Product Puts Beekeepers, Lawn Growers at Odds

By Paul Tukey
SafeLawns.org

The onset of autumn always brings heightened advertising for grub control products for lawns. With the winter of 2007-2008 not far off, however, comes an urgent reminder from beekeepers about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which wiped out tens of thousands of hives of bees across North America last winter and spring.
That desire for a grub-free lawn has placed some homeowners and landscape contractors in direct conflict with the bee industry.
“The issue is that the primary product used to control grubs contains a chemical compound known as imidacloprid, which is most commonly marketed as Merit,” said Paul Tukey, founder and spokesman for SafeLawns.org, a national nonprofit organization. “Imidacloprid is known to be toxic to bees, and many beekeepers see a direct link to this chemical and the disappearance of bee hives. Many countries are employing the ‘precautionary principle’ and pulling imidacloprid from the shelves. In the U.S., homeowners and farms are using more and more of it, especially since many of the other products with diazinon that folks were using to kill grubs and other insects have already been banned due to their proven toxicity.”

A BEE MYSTERY SOLVED?

In addition to the production of honey, honeybees pollinate approximately one-third of the food consumed by Americans, according to a Cornell University study. Among the most common crops that require pollination by bees are apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. Numerous fruits also need bees, including, citrus, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, blueberries, cantaloupe and other melons.
Colony Collapse Disorder was coined in 2006 as catch phrase for a disturbing, unexplained phenomenon that caused nearly a quarter of U.S. honeybee colonies to disappear within a few months. Though many thought the problem was limited to western North America, beekeepers across the United States, Canada and Europe also reported the problem that is posing a threat to the world’s food supply.
The cause of CCD is greatly disputed, but many have begun to focus their theories and research on imidacloprid, a recently registered nicotine-like synthetic pesticide that is commonly used in flea and tick products, as well as for termite and grub control. Other target insects include aphids, whiteflies, thrips, mealybugs and beetles. Products that contain imidacloprid include Admire, Confidor, Connect, Evidence, Leverage, Muralla, Provado, Trimax, Premise and Winne.
Though imidacloprid has been patented since 1988, its use on American crops escalated significantly in the past three years, just as Diazinon came off store shelves. In the case of bees, the imidacloprid apparently does not directly kill the colonies, but may disorient the bees and cause them to disband — at least according to beekeepers who are closely studying the issue.
“Before last November I knew very little about (imidacloprid),” said David Hackenberg, owner of Hackenberg Apiaries in Lewisburg, Pa., and past president of the American Beekeeping Association. “In the past few months I have come to know more than I want to know about this newer type of pesticide. From what I have learned so far, I am convinced that imidacloprid plays a role in CCD.”
Eric Lane agrees. The California beekeeper said he can trace the origin of Colony Collapse Disorder to 2003, the year imidacloprid was approved for use in his state. He estimates he lost 80 percent of his bees last winter and said he was not surprised, based on his prior research.
“When an adult bee goes out to forage for pollen (on plants affected by imidacloprid), by the fourth day the bee loses the ability to smell,” he said. “Young bees do their normal duties around the hive for five days. Then they go and fill up with nectar and realize they don’t know where home is. Old bees hang around the hive but eventually wander off and die. Young bees fly off and never come home.”

THE EVIDENCE GROWS

Hackenberg, Lane and many others are calling on farmers and homeowners to eliminate the use of Merit and other products containing imidacloprid, at least until someone can prove that the chemical is not the problem. Bayer AG, the aspirin and chemical manufacturer that originated the patent on imidacloprid, has reportedly paid for dozens of laboratory tests and sharply denounces any speculation that its product harms bees when it is applied according to directions. Research at Penn State and elsewhere, however, has suggested potential links to bee decline and the new pesticide.
“If bees are eating fresh or stored pollen contaminated with these chemicals at low levels, they may not cause mortality but may impact the bees’ ability to learn or make memories,” stated a Penn State report published in December 2006. “If this is the case, young bees leaving the hive to make orientation flights may not be able to learn the location of the hive and may not be returning, causing the colonies to dwindle and eventually die.”
Dr. Jerry J. Bromenshenk, a research scientist at the University of Montana is a member of the nationwide CCD working group of scientists that convened to study the phenomenon last year. Though he said he is still skeptical that imidacloprid is the entire cause of the bee decline, he has testified on behalf of beekeepers who have lost hives due to imidacloprid exposure.
“The problem is that imidacloprid and similar chemicals were supposed to have been used in controlled, specific situations,” he said. “Now we have people drenching it into the soil and applying in by air as a foliar application. In those situations, absolutely, you’re laying yourself open for a bee poisoning event.”
In a report published in June by the Congressional Research Service, imidacloprid was named as a likely cause of the bees’ demise.
“The scientists studying CCD note that the doses taken up by bees are not lethal, but they are concerned about possible chronic problems caused by long-term exposure,” according to the CRS report. As noted by the National Research Council, some studies report sublethal effects of pesticides that may impair the navigational and foraging abilities of honeybees.
Lawmakers in France and several other European countries have long restricted certain applications of imidacloprid based on evidence that the product harms bees. In Canada, the Sierra Club has taken a particularly strong stand against imidacloprid’s impact on species other than bees. “It has been shown to cause acute health effects, including spasms and thyroid lesions,” the Sierra Club stated. “No chronic toxicity tests have been made available to the public, but we do know that it has effects on mammalian reproduction. The reproductive health of birds is also affected, with reduced egg production and egg thinning. It affects a multitude of beneficial insects, as well as earthworms.”
According to registration papers filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, imidacloprid is moderately toxic to humans, and manufacturers are required to place a “Caution” or “Warning” designation on product labels. The EPA further classifies imidacloprid as highly toxic to bees and upland game birds.

