#This has been observed a few times - fossil fuels are very likely to either peak within a few years

[overfedvenison]

This fuggin headline is like...

[pinkonblonde]

Strange World: The Radical Rhetoric of Greta Thunberg

[A version of this piece was published by Green Left on 8 January, 2020.]

On Friday, 20 August, 2018, rather than go to school, Greta Thunberg sat outside Swedish parliament to protest inaction on climate change. The then-fifteen-year-old school student had with her some flyers, and a handpainted wooden sign that read: “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (school strike for the climate). On the first day of her strike, she sat alone, but news of her protest quickly spread via social media. On the second day, others joined her, and so began a youth-led protest movement comprised of millions around the world who have taken to the streets to demand a liveable future.1

If Thunberg’s act of civil disobedience attracted considerable interest, her gifts as a public communicator, evident in numerous speeches given in the intervening months, have merely served to magnify her spotlight. These speeches were gathered and published last May as No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference. In late 2019, the book was reissued in expanded editions 2019 to include speeches delivered by Thunberg between May and September.

Much of Thunberg’s activism involves pointing out what, in the midst of Australia’s nightmarish bushfire season, is now horrifyingly apparent: climate change is not merely happening but is a genuine global emergency requiring unprecedented action. Obstructing urgent progress, she points out, is widespread ignorance of the extent of the crisis. Beginning with our politicians and the media, this ignorance spreads, infecting the populace.

Although we are witnessing its effects all around us, however, Thunberg observes that “there are no headlines, no emergency meetings, no breaking news” regarding climate change itself. “No one is acting as if we were in a crisis.”2 We need to take immediate action to end greenhouse gas emissions by shifting to renewable energy sources. The emission curve, she explains, is the only thing that matters.

And the curve only continues to rise.3

António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, has deemed climate change “a direct existential threat” and “the defining issue of our time.”4 The Paris Agreement, an international treaty forming part of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, was established in 2016, under which countries pledged to keep the rise in global average temperatures “well below 2°C” while “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”5

Achieving the 1.5 degree target is critical, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says doing so “would reduce challenging impacts on ecosystems, human health and well-being.” However, this “would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” with “the next few years [being] probably the most important in our history.”6

We have already surpassed 1 degree of warming.7 Yet, much of the world is embarked upon a business-as-usual trajectory, with few if any countries having so far demonstrated a readiness to undertake the unprecedented, transformative changes required to secure a safe and liveable future.8

Confronting climate change therefore means recognising, as Thunberg does, that the world’s political and economic systems seem utterly incapable of solving the very crisis they have helped create. “You [politicians] … are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before,” she writes. “And those answers don’t exist any more. Because you did not act in time.”9

Thunberg prefers to define herself as a realist rather than a radical10 and resists the perception that she is political: “This is not a political text” the book’s opening speech proclaims.11 Her reluctance to be thought of in such terms is perhaps in part strategic. Her critics, eager to divert attention away from meaningful issues, characterise her as exploited, indoctrinated, and compromised by vested interests.

Eschewing labels and sticking to the science presumably allows Thunberg to safeguard her sense of independence, making it harder for others to dismiss her message as ideologically motivated. “Many people love to spread rumours saying that I have people ‘behind me’ or that I’m being ‘paid’ or ‘used’ to do what I’m doing,” she writes. “But there is no one ‘behind’ me except for myself.”12

And unlike politicians who are desperate to “talk about almost anything except for the climate crisis,” the science itself is at the heart of her message. “We [young activists] don’t have any other manifestos or demands—you unite behind the science, that is our demand.”13 (This point was emphasised when, after addressing the United States Congress in September, 2019, Thunberg submitted into the record a report from the IPCC in lieu of her own testimony.14)

Yet, when one considers the implications of what “unit[ing] behind the science” means for our political and economic systems, to be a realist in a time of crisis requires a willingness to consider radical alternatives. “[O]ur current economics,” she notes, “are still totally dependent on burning fossil fuels, and thereby destroying ecosystems in order to create everlasting economic growth.”15

Responsibility therefore largely rests not with the populace at large but with the corporations and the politicians who work in their interests. “[S]omeone is to blame,” she insists. “Some people—some companies and some decision-makers in particular—have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.”16

The cause is of the crisis, in other words, is neither corruption nor aberration; rather, it is our political and economic systems running precisely as intended. “We live in a strange world,” she reflects, “where no one dares to look beyond the current political systems even though it’s clear that the answers we seek will not be found within the politics of today.” She concludes, therefore, that “maybe we should change the system itself.”17 To achieve this, Thunberg advocates “civil disobedience” tactics and “grassroots” social change.18 “It’s time to rebel,” she declares.19

