Impact of Post-Peak Oil on Our Quality of Life

Say good-bye to Planet Earth and don't thank the Vogon construction fleet for the privilege. Thank the oil companies. As long as the price of crude oil stays above $90 a barrel then extraction from post-peak sources becomes profitable. And that means more plastic crap from China, more SUVs on the road, and more greenhouse gases in the air. But it's not just increased consumption that gives cause to worry. The extraction methods required to get at post-peak oil require far more energy and cause much more ecological devastation than current methods. Another issue the resulting product produces a higher concentration of greenhouse gases than conventional crude.

Development in the Alberta Tar Sands is moving forward at a steady rate, with Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Imperial Oil (which is affiliated with ExxonMobil) receiving approval to construct major projects in the region. With the influx of synthetic crude from the Tar Sands, Canadian output now exceeds 1 million barrels a day, making our Northern neighbor the number one supplier of oil to the U.S.

The amount of post-peak oil available in Alberta Tar Sands, which cover some 57,000 miles, represents the world's second largest oil reserve after Saudi Arabia, and this even if only ten percent of the potential yield of 1.7 trillion barrels is exploited. The primary product to be extracted is a hydrocarbon called bitumen that can be converted into synthetic crude, but at a tremendous cost to the environment. More land needs be mined, and tremendous quantities of natural gas are required by the process (two billion cubic feet per day by 2012).

Another penalty for switching to synthetic crude is an additional 50 to 400 gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere over the next century, on top of the 8 gigatons per year currently being generated by the burning of fossil fuels.

If you've stayed up nights sweating it out over post-peak oil scarcity, you breathe easy and rest assured that your posh petroleum-based lifestyle has landed a reprieve. Just don't expect the same facility at breath in 20 or 30 years due to the rising temperatures and all the extra junk in the air. Now that the potential to extend the petroleum age for generations is upon us, we have to seriously ponder whether our lifestyle is truly worth all our lives.

Posted by Christos Tsirbas.
Sources:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_kolbe

Comments

The URL posted as sources above does not work and i cannot find anything relating to this article with a search at newyorker.com. What is the source of this article?

Posted by: Seth Russell | November 30, 2007 at 07:48 AM