AVOIDANCE MAY BE BEST OPTION

Given all of this information, many American farmers aren’t willing to take any chances and are forsaking all products containing imidacloprid.
“Pollination is so important to us, we agreed not to use these new materials,” said Darren Hammond, farm manager for Jasper Wyman & Sons of Maine, the nation’s largest producer of wild blueberries. “Our primary competitor and all of our outside growers have also agreed not to use these products. We’re not saying there’s definitely a link between bees and imidacloprid; that’s for the researchers to decide. We’re just not willing to take the risk.”
That also leaves many homeowners in a quandary this fall, just as many companies begin advertising promotions for grub control products such as Merit. Grubs, which are the larvae of flying and chewing insects including Japanese beetles and European chafers, cause lawn damage by eating grass roots. Skunks and moles also can make a mess of a lawn when they tunnel and claw in search of the grubs as a food source.
To combat grub infestations, Tukey suggests other approaches that don’t involve chemicals, including the use of naturally occurring beneficial nematodes, which are nontoxic, as well as organic soil management.
“In acute cases, application of the nematodes may be necessary to control many species of grubs in the lawn,” Tukey said. “The fact is, though, that lawns grown with organic methods are going to be far more resilient to grub damage. Naturally occurring soil organisms will most often keep grub populations in check as long as those organisms are not killed off by chemical fertilizers and pesticides.”
The issue of imidacloprid and bees, according to Tukey, is yet another reason why homeowners should always be careful when considering chemicals in their lawn care and landscaping.
“Time and time again these chemical products have proven to be questionable for either our health, our pets’ health or the environment in general,” said Tukey, author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual. “At SafeLawns.org, we’re committed to promoting organic alternatives that don’t present these same risks.”
Chemicals, nearly all chemicals, pose risks if used improperly; some are problems no matter what.
“For generations, every time a new classification of chemicals is introduced to the public, it comes with unexpected consequences,” said Dr. Bromenshenk. “In the case of imidacloprid, the recent widespread use is a major concern and I don’t think the warning labels go far enough to protect the American public.”
For the beekeeping brethren, no further warning is necessary.
“The last three years, people have just been pouring this chemical on crops and grass,” said Hackenburg, among the first American beekeepers to discover CCD in 2006. “Imidacloprid is approved for everything. All I’m saying is, you go buy this stuff at Wal-Mart to use on aphids or grubs or whatnot, and the little insert from the chemical company says straight out that it, one, makes bugs quit eating, and two, induces memory loss and confusion. Then, three, it gives them a nervous system disorder. And that’s exactly what’s happening to bees. I know many of the scientists refuse to go out on a limb and state emphatically that there’s a link here, but what about common sense? But then I’m just a dumb beekeeper who’s been beekeeping for 45 years. What do I know?”

http://www.safelawns.org/articles/Product_Puts_Beekeepers_Lawn_Growers_at_Odds.php

Safelawns.org is a national non-profit group whose mission is to create a broad based coalition of non and for-profit organizations committed to educating society about the benefits of organic lawn care and gardening, and effect a quantum change in consumer and industry behavior.
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Additional Notes and links regarding CCD and Imidacloprid::

According to the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS):

Case studies and questionnaires related to management practices and environmental factors have identified a few common factors shared by those beekeepers experiencing CCD, but no common environmental agents or chemicals stand out as causative. There are three major possibilities that are being looked into by researchers.

Pesticides may be having unexpected negative effects on honey bees.

A new parasite or pathogen may be attacking honey bees. One possible candidate being looked at is a pathogenic gut microbe called Nosema. Viruses are also suspected.

A perfect storm of existing stresses may have unexpectedly weakened colonies leading to collapse. Stress, in general, compromises the immune system of bees (and other social insects) and may disrupt their social system, making colonies more susceptible to disease.

These stresses could include high levels of infection by the varroa mite (a parasite that feeds on bee blood and transmits bee viruses); poor nutrition due to apiary overcrowding, pollination of crops with low nutritional value, or pollen or nectar scarcity; and exposure to limited or contaminated water supplies. Migratory stress brought about by increased needs for pollination might also be a contributing factor.

What can I as a member of the public do to help honey bees?

While not banning the neonicotinoid, imidacloprid, until research is complete, the USDA (ARS) gives this advice:

The best action you can take to benefit honey bees is to not use pesticides indiscriminately, especially not to use pesticides at mid-day when honey bees are most likely to be out foraging for nectar.