In the chapter ‘I’m Too Young to Do This,’ Thunberg explains that idea of a student school strike came from phone meetings with other activists, facilitated by Bo Thorén from the group Fossil Free Dalsland. During these discussions, Thorén suggested a student strike, an idea inspired by US students who refused to return to school in the aftermath of a 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. Thunberg liked it, but the rest of the group favoured other ideas.20 “So I went on planning the school strike all by myself,” she writes, “and after that I didn’t participate in any more meetings.”21

In a tweet, meteorologist Martin Hedberg confirmed Thunberg’s account. “I participated in a phone-meeting with Greta, Bo and others in June 2018. After a while Greta concluded: ‘You are not radical enough. I have to do something myself.’ [A]nd then she hung up. She went on to do her thing, her way.”22

In speeches added to the book’s expanded editions, Thunberg emphasises the global carbon budget, which estimates the amount of fossil fuels the world can potentially consume before we breach the threshold of 1.5 degrees of warming. Citing “chapter 2, on page 108 of the SR15 IPCC report,” she notes that at current rates of consumption, we will have exhausted that budget in scarcely over eight years.23 “No other current challenge can match the importance of establishing a wide, public awareness and understanding of our our rapidly disappearing carbon budget, that should and must become our new global currency and the very heart of our future and present economics.”24

The activist, who has Asperger syndrome, believes the condition has motivated much of her work, explaining that “since I am not that good at socializing I did this instead.”25 Likewise, she believes the condition to be key in her ability to accurately assess the existential threat posed by climate change: because Thunberg sees things as “black and white,” she avoids the cognitive dissonance and doublethink necessary to be passive and complicit within a toxic system. “[T]he rest of the people … keep saying that climate change is an existential threat and the most important issue of all,” she writes. “And yet they just carry on like before.”26

Thunberg is one of the truthtellers of our age, whose use stark binary terms evokes the urgency of our times. “If the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. To me that is black or white. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival. Either we go on as a civilization or we don’t.”27

Her role role to wrest us from our collective slumber and to awaken us to the horrifying realworld consequences of endless consumption and exploitation. “I have a dream,” she declares, invoking Martin Luther King Jr. (whom she mentions by name).28

“In fact I have many dreams. But … [t]his is not the time and place for dreams. This is the moment in history when we need to be wide awake.… And yet, wherever I go I seem to be surrounded by fairytales. Business leaders, elected officials all across the political spectrum [are] spending their time telling bedtime stories that soothe us, that make us go back to sleep.… It’s time to face the reality, the facts, the science.”29

It is sadly predictable—and a testament to the topsy-turvy nature of our times—that someone so clearsighted should be regularly denounced as a tool of propaganda.30 In 2018, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an organisation that assesses existential risk, set their metaphorical Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight.31 It was the nearest the clock had been set to midnight since a single previous occasion in 1953: the peak of the Cold War.32

Branding the times in which we live as the ‘new abnormal,’ the Bulletin cited, in addition to two major existential threats—the climate crisis and the proliferation of nuclear weapons—an emerging third threat: the “ongoing and intentional corruption of the information environment,” or the spread of propaganda by way of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts,’ which has undermined our capacity for rational discourse.33

Last month, citing a further deterioration in these areas, the Bulletin advanced the clock further still: to 100 seconds to midnight.34

In August, 2019, the Sun Herald columnist Andrew Bolt wrote a tawdry attack piece in which he referenced Thunberg’s mental health, calling her “deeply disturbed” and likening her to a cult leader.35

“Where are the adults?” she tweeted in response.36

A similar question was recently on the mind of the dissident intellectual Noam Chomsky as he pondered, in an interview, this “scandalous” state of affairs in which the fight for a survivable future has been left largely to teenagers. “It’s literally the case that this generation is going to have to determine whether organised human society persists,” he said. “Where’s the rest of us?”37

[The expanded edition of No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference is available in both illustrated and non-illustrated formats. Greta Thunberg’s next book, Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis is a memoir, cowritten with her family; it will be published in English in March.]

1 The “millions” figure comes from estimates of numbers at global protests in March and September of 2019. See Damian Carrington, ‘School Climate Strikes: 1.4 Million People Took Part, Say Campaigners,’ The Guardian, 19 March, 2019; Matthew Taylor, Jonathan Watts, and John Bartlett, ‘Climate Crisis: 6 Million People Join Latest Wave of Global Protests,’ The Guardian, 28 September, 2019.

2 Greta Thunberg, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, United Kingdom: Allen Lane, 2019, page 19.

3 Ibid., page 85.

4‘Secretary-General’s Remarks on Climate Change [As Delivered],’ United Nations, 10 September, 2018.

