Limited Energy Options

The following is from the David Hughes presentation summary given on March 9 to the Alliance for a Sustainable Colorado. We simply can not continue consuming in the way we have accepted as normal in our life time. The car culture, the Wal-mart culture, the suburban culture, the consumer society. . . . all of it, will change. Our children, in our life time, will ask us why we consumed so much and left so little for them. Hughes, a retired geoscientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, makes five essential points.

• The five-fold expansion of global population since 1850 has been made possible by non-renewable fuels, the consumption of which pervades all aspects of society –food, transportation, communication etc. (Before 1850 population growth was relatively flat.)
• The eight-fold expansion of global per capita energy consumption since 1850 has been entirely a result of consumption of non-renewable energy. (Oil, and then natural gas, made cheap goods possible.)
  
• North America consumes a disproportionate amount of energy (5 times the global per capita average). The Developing World understandably aspires to North American energy consumption levels; however, finite non-renewable resources are unlikely to be sufficient to allow this to happen, setting the stage for global conflict over energy. (This will lead to paralysis in addressing global warming.)
  
• The realities of the finite nature of non-renewable energy resources are now becoming evident –peak oil in many producing countries, peak North American natural gas, ten-fold increase in uranium prices since 2000, imports of coal into the US after centuries of self-sufficiency. (Peaks are defined as the point at which production begins an irreversible decline relative to demand.)
• Despite the hype, renewable energy technologies are EXTREMELY UNLIKELY to be able to replace non-renewable energy in existing business-as-usual energy demand forecasts –a sustainable future lies in radically reducing and rethinking energy consumption. (A future that few political leaders are prepared to address, thus requiring individual action and responsibility - sorry no magic bullet.)