In addition, you can plant and encourage the planting of good nectar sources such as red clover, foxglove, bee balm, and joe-pye weed. For more information, see www.nappc.org

http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572

Link to fact sheet on imidacloprid: http://www.beekeeping.com/intoxications/imidacloprid.pdf

Imported Bees Not Source of Virus Associated with Colony Collapse Disorder

By Kim Kaplan
November 19, 2007

BELTSVILLE, Md., Nov. 19—Scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have found that the Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV), a virus recently shown to be associated with Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) of honey bees, has been in the United States since at least 2002, according to a note published in the American Bee Journal.

Research entomologists Yanping (Judy) Chen and Jay D. Evans, both with the ARS Bee Research Laboratory here, conducted a detailed genetic screening of several hundred honey bees that had been collected between 2002 and 2007 from colonies in Maryland, Pennsylvania, California and Israel.

"Our study shows that, without question, IAPV has been in this country since at least 2002," said Chen. "This work challenges the idea that IAPV is a recent introduction from Australia."

Evans added, "Our study in no way rules IAPV out as a factor in CCD. We have always believed that CCD is a complex issue likely involving multiple elements. Research by several groups will now focus on understanding differences in virulence across strains of IAPV and on interactions with other stress factors."

IAPV showed a high degree of genetic diversity in the U.S., with distinct lineages in California, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The virus was found to be substantially different from the well-studied Kashmir Bee Virus.

IAPV, first described in Israel in 2002, came to national and international attention in September when university and ARS scientists showed a strong association between the presence of IAPV and CCD.

That first study also found IAPV in honey bees from Australia that had been imported into the United States, as well as in royal jelly imported from China. Australian bees began to be imported from Australia into the United States in 2005. Questions were raised about a connection between those imported bees and the appearance of IAPV in the United States. Beekeepers have sought out Australian imports of bees to replenish their hive populations.

ARS has begun several experiments to determine what factors may be most involved in CCD. Combinations of four areas are being examined: pathogens, parasites, environmental stresses, and bee management stresses such as poor nutrition.

CCD became a matter of concern in the winter of 2006-2007 when some beekeepers began reporting losses of 30 to 90 percent of their hives. While colony losses are not unexpected during winter weather, the magnitude and rapidity of loss suffered by some beekeepers was highly unusual.

The defining trait of CCD is a low number of adult honey bees present with few signs of dead honey bees in the hive. Often there is still honey in the hive and immature bees (brood) are present, indicating recent brood rearing.

Pollination is a critical element in agriculture, since honey bees pollinate more than 130 crops in the United States and add $15 billion in crop value annually. There were enough honey bees to provide pollination for U.S. agriculture this year, but beekeepers could face a serious problem next year and beyond if CCD becomes more widespread and no treatment is developed.

More information about CCD can be found at www.ars.usda.gov/is/br/ccd/.

Alternative Energy And The Pollyanna Principle

By Peter Goodchild
05 December, 2007
Countercurrents.org

The problem of explaining "peak oil" does not hinge on the issue of peak oil as such, but rather on that of "alternative energy." Most people now have some idea of the concept of peak oil, but it tends to be brushed aside in conversation because of the common incantation: "It doesn’t matter if oil runs out, because by then everything will be converted to [whatever] power." Humanity’s faith in what might be called the Pollyanna Principle — everything will work out right in the end — is eternal.

The critical missing information in such a dialogue, of course, is that "alternative energy" will do little to solve the peak-oil problem, although very few people are aware of the fact. The situation might be illustrated by a representative conversation I myself had a few months ago; the discourse might also illustrate the extent to which we are preparing the next generation for the coming decades:

P: There won’t be much gasoline left in a few years from now. Did your mother ever tell you that?

A (age 14): No, but I pretty well figured it out by myself. I guess we’ll be running cars with vegetable oil.

The Pollyanna Principle, after all, is what gets us through the day. Unfortunately, a quick glance through any standard textbook on world history would show that the principle does not apply to the many civilizations that lie buried beneath the sand. But to point at oil-production charts is to mistake a psychological problem for an engineering one: most people do not like to be pushed very far in the direction of the logical.

The main stumbling block, as noted above, is not the fact of the decline in world oil production, but the related fact of the impracticality of alternative energy. Alternative sources of energy do, of course, have certain uses, and they always have had, especially in pre-industrial societies. However, it is not possible to use non-hydrocarbon sources of energy to produce the required annual 400 to 500 quadrillion BTUs, and in a form that can be (1) stored conveniently, (2) pumped into cars, trucks, ships, and airplanes for the purpose of long-distance transportation of goods and people, (3) converted into a thousand everyday products, from asphalt to pharmaceuticals, and (4) used to run factories (which are places for machines that make machines [that make machines etc.]) — and which costs so little that it can be purchased in large quantities on a daily basis by billions of people.