5‘Summary for Policymakers of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C Approved by Governments,’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 8 October, 2018.

6 Ibid.

7 Myles Allen et al., ‘Frequently Asked Questions,’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2015.

8‘Climate Change Performance Index,’ Gemanwatch, NewClimate Institute, and Climate Action Network International, December, 2019; ‘Countries,’ Climate Action Tracker, accessed 9 February, 2020.

9 Thunberg, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, page 87.

10‘Interview mit Greta Thunberg: “Ich bin Realistin. Ich sehe Fakten.”’ ARD, 31 March, 2019; Sarah Kaplan and Brady Dennis, ‘Teen Activist Greta Thunberg Takes Her Youth Climate Campaign to Washington,’ The Washington Post, 14 September, 2019; Greta Thunberg, tweet, 12 December, 2019, 12:16 PM.

11 Thunberg, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, page 10.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., page 54.

14 Somini Sengupta, ‘Greta Thunberg, on Tour in America, Offers an Unvarnished View,’ The New York Times, 18 September, 2019.

15 Thunberg, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, page 86.

16 Ibid., page 35.

17 Ibid., pages 28, 64.

18 Ibid., pages 21, 136.

19 Ibid., page 21.

20 Ibid., pages 45–46; Wesley Lowery, ‘He Survived the Florida School Shooting. He Vows Not to Return to Classes until Gun Laws Change,’ The Washington Post, 19 February, 2018.

21 Thunberg, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, pages 45–46.

22 Martin Hedberg, tweet, 3 February, 2019, 4:13 AM.

23 Joeri Rogelj et al., ‘Mitigation Pathways Compatible with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development,’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2018, page 108; Thunberg, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, page 120.

24 Ibid., page 39.

25 Ibid., page 48.

26 Ibid., page 18.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid., pages 117, 122.

29 Ibid., pages 117–118.

30 See for instance Dinesh D’Souza, tweet, 22 September, 2019, 12:04 PM; Sebastian Gorka, tweet, 23 September, 6:04 PM; Daniel Lee, ‘Greta Thunberg and Samantha Smith: Propaganda Poster Girls,’ National Review, 2 October, 2019.

31‘It Is Now 2 Minutes to Midnight,’ The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 January, 2018.

32‘Timeline,’ The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, accessed 9 February, 2020.

33‘Press Release—Welcome to “The New Abnormal,”’ The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 24 January, 2019.

34‘Closer than Ever: It Is 100 Seconds to Midnight,’ The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 23 January, 2020.

35 Andrew Bolt, ‘The Disturbing Secret to the Cult of Greta Thunberg,’ The Sun-Herald, 1 August, 2019.

36 Greta Thunberg, tweet, 1 August, 2019.

37 Noam Chomsky, ‘8.0,’ YouTube, uploaded by Thomas Pogge, 4 November, 2019.

[shirlleycoyle]

Government Agency Warns Global Oil Industry Is on the Brink of a Meltdown

A government research report produced by Finland warns that the increasingly unsustainable economics of the oil industry could derail the global financial system within the next few years.

The new report is published by the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), which operates under the government’s Ministry of Economic Affairs. GTK is currently the European Commission’s lead coordinator of the EU’s ProMine project, its flagship mineral resources database and modeling system.

The report was produced as an internal research exercise for the Finnish government, which until 2019 held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Signed off by GTK’s director of scientific research Dr Saku Vuori, the report is written by GTK senior scientist Dr Simon Michaux of the Ore Geology and Mineral Economics Unit. It conducts a comprehensive global assessment of scientific research into the state of the global oil industry with goal of determining how the risks of a global supply gap could impact mining and mineral production.

The peer-reviewed report calls for the European Commission to consider oil as the world’s most important "critical raw material." Despite offering a scathing critique of conventional peak oil theory, the report arrives at the shock conclusion that the economic viability of the entire global oil market could come undone within the next few years.

Oil, oil everywhere, too costly to drill

The plateauing of conventional crude oil production in January 2005 was one of the triggers of events leading to the 2008 global financial crash, according to the report. As debt built-up in the subprime mortgage sector, the crude oil plateau drove up the underlying energy costs for the entire economy making that debt more difficult to repay—and eventually resulting in catastrophic defaults. The report warns that “unresolved” dynamics in the global energy system were only temporarily relieved due to "Quantitative Easing"—the creation of new money by central banks. A correction is now overdue, it warns.

