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| I Am Skooter | |
| So here's us, on the raggedy edge. | |
Everybody needs to read this article in the most recent issue of The Walrus. Whether the numbers are perfectly accurate or not isn’t relevant: the reality is that the end of the hydrocarbon is coming, and probably within my lifetime.
Critical points:
[Dave Hughes’] Talk is all kinds of policy-wonky. Your eyes could glaze over. You could even miss the two slides Dave always says are the only ones you must remember. The first is a single-line graph depicting “World Per Capita Annual Primary Energy Consumption by Fuel 1850-2007,” which climbs by 761 percent over its 157-year timeline and flips from 82 percent renewable biomass (mostly wood) at the 1850 end to 89 percent non-renewables (almost entirely fossil fuels) at the 2007 end. The second critical slide has three line graphs in horizontal sequence, all tracking curves that begin in 1850, around the time humanity started drilling for oil in a serious way, and then spiking impossibly high at the right-hand, 2007 termini of their X axes. Global population today: 5.3 times global population in 1850. Per capita energy consumption today: 8.6 times that of 1850. Total energy consumption today: 45 times 1850’s.
I personally think this makes the point rather well:
Even if you’re convinced climate change is UN-sponsored hysteria or every last puff of greenhouse gas will soon be buried forever a mile underground or ducks look their best choking on tar sands tailings, Dave Hughes is saying your way of life is over. Not because of the clouds of smoke, you understand, but because we’re running out of what makes them.
Emissions are the back end of the problem. They won’t matter when there’s suddenly nothing to emit. Of course our economy will collapse since the entire thing is based on hydrocarbon inputs.
Posted by skooter at 11:26 PM
This entry is filed under Canada.
This entry is tagged: Cars, Environmentalism