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The publication of Jeff
Rubin’s The
End of Growth (Random House Canada,
2012) coincided with the end of the spring
2012 garden growth season. On
July 24th, Margaret Wente wrote in the
Globe & Mail The
New Energy Revolution: The Nexen deal is
a sign of Canada’s growing role as a
petro-power. Wente’s column throws
her weight in favour of allowing CNOOC, a
state-owned Chinese oil company, to
takeover the smaller Canadian Nexen oil
company. In passing, her enthusiasm for
the future of oil is glowing. She
declares: “thanks to an astonishing array
of recent oil and gas finds – which can be
tapped by new techniques – the US is
becoming an energy superpower, capable of
supplying far more of its own needs then
before.” … “ … the Green River Formation alone
in Colorado & Utah contains more than
a trillion barrels of recoverable oil.
That amount is about equal to the entire
world’s proven oil reserves. Everything
you’ve heard about peak oil is obsolete.”
Note
that Wente does not suggest that the US is self-sufficient
in oil.
It must still import. On a contrasting tack,
Rubin uses his book to build on his
earlier thinking that the economic growth
we have known was tied to cheap available
oil: “Peak
oil is really about prices, not supply.”
It was the low cost of oil rather than oil
“reserves” which allowed oil to fuel
economic growth in the past. Several
factors converge to make the cost of oil
grow. Sadly,
the issue of whether our world can remain
inhabitable as we burn carbon-based fuels
has become secondary after over a year of
being fed front page dismal economic news.
Global warming from burning oil and gas is
secondary for Rubin and is now absent in
Wente’s article. Rubin’s perky chatty
style seems a bit contrived and his
documentation not very thorough.
Nonetheless, useful key ideas are conveyed
and Rubin manages to make a reasoned case.
The oil reserves now available require
more exotic extraction methods. The
environmental risks and corresponding
public demands for safeguards are greater.
Witness
my own May 2010 article about the BP ocean
floor extractions and oil leak in the gulf
of Mexico. To these extraction challenges
Rubin adds the scale of the new demand for
oil from expanding manufacturing economies
in India and China. These factors he
argues make oil costs rise and that limits
the expansion of economies. Rubin claims a
relationship between the price of oil and
the rate of economic growth. He has a
chapter on how the oil cost is a greater
problem for economic growth when states
start off with large debts. A short
chapter argues that regime change in the
Arab world does not help oil production. Rubin gives arguments
that other sources of energy are not
readily available substitutes. High energy
coal sources were mined and one is now
working with lower grades which are harder
and costlier to safely mine. Also, coal is
basically a local energy source, for the
most part burned where it is mined.
Nuclear power comes with nuclear risks.
Here too greater safety calls require
greater costs. I add that there are hidden
costs to nuclear energy like pervasive
cost overruns, excessive downtime and
state subsidies by way of limits on
liability. I note that natural or propane
gas can substitute for gasoline in the
short to medium term and that hydrogen gas
is an environmentally friendly substitute
in the long term - provided other energy
sources are available to make the hydrogen
from water. Rubin discounts the
possibility of major fractions of energy
needs coming from wind and solar power –
contrary to the Greenpeace studies which
suggest these are viable major energy
sources(1).
The second part of the
book reflects on a zero sum world for
available oil, a static economy and
uncertainty replacing the economist’s
usual bet that something will turn up to
solve a looming scarcity of resources.
Surprisingly, Rubin is not depressed by
his zero growth world. Perhaps he is less
aware of the dead former manufacturing
cities with populations of young people
with no meaningful future than Judt, whose
book I covered in an Oct 2011 article. To sum up, it seems
Wente’s Globe article missed the
mark
at almost every turn. Given Rubin’s book,
Wente’s discovery of more oil resources
is not news. Similarly the fact that
Canada is an important oil supplier so
that China has an interest in buying into
Alberta’s oil from tar sands is not news.
Further, Wente missed Rubin’s key thought
that oil price - not oil reserves - is
what limits economic growth. Her
optimistic expectation of economic growth
may be dreaming. Finally,
I confess that as a person drawing
from the thinking in “Small is
beautiful,” “Limits to Growth” and “An
Unpleasant Truth” I welcome the
challenge of Rubin’s zero growth world
where we must find ways of building
justice, equity and social peace.
Perhaps there are ways of keeping the
pension funds saved up during my
working life paying my pension!
(1) Political interests
seem to determine whether energy from
wind is vaible or not. I saw wind
turbines on the moors around Haworth UK
and heard no protests. In Canada, where
there are vested interests in oil
production and sale, the Ontario public
in Prince Edward County has latched onto
a host of dangers in wind turbines. I
noted before that in Canada, with vested
interests in Uranium mining and sales,
the public has not discovered any
dangers from nuclear power.
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