The report says we are not running out of oil—vast reserves exist—but says that it is becoming uneconomical to exploit it. The plateauing of crude oil production was “a decisive turning point for the industrial ecosystem,” with demand shortfall being made up from liquid fuels which are far more expensive and difficult to extract—namely, unconventional oil sources like crude oil from deep offshore sources, oil sands, and especially shale oil (also known as "tight oil," extracted by fracking).

These sources require far more elaborate and expensive methods of extraction, refining and processing than conventional crude mined onshore, which has driven up costs of production and operations.

Yet the shift to more expensive sources of oil to sustain the global economy, the report finds, is not only already undermining economic growth, but likely to become unsustainable on its own terms. In short, we have entered a new era of expensive energy that is likely to trigger a long-term economic contraction.

The coming crash

‘Quantitative Easing’ or QE as it’s often known in shorthand, consists of massive programs of money creation through central banks purchasing government debt. But the report warns that the scale of QE could pave the way for another financial crash as oil markets become unstable, most likely within half a decade.

The role of QE in propping up the oil industry and wider global economy was not anticipated in traditional peak oil theory, which failed to predict the low oil prices endangering profitability. The report concludes that: “The era of cheap and abundant energy is long gone… Money supply and debt have grown faster than the real economy. Debt saturation and paralysis is now a very real risk, requiring a global scale reset.”

Although the world therefore needs to urgently transition away from fossil fuels, it may well be too late to do so in a way that avoids an economic crisis. And doing so will require industrial civilization as we know it to be fundamentally transformed:

“To phase out petroleum products (and fossil fuels in general), the entire global industrial ecosystem will need to be reengineered, retooled and fundamentally rebuilt," the report notes. "This will be perhaps the greatest industrial challenge the world has ever faced historically.”

Professor Nate Hagens, a former Vice President at investment firms Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers who now teaches ecological economics at the University of Minnesota, said he "finds the report quite plausible."

"But our institutions and policies and expectations are ‘energy blind’,” he told me. He believes that the report’s warning of a coming economic crisis is very likely.

“We optimize around growth, which requires energy which requires carbon energy,” he said. “We have created approaching 300 trillion dollars in financial claims, on a finite amount of high quality resources… All in all, we’ve created too many claims for future energy and resources to support.”

From Saudi peak to shale bubble

The report offers the first independent public government assessment concluding that Saudi Arabia, once the world’s largest oil producer, is now probably approaching (and may already have passed) a production peak.

The study cites accelerating rig counts amid disproportionately low oil output as mounting evidence of the Saudi oil sector’s declining productivity. It also cites data from the recent IPO held by the Saudi national oil firm, Aramco, indicating that production levels from the country’s largest field, Ghawar, is 1.2 million barrels lower than previously claimed, suggesting the field is nearing maturity.

Meanwhile, as Saudi Arabia has been unable to keep up with demand, US shale has stepped in, contributing to the vast bulk of new global oil supply since 2005—71.4 percent of it to be exact.

The rest of the international oil market is dominated by Russia and Iraq, with other members of the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) consortium of Middle East oil producers overall contributing just 22 percent of total supply, barely enough to cover losses from countries whose production has been declining.

A bubble ready to burst

The report warns that global production growth may therefore soon stall due to the dodgy debt-driven economics of the US shale industry. While Saudi Arabia will no longer be able to ramp up production much, the US shale oil sector could be on the brink of unravelling due to massive unrepayable debts, declining production rates, and poor well quality.

While the productivity of shale oil wells has increased at first glance, the report says this has come at the expense of “observable decreases in real productivity.” Increasing production “has come at a cost of increased lateral drilling per hole and the increase of water, chemical, and proppant.”

So while average production from fracked US shale wells increased between 2010 and 2018 by 28 percent, in the same period water injection, chemical and proppant use increased by 118 percent. The report says this indicates the huge spike in extraction costs.

Meanwhile, the report warns that most shale oil companies experience negative cash flow due to mounting unrepayable debt levels. As a result, we are fast approaching a point where investors are losing faith in the industry, which is now running out of money to sustain continued operations amidst declining profitability.

The exact date of a peak in US shale oil production is difficult to estimate, but the report concludes that production “is likely to be in terminal decline within the next 5 to 10 years, with the possibility that it has already peaked due to contraction of upstream capital investment.”

If that happens, it would mean we can no longer rely on the principal source of oil behind global production growth.

According to World Oil, two major oil industry service providers, Halliburton and Schlumberger, already believe that despite production reaching record highs, US shale oil fracking has already peaked and is in a period of sustained contraction.

A global peak?

