“Life Without Oil” offers an overview of the subject of peak oil and its consequences for modern society. The book is an ecological-economic macroanalysis, so don’t expect anything in the way of suggestions for personal preparedness.
It’s divided into four sections, the first devoted to stories about the invention of agriculture, Easter Island, the Mayans, the adoption of fossil fuels, etc. I skimmed most of this, pretty old hat. The second section covers peak oil, climate change, and a hodgepodge of other concerns (peak fish, peak nitrogen, overpopulation, etc.). Not a lot new here either, but decent summaries of the problems. I also skimmed most of these chapters.
Citing Deffeyes, Hallett thinks we’ve probably hit peak oil already. “Declining oil production over the next few years seems likely, and it will cause economies to stagnate” (p.127). He doesn’t have high hopes about getting significant supplies of oil from deep water, Arctic, or unconventional sources.
The final section in the climate change chapter is titled “mitigate, adapt, or suffer.” He says since mitigation likely won’t be as effective as we’d like to believe, so “we will have to adapt to a series of unavoidable changes. In many cases we will not be able to adapt, and suffering is inevitable” (p.212). Sounds kinda doomy.
I found the last two sections the most interesting by far. Here he prognosticates about the long term effects of peak oil, and how we can eventually pull out of the Long Emergency (he gives a tip of the hat to Kunstler).
A prolonged global recession will result from high prices and fuel shortfalls and will cause economic stagnation with high inflation [stagflation]….More than once we may think the economy has bottomed out, only to watch it fall further as the gravity of the situation gradually sinks in. As the shockwaves of oil depletion begin to settle, more will come from the depletion of natural gas and then coal. The contraction of the global economy, stemming from a fundamental failure and long-term decline in its energy sectors, will continue for decades” (pp.225-7).
Hallett writes about the negative social and ecological effects of globalization, a trend he believes won’t survive the end of the oil age: Those countries “that are able to function on the basis of their own production, manufacturing, and services will fare the best, as the global economy reverses its trend of globalization into a new era of localization” (p.240). I like this message, and I hope he’s right, but time will tell. I’m not entirely convinced the transnationals (or their useful idiots) will give up so easily.
He argues that countries should strive for food self-sufficiency and that the US should end “food aid” to the Third World. He opines that a return to smaller scale diversified agriculture will be an inevitable consequence of peak oil (I hope so, but I’m not so sure after reading Staniford and seeing first-hand the financial problems of diversified organic farming). As a dirty hippie organic farmer, I laughed when I read this passage: “much of the knowledge we will need in the future might rest with the hippies and small, organic farmers….Smaller-scale operations with fewer inputs are what we have to look forward to in the future, and so these guys may be the guardians of some of the skills we will need” (pp.339-40). I hope he’s right.
He says “shortening the interregnum” should be our societal goal, i.e., we will almost certainly experience major economic hardships in the decades to come no matter what we do at this point, but we can soften the landing by implementing the principles of ecological economics. I found his focus on ecological economics to be one of the more engaging aspects of the book.
Some parts were unconvincing, though. The section on the Jevons Paradox, for example, was poorly researched and self-contradictory. I also thoroughly disagree with his rather perfunctory section on “lifeboat ethics” (Hardin’s term), in which he claims that the “problem” of population stabilization in developed countries is easily and unproblematically “solved” by allowing unlimited immigration from the Third World. This strikes me as insanity.
I also think he’s overly optimistic about nukes. He’s a strong advocate of a nuclear-hydrogen future, which he considers our “one choice” to “reduce the size of the coming collapse” (p.327). The whiff of techno-utopianism got real strong in this section. He’s rightfully pessimistic about our ability to scale this up fast enough to deal with oil depletion, but long-term he seems to think this will pull us out of the Long Emergency. I’m not so sure this is either economically possible or ecologically desirable. He concedes that solar and wind will have limited benefits in some places, but obliquely implies that focusing our energy policy on renewables and conservation will lead to dieoff---the only solution, he claims, is nuclear combined with hydrogen. The Archdruid disapproves.
He also dismisses biofuels rather flippantly, focusing as most do on corn ethanol and the destruction of the rainforest due to cane sugar and palm oil, all indefensible of course. But there’s not much nuance or critical analysis here. I prefer Heinberg’s suggestion that locally grown biodiesel makes sense if used to power tractors to grow food, particularly if the right feedstock is used. Not all biofuel feedstocks and end uses are the same.
Despite my quibbles, overall I found Hallett’s “Life Without Oil” to be an accessible, considered, timely overview of peak oil and associated energy problems. It’d be a particularly useful introductory work for those new to peak oil. Even though I was familiar with most of the concepts Hallett presented, I still found much of his book thought provoking, especially where I disagreed with him.
I wonder what his user name is here