There is also the question of time. The entire conversion of world industry would have to be done virtually overnight. The peak of world oil production was perhaps 2006. The more important date of peak oil production per capita was 1990. There are approximately 1 billion automobiles, and nearly 7 billion people. Throughout the 20th century, food production only barely met global needs, and in the last few years it has not even reached that level. In terms of the amount of time available, the switch from hydrocarbon energy to an alternative form of energy would stretch the bounds of even the most fanciful work of science fiction.

Contemplating the expense will also take us far into the realms of fantasy. At $10,000 per vehicle, replacing the vehicles that are now on the road would cost $10 trillion. The infrastructure — the ongoing manufacture, transportation, maintenance, and repair — would add much greater expense. The existing furnaces and air conditioning in all the world’s buildings would be obsolete. Every machine on the planet would have to be replaced, every factory redesigned. We would have to replace the asphalt on all the world’s motorways by a non-hydrocarbon substance. The money and resources simply do not exist.

It is already too late; the system has been collapsing for years. The concept of retrofitting an entire planet must have the Pharaohs (who built only pyramids) chuckling in their graves. It is perhaps fortunate that there is no politician or business leader who would be willing to initiate such a mad venture.

In actuality, the world of the future will not be crowded. Survival for a few will be possible; survival for a population of billions will not be possible. But very few people have asked the ugly question of exactly how that rapid and dramatic reduction of population is going to take place. Voluntarily?

There are two further problems with trying to educate people on these matters. The first is that any discussion of both peak oil or alternative energy requires a scientific frame of mind: an understanding of empirical research and an ability to follow statistics without being misled. A grasp of basic science is essential in order to get a balanced perspective on the data, and in order to judge between the practical and the impractical.

The second of these further problems is that the concepts of peak oil and alternative energy are extremely complicated. Although it is possible to reduce those two topics to an "ABC" form of 500 words or so, the problem with such a single-page explanation is that much of the vital information would be left out. If the document failed to mention every "and / but / or," the message would almost certainly be lost. If, on the other hand, the document were to be expanded to about 5,000 words, the writer probably lose track of the reader, since the text might exceed the latter’s attention span.

For those who are willing to make an effort to unravel the information, however, there are certainly several documents on alternative energy worth a close look. One of the best of the book-length documents is still John Gever et al., "Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades" (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger, 3rd ed., 1991). A few useful hyperlinks are:
Jay Hanson, "Energetic Limits to Growth"
Walter Youngquist, "Alternative Energy Sources"
Kevin Capp, "The End of Las Vegas"

The "alternative energy" problem can also be illuminated by an examination of similar dialogues on other topics, especially in cases where science clashes with its opposite. A discussion about astrology, for example, might entail hours of exhausting dialogue, to be terminated when the pro-astrology party raises his head, takes a deep breath, and says, "Well, I believe. . . ." A barrier has been reached, beyond which no travel is possible. When communication is in such a poor state, there is often little hope that a reader will go so far as to check citations, bibliographies, or "Further Reading," or even to do something requiring as little labor as clicking on a hyperlink on a Web page. But then the problem of being a teacher is that there is no such thing as retirement.

Peter Goodchild is the author of Survival Skills of the North American Indians, published by Chicago Review Press. He can be reached at petergoodchild@interhop.net.

Israeli Virus Linked to Devastating Bee Disease

Honeybee on a peach blossom. Bees are essential for pollination of 90 fruit and vegetable crops worldwide. (Photo by Z. Huang courtesy Michigan State University)





UNIVERSITY PARK, Pennsylvania, September 7, 2007 (ENS) - Scientists are homing in on a possible cause of the new bee disease known as colony collapse disorder, linking it with a virus from Israel that may have arrived in the United States via shipments of live bees from Australia.

Since it was first reported in 2004, colony collapse disorder, CCD, has affected 23 percent of the commercial bee colonies in the United States, causing losses of from 50 to 90 percent of the bees in each colony.

A team of entomologists and infectious disease researchers are reporting a "strong correlation" between the colony collapse disorder and a virus, the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, IVAP, identified just three years ago.

This is the first report of IAPV in the United States, the scientists said, adding that this virus is transmitted by the varroa mite, found in many U.S. hives.

But the scientists are serving up the results of their study with a dose of caution.

"We have not proven a causal relationship between any infectious agent and CCD," they wrote in Thursday's issue of "Science Express" online.

They did find that the prevalence of IAPV genetic material in bees suffering from colony collapse disorder, the timing of the outbreaks and the geographical circumstances "indicate that IAPV is a significant marker for CCD."
On the hunt for the cause of colony collapse disorder, the researchers decided to sequence the genetic material in bees to try to find a potential pathogen…

more at link

The Tree Thing

We don’t have a tree. That’s because last year we had kittens. On Thanksgiving Day weekend last year (the “year of the kittens”), I pulled out our fake tree (pre-lit no less), set it up, and trimmed it. The kittens figured it was a plaything created especially for them. At first they batted the balls hanging low. We’d pick them up off the floor and hang them back on the tree. Gary called me at work, “the kittens figured out how to climb the tree,” he informed me. “They’ve been climbing out on the branches and smacking the ornaments off the tree, then they jump down and bat them around the floor.”