The report is heavily critical of conventional peak oil theory, which predicted that global oil production would peak and decline shortly after 2000 due to ‘below-ground’ geological depletion, leading to permanently spiralling oil prices. The approach is described as “too simplistic” for overlooking “the complex and dynamic interactions of a number of issues around the oil industry (most notably geopolitical actions and the effect on Quantitative Easing).”

But the report also dismisses the now fashionable rejection of the entire relevance of peak oil. Although there is “plenty of oil left,” it is “increasingly expensive to access”.

The current economic system cannot sustain oil prices above $100 a barrel and keep growing, while producers for most new fields cannot sustain profits at prices as low as $45 a barrel without more borrowing.

According to Dr. Michaux, the global economy is therefore caught between a rock and a hard place. “Oil prices will be held low for a time,” he explained. “The problem is all consumers at all scales in all sectors are saturated with debt. Costs are going up, while the ability to generate wealth is contracting.”

This means that although the oil industry can’t cope with the lower prices, the global economy can’t cope with high prices. “I now see peak oil as being defined by a contracting window between an oil price high enough to keep producers in business and a price low enough for consumers to access oil derived goods and services,” said Michaux.

As a result of this combination of geological challenges and above-ground market constraints, Michaux’s government study warns that a global peak in total oil production is either “imminent” over the next few years, or may already have happened, possibly in November 2018. But we will only be able to fully confirm the peak around five years after the fact.

More than half the world’s oil producing countries are now in decline, the report claims, with the bulk of new production concentrated among just six main producers. When looking specifically at crude oil operations, the report says, about 81 percent of the world’s oil fields are now in decline, with the rate of discoveries of new oil fields declining to record lows.

By 2040, this means the world would need to replace over four times the current crude oil output of Saudi Arabia, just to keep output consistently flat.

Rather than global oil supply being constrained simply by the volume of oil deposits in the ground, as conventional peak oil theory assumes, the report says that it is instead constrained “by the number of economically viable projects available to be developed at a low enough production cost.”

Currently, the bulk of continued expansion in global supply is dependent on the United States. With the US shale sector on the verge of breakdown, the report warns that the “window of oil market viability is closing, which suggests the resumption of the 2008 correction will be soon.”

According to Dr. Hagens, this new analysis confirms that “‘peak oil’ is now really about ‘peak credit.’ If we can somehow continue to keep growing our financial claims to allow us access to future energy today, we’ll continue to be able to extract the next most costly tranche of hydrocarbons.”

But as debt levels are becoming dangerously unstable, this can only continue for so long; and only pushes the problem forward, making future oil decline rates steeper. Eventually the situation will become unworkable. He argues that it’s the “global credit orgy of the last 50 years,” but especially since 2008, that has kept the growth engine growing.

I asked Hagens whether he agrees with the report’s verdict that an overall peak could therefore be imminent. “I find it extremely plausible,” he said.

Global reset and the need for a new industrial paradigm

Because we are “using finance to paper over this biophysical gap”, he added, this will eventually “lead to a deflationary pulse in global economies.”

Levels of global debt are now thoroughly out of control, the report says—finding that US government debt creation has been approximately twice the rate of economic growth over the last 40 years. By increasing the volume of debt, countries were able to maintain growth as costs of energy went up. As a result, most national economies now have debt to GDP ratio exceeding 90 percent, which means that they need to go further into debt just to keep their economies functioning while maintaining debt repayments.

Growth in GDP therefore amounts to a “debt fueled mirage,” according to the report. As we have not properly planned for the possible phasing out of fossil fuel energy, it is entirely possible that as energy systems, oil in particular, come to contract, we could witness “the peak of industrial output per capita sometime in the next few years.”

As oil markets become unreliable, the report urges, the world needs to develop “an entirely new energy system based around an entirely different paradigm.” The report calls on technical professionals and policymakers to focus on how “to create a high technology society” based on a smaller clean energy footprint that isn’t reliant on endless material growth. “If this is not achieved, the alternative is the degradation (and fragmentation) of the current industrial ecosystem.”

In short, this means we need an extremely rapid shift to renewables, along with a total reorganization of how our societies function for the coming post-fossil fuels world.

All major industrial nations need to “work together in how to transition away from oil and fossil fuels in general,” the report concludes, warning: “The alternative is conflict.” Industrial civilization will need to “evolve” into “a lower energy consumption profile with less complexity,” based on a “complete restructure of the demand side of energy requirements.”

Right now, though, “no one is preparing for this,” said Hagens. “Not only are we speeding, but we are wearing energy blind-folds at the same time. But the momentum of our current system forces us to have conversations about a bigger system not a smaller one—so the correct and valid plans and blueprints are not discussed… It is a perfect storm—and when the waters recede we are going to have smaller, simpler and more local, regional economies.”

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