contract or collapse. Unfortunately, an honest and accurate appraisal of the facts doesn't provide for this notion. As Heinberg himself unwittingly offers: "It is self-delusional to dwell on hopeful images of the future merely to distract ourselves from facing unpleasant truths or to avoid having to take difficult actions."⁸

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NOTES:

1. Pages 208-209. With respect to this analysis, this book fails where Theodore Kaczynski's Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How succeeds.

2. This seems to be the case especially for Richard Heinberg and John Michael Greer. Whether or not peak oil leads to collapse, it still promises a radical transformation of society that opens the way to the realization of social dreams. For Heinberg, this seems to be a moment of crisis where advanced society is forced to adopt more "sustainable" ways of life. For Greer, who follows a mystic tradition, the dream is a return to a more primitive experience. The oil era is just a historical blip, they told us: The horrific destruction of the environment, the soul­ crushing modern wage-slavery, the spiritual emptiness, the depression, anxiety, and purposelessness of the modern experience—these are all manifestations of humanity's temporary experiment with fossil fuels, which was on its way out. There would be great chaos and suffering in the near term, but when the dust had settled, the earth at least could relax, and humans could be free. "[l]n the post-petroleum world, humankind will discover a way of living that is more psychologically fulfilling as well as more ecologically sustainable than the one we have known during the industrial age." Page 5 [Emphasis added].

3. Page 127.

4. Jean Laherrere, as quoted by Michael Lynch, "What Ever Happened to Peak Oil?" Forbes Magazine, June 29, 2018. Online at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2018/06/29/what-ever-happened-to-peak-oil/?sh=6896cb59731a 

5. Theodore Kaczynski, Anti-Tech Revolution, Scottsdale, AZ: Fitch & Madison Publishers, 2016, p. 59. For a more systematic account of this process, refer to pp. 60-64 therein.

6. And thus we come to the present paradigm or world view, which in this case is best reflected by the "founder" of peak oil itself, the geologist Marion King Hubbert: "The world's present industrial civilization is handicapped by the coexistence of two universal, overlapping, and incompatible intellectual systems: the accumulated knowledge of the last four centuries of the properties and interrelationships of matter and energy; and the associated monetary culture which has evolved from folkways of prehistoric origin." (p. 99).

This is astonishingly naïve! But it's also typical of the mental framework that scientists and technicians continue to maintain to this day. The "properties and interrelationships of matter and energy," namely, the accumulating knowledge and advancing practice of science and technology are deeply dependent on, and interrelated with, "the associated monetary system." Hubbert and his scientific peers can't simply decouple science and technology from society. It's easy to see why they do: they can happily continue on with their "surrogate activities," pursuing their careers, their fulfillment, their excitement and their status and prestige, while conveniently disavowing any of the unintended, detrimental developments which inevitably result from technology's advance. By artificially separating the practice of science from society, they can render their convenient little scapegoats ("Capitalism," "politicians," the "monetary system" etc.) and continue on their merry way advancing technology.

7. A good illustration of this is the way some peak oilists have swung away from the idea of "peak oil" supply and to embrace the notion of "peak oil" demand. In this case, alternative "green" energies are thought to be on track to mitigate or negate demand for fossil fuels. (Joe Romm, "Peak Oil Returns: Why Demand will Likely Peak by 2030," Think Progress, Feb. 22, 2016. Online at: https://thinkprogress.org/peak-oil-returns-why-demand-will-likely-peak­ by-2030-86d6621c119c/#.r7czlo353.) This is also incredibly naïve. As long as oil still can still give a net energy return on investment superior to alternatives, it will continue to be used by the entire system.

8. Page 274.

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