When I got home, I headed to the tree. Branches were bent at unnatural angles, ornaments were scattered about the floor. I looked over at Gary. He gives me this defensive look. “I tried. It was useless.”

The routine of coming home and putting the tree back together lasted one more day, then I said to hell with it. About a week later a kitten snagged its foot in the light cord wrapped around one of the branches. Gary had to cut the cord to free the cat. – wish I’d been there to watch the show. So much for pre-lit. I tossed the tree after Christmas.

The first year we were married, Bruce and Gloria (Gary’s parents), drove up to the national forest land where you could cut your own Christmas tree. They cut one for us too. We were quite grateful for their thoughtfulness; I watched with great anticipation as Gary hauled the tree into the house. Gloria came after with some old ornaments she’d culled from her collection. The tree looked a little sparse, and it was small, but what matter -- It was our very first Christmas tree. We spent the good part of an hour trying to put it in the stand so that it stood straight. No matter what we did it was crooked. Gary finally said he was “fuckin’ finished.” Okay, I thought, so it’s not exactly straight, it’ll look alright once we get the ornaments on and then we’ll shove it in the corner in such a way as to disguise the fact that it’s in the damn stand crooked. The ornaments didn’t do much to fill in the gaps. When we tried to find the straight angle we discovered that the tree was so twisted that it didn’t’ matter what “angle” it was sitting at it was going to look crooked (because it was). We named it our Charlie Brown tree (went with the house which is a story in and of itself). The next year we went up to the mountain and cut our own tree.

I had this Currier and Ives image of going to the forest to get our tree. Wrong. In order to go to the woods you have to drive up steep, twisty-turny, gravel logging roads. I was sure we’d end up going over the bank, never to be found again. Gary was in his element --I think he went farther than we really needed to go. He just had to show me the spectacular view of some mountain – maybe he figured as soon as I saw the view I’d forget just how close we were to the edge of the road. Heck, for all I know we could’ve been poaching the tree. I had not a clue where in heaven’s name we were. Once you’ve found a tree the right size and shape that isn’t crooked (no easy task) you’ve got to cut it down and haul it back to the car. Hopefully, the car isn’t too far away. The ride down the mountain is only better in that you know you are heading for safe ground. The price of gas was my rationale why that wasn’t a good idea for future years.

Our landlord gave us a tree every year when we lived on Everson-Goshen Rd. He had a little Christmas tree lot that he maintained himself. The branches wrapped around and around the tree. You could hang two ornaments on one branch and they’d be on opposite sides of the tree. We lived there ten years, every single Christmas tree we had was like that, almost as if it had been in a perpetual whirlwind.

When we moved to Acme, I bought a fake tree, on the premise that it’d save us money. Brenda hated it; she wanted a real tree. Tough. It might’ve been cheaper, but having a fake tree isn’t any less hassle than a real tree. You’ve got to put it together, and shape the branches so they look kind of real. Then after the holiday you’ve got to disassemble it and straighten out the branches so they’ll fit into the box.

From a purely ecological standpoint, I’d say that a live tree is the only responsible choice. That’s assuming that after Christmas you manage to plant the thing -- and it lives. I wonder how many live trees ever see another Christmas?

For years I dreamed of having a “designer” tree after the kids were grown – something that looks like a professional put it together. My brother Pat and his partner Greg have such a tree, but then their entire house looks like it came out of House Beautiful. Every year they decorate for Christmas, and then host an open house with a wonderful spread of food and drink. I’ve given up on the idea of a perfect tree. I lost the inclination once I had the opportunity to make it a reality.

A few years ago my mother said she didn’t feel like having a tree. No tree? -- We all thought she was depressed. Someone (not me) bought her a tree and decorated her place. I don’t know if that same person cleaned up the decorations after Christmas or if that chore was left to someone else. I suspect the latter.

So what to do about a tree? Somehow I just can’t get motivated, especially considering the work involved. First you have to find a spot to put it. – Where the hell are those furniture movers when you need them? Then you have to set up the tree. If it’s real you have to go get it then haul it in the house, then put it in the tree stand (a project in and of itself). Digging out all those ornaments from the attic, garage, or wherever is next. At my house the ornaments are behind and/or under a bunch of other junk. I guess that’s as good a reason as any to simplify. Trimming the tree is supposed to be the fun part. My family lets me have all the fun. Just think of the fun after Christmas taking down the ornaments, packing them up (I always seem to have ornaments still floating around in July), taking down the tree, cleaning up and rearranging the furniture. I’ve got to ask myself, why the hell go through the hassle?

I keep thinking of all those millions of trees, and all that plastic tree like junk and wonder at the impact if we all just gave up one of the most inane of traditions. – And then wonder how much of my thought process is really just tinged with my own growing aversion to participating in that very tradition.

This year I think I’ll go “green” and forego the tree. That ought to fit in nicely with my plan to boycott corporate retail outlets (which worked swimmingly last year). So what if my ulterior motive is that I’m lazy and cheap?

The Algae Solution: maybe this would be a good investment?

Guido Radaelli's rented house in the Berkeley Hills commands sweeping vistas of the San Francisco Bay. But the sparse furnishings inside hint at his status as a recent grad student. Last year, Radaelli made a peculiar addition to the décor. In a loft overlooking the living room, he installed four large fish tanks filled with a pale green liquid. Since then, Radaelli has tended to the tanks like a sick child, taking samples and checking temperature and pH levels several times a day.

"It's a challenging relationship," admits Radaelli. But, he hopes, a lucrative one as well.

The tanks contain modified algae strains which Radaelli claims could offer a solution to America's, and the world's, fossil fuel crisis. That's because the unicellular green goo produces up to half its weight in oil. Harvesting that oil has been the dream of alternative energy researchers for decades.

The make-shift laboratory is the brainchild of Radaelli and two grad school friends who founded Aurora Biofuels in 2006. Aurora CEO Matt Caspari has an M.B.A., chief scientist Burt Vick earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and Radaelli studied petroleum engineering in his native Italy and business at Berkeley.

Aurora is one of dozens of start-up companies rushing into northern California's booming clean-tech sector. Ten years ago, ambitious innovators like the Aurora guys were getting rich in the Internet or biotech sectors. But today, with oil prices soaring and global warming a looming reality, alternative energy is all the rage. And the Bay Area and Silicon Valley are at the epicenter of this new investors' frenzy. It's a green rush.


Aurora chief scientist Burt Vick and Noventi partner James Horn. Photo by Michael Montgomery
"Our business is about making money," says James Horn, a partner in the Silicon Valley venture firm Noventi, which is investing heavily in so-called clean tech. "And one of the drivers that we saw in Silicon Valley was that there was this migration of engineering talent and entrepreneurial talent moving into the clean tech space. California as a state has always been a leader in technology innovation. It's just that we're applying our skills and our talent in new areas."

Alternative energy, which is just one part of the clean tech sector, has seen a flood of new investors like Horn. Globally, more than $70 billion went into renewable energy in 2006, according to the United Nations.

"The energy business ... is a $6 trillion market," says Horn. "It is such a vast market that there really is sufficient potential to justify the investments that are going into the market right now. And again, we are very early on in this process."

What are BioFuels?

The two most common types of biofuels are ethanol and biodiesel. Ethanol is an alcohol, the same as in beer and wine (although ethanol used as a fuel is modified to make it undrinkable). It is made by fermenting any biomass high in carbohydrates through a process similar to beer brewing.

Today, ethanol is made from starches and sugars, but scientists are developing technology to allow it to be made from cellulose and hemicellulose, the fibrous material that makes up the bulk of most plant matter. Ethanol is mostly used as a blending agent with gasoline to increase octane and cut down carbon monoxide and other smog-causing emissions.

Biodiesel is made by combining alcohol (usually methanol) with vegetable oil, animal fat, or recycled cooking grease. It can be used as an additive (typically 20 percent) to reduce vehicle emissions or in its pure form as a renewable alternative fuel for diesel engines.
Helping fuel the world with humble algae oil is not as farfetched as it may sound. Some 100 years ago, Rudolf Diesel designed his first engines to run on peanut oil (as well as coal dust). Today, bio-fuels made from soy and corn are a booming business. But there's growing concern that tapping food stocks as a source for renewable energy could backfire. Corn and soy use valuable farmland and freshwater. Increasing demand for ethanol is driving up the price of corn. This in turn raises food prices.

However, algae doesn't need soil and thrives in wastewater. All it needs to grow are sunlight and carbon dioxide. Algal oil can be harvested and converted into bio-diesel; the algae's carbohydrate content can be fermented into ethanol. Both are much cleaner-burning fuels than conventional diesel or gasoline. What's more, bio-fuels derived from plants like algae are considered "carbon neutral." While burning fossil fuels releases CO2 that was trapped underground for millennia, the CO2 released from burning bio-fuels was just pulled out of the air as the plants grew. So, according to proponents, bio-fuels are simply recycling the same gases over and over.

That's not all. Aurora claims to have developed and patented (together with Berkeley plant biologist Anastasios Melis) a technology that dramatically boosts algae's photosynthetic power to 100 times that of soy and other crops. It's a very profitable calculation considering the amount of diesel burned in America's transportation sector.

"We consume 60 billion gallons of diesel fuel every year," says Aurora CEO Matt Caspari. "So if our technology does what we are claiming it can do, it's a major opportunity and it's attractive for venture capital investors."

But it's not just the lure of profits that pulled the Aurora team into alternative energy.

"This is the type of business that has a double bottom line," says Burt Vick. "Not only [is it] very healthy from a financial standpoint, but also from a social and environmental point of view as well."

A key ingredient for any successful startup is attracting the right investors. But in a booming market, competition for investment dollars is fierce.

"The odds aren't with you to get venture financing," Matt Caspari tells us. "Once you get venture financing, the odds aren't with you that it will be at all successful. And even the successful ones, you hear the company's sold for $100 million. Well, how much do the entrepreneurs really own?"

To get ahead of the competition, and get Aurora's name in lights, the company entered one of the world's premier business plan competitions, the Intel/Berkeley Challenge. The annual Intel Challenge, as most people call it, is a bracing three-day competition that pits young companies from America against teams from around the globe.

In recent years, clean tech proposals have dominated top business plan competitions. On the first day of the Intel Challenge, Matt Caspari mulls over Aurora's prospects as he surveys teams from Russia and China.

"A lot of people who have done well in their careers are saying, 'What do I want to do next?'" he says. "They see energy in the news and they don't like the reliance on fossil fuels in the Middle East; they don't like high prices; they don't like the environmental impacts. So, a lot of people with political clout and capital are trying to solve this problem. Fortunately for us and the other entrepreneurs here, they're looking to some of the top universities around the world to try to find people who are willing to do the hard work day in and day out to make it happen."


Marianne Wu, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures and a judge at the Intel/Berkeley Challenge.
Photo: Bruce Cook/Lester Center
A major attraction of business plan competitions is hob-nobbing with the judges. At the Intel Challenge, many judges are investors from Silicon Valley's leading venture capital firms who pick the winners and scout out possible deals. One of the judges at this year's competition is Marianne Wu, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures. Wu has already been talking about a deal with Aurora.

"The area that they're focused on, which is algae as a feed stock for bio-fuel, is one that we have great interest in," Wu says. "Energy is the fundamental driver behind daily activity, behind industrial growth, behind our commercial infrastructure."

At the competition, teams make short pitches and are grilled by judges in small, wood-paneled meeting rooms. On day two, Aurora passes into the semi-finals where the team makes the pitch before four judges, including Marianne Wu.

Guido Radaelli opens in gravely accented English. "We are Aurora BioFuels. And we are doing something magic. We are turning wastewater into bio-diesel using our proprietary super-algae."

Company CEO Caspari sketches out the big picture.

"We're all aware of extremely high oil prices, geopolitical issues that are tied in with our dependence on fossil fuels that has resulted in subsidies and mandates on the federal and state level," he says. "Adding to that environmental concerns and it's really a perfect environment for alternative energy and bio diesel. The market itself is new and rapidly expanding. We had a production of 20 million gallons of bio-diesel in 2004. Last year, production was 75 million gallons."

But, he adds, "The problem with bio-diesel today is that it mostly comes from agricultural crops. Agricultural crops are expensive. They have better uses than being burned for fuel. Our method allows us to produce vast quantities of bio-fuel cheaply."

Aurora asked us not to reveal proprietary information discussed in private meetings with judges, but in an earlier public gathering at Berkeley, the Aurora team gave clues about their business plan.

"The heart of this business, we call it our secret sauce, is our biotechnology," Caspari told the audience. He explained that the "secret sauce" was derived from a strain of algae "whose bio-yields are three times higher than what occur naturally."

Back at the competition, Aurora's pitch ends smoothly. The judges give the team a round of applause. In the halls of Berkeley's Haas School of Business, home to the Intel Challenge, Aurora is generating buzz. Dan Lankford, a judge and partner at Wavepoint Ventures, tells us bio-fuel companies like Aurora could offer consumers, businesses and municipalities a simple way to reduce carbon emissions.

"There's no question," says Lankford, "that from a venture capital standpoint, the whole issue of global warming and [reducing] carbon emissions has become a very interesting space. This is real business, real money, with very draconian consequences for people who don't meet the standards."

Lankford tells us he's impressed with Aurora's business plan.

"In order to have any value at all, you have to have a big enough market," he says. "So you have to solve a need. You have to address, as we often say, somebody's pain. You have to make the pain go away. Two of the biggest problems we're trying to solve in society today, one is energy, the other's environmental. Aurora addresses both."

At the evening awards ceremony, each team gives a one-minute "elevator pitch," a rapid-fire monologue set in an imaginary elevator ride with an investor. When the first-place winner is announced, Aurora Biofuels name flashes across a large screen. Matt Caspari and his partners stroll to the stage in fashionable black suits to collect the $25,000 winning check.

Investors, including Noventi's James Horn, take notice of Aurora's success at Berkeley.

"Winning the competition clearly means a lot about the viability of their idea. So it kind of started the ball rolling for us," he says. Soon after, Horn's firm Noventi agrees to fund Aurora.
The idea of getting fuel from aquatic plants has existed for decades. But it seems to take an emergency to push America away from petroleum. A generation ago, the United States was facing another energy crisis brought on by the OPEC oil embargo. Oil prices quadrupled. The federal government sought to counter the OPEC cartel and solve wrenching energy shortages. The most ambitious effort to tackle the crisis was announced by Jimmy Carter in 1979.

"The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation," Carter said in a major televised address.

Carter outlined plans to cut oil imports and boost domestic production and energy conservation. He also charted a third path. Today we call it "green energy."

"To give us energy security," Carter said, "I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel."

President Carter invested millions in new government research centers like NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. As part of NREL's Aquatic Species Program, researchers spent 20 years studying micro-organisms like algae. They were startled by algae's capacity to produce oil.


Al Darzins, a senior manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado.
"It's amazing," says Al Darzins, a senior manager at NREL.

Given the right conditions, Darzins says algae could double its volume overnight. And unlike other sources, such as soy or corn, algae can be harvested day after day.

"If you could actually generate an algae strain that produces lots of oil, you could use this oil for a variety of bio-fuels," Darzins says. Including "fuel for ships and trains, jet fuel and even green gasoline."

"There is no other resource that comes even close in magnitude to the potential for making oil," says John Sheehan, an NREL energy analyst who worked in the aquatic species program. One of algae's great strengths, Sheehan recently told the journal Popular Mechanics, is its ability to grow robustly in brackish water. NREL's research initially focused on identifying natural algal strains that were then tested in outdoor pools in New Mexico, where much of the groundwater is saline and unsuitable for other forms of agriculture.

The government's alternative energy initiative was strong while oil prices stayed high. But in the early 1990s, the cost of crude oil plunged. So did interest in alternative fuels that were not cost-effective against petroleum. In 1996 the Department of Energy shut down the aquatic species program.

But just before work stopped, NREL researchers made an important breakthrough. Using new techniques, the scientists discovered it might be possible to boost algae's capacity to produce oil through genetic engineering. While NREL didn't actually produce oil from these strains, the work provided a road map for others to follow.

"Before then, people really had not been able to do any genetic transformation, that is the introduction of new genetic material into these organisms," Al Darzins says. "NREL at the time found methods of getting foreign genes into some of the strains they were working with. That serves as the basis for what a lot of people are going to be doing in the future."

Today, NREL is hoping to create new algae strains through genetic engineering, as part of an ambitious collaboration with private companies. Aurora's Matt Caspari will be watching closely. A lot of his company's work is based on the government's pioneering research.




The Heat of Competition

Flush with investment funding, Aurora moves its team and fish tanks into spacious, glass-enclosed offices in an industrial park perched on the east side of the San Francisco Bay.

But as the company prepares to hire more staff and step up operations, competition moves in on its home turf. A number of other small California start-ups announce plans to gear up algae-to-bio-fuel programs. Then oil giant British Petroleum announces it will invest $500 million in an alternative energy research center on the U.C. Berkeley campus. Elsewhere, Boeing, Virgin Atlantic and the Department of Defense also say they are studying ways to produce fuel from algae and other plants. It was daunting competition for three guys and their fish tanks.

As he reviews his company's successful launch, Matt Caspari spies storm clouds on the horizon.

"I'm not just worried about little start-ups," he tells us. "I'm worried about big companies too, because they can pour potentially as much or more money into an idea and put a lot of smart people to work on it. And the one advantage you have over a big company as a small entrepreneurial start-up is you can move really fast and make decisions really quickly. So, I feel a huge pressure to get results."

Aurora's chief investor James Horn says results may not be around the corner, but that's part of the adventure for early-stage venture capital firms.

"Aurora was a very raw company at the first conversation," he says. "It was effectively three guys with a plan on how to create a new energy supply for a growing world. But it was not a stretch to think that we could adapt algae to produce bio-diesel. So we made the investment. And it may take longer than we expect, but we're risk-takers by nature and we believe there is a chance to be successful here."

How do investors measure success in clean tech? It's clearly about making a profit. But for James Horn, saving the world from global warming is a welcome benefit.

"Using algae is effectively carbon neutral, it's not competing for food stocks, it's not competing for scarce water," Horn says. "In many ways, it is kind of the ultimate solution for powering our cars. You know, 18 months ago, I never thought I would be investing in an algae company."

Horn tells us Aurora's success depends on its secret, oil-boosting technology developed at Berkeley. Government scientist Al Darzins cautions that Aurora's claims seem impressive, at least on paper.

"But have they actually proven that?" he asks. "I suspect it's theoretical at this point and maybe [based on] some small-scale lab stuff that they've done and they extrapolate. But let's take that organism out of the lab and let's see what it does in the environment."

Scaling up lab experiments in large, outdoor settings is the biggest challenge facing Aurora and many other alternative energy pioneers.

"You're talking about hundreds or thousands of acres of algae growth," says CEO Matt Caspari. "So it's money and time to scale that up."

"They are trying to do something on a very large scale which hasn't been done before," says James Horn. "There are a number of hurdles that we haven't even addressed yet and that we won't be able to address until we can actually test it."

With more hurdles ahead, scientists are projecting it may take five years or more before fuel derived from algae is widely available. But one company in New Zealand is already marketing a new diesel blend. Five percent is from refined algae oil.

Alternative energy - whether from solar, wind or even algae - is no longer a tale of science fiction or distant dreams. That's obvious. Just look at the billions of dollars flowing into the market to back new, earth-friendly products such as green credits cards and bio-fuels. Investors insist intense competition in this green marketplace is no passing fad.

"Energy is the number one driver in the world," says James Horn. "And if we can migrate to alternative energy supplies, it can be an enormous industry both in California and worldwide."

Marianne Wu says, "It's a much more fundamental change that we're going through. So, it's not some little blip that it's hot today and tomorrow it's going to be some next hot thing."

The marketplace can deliver wealth of course, but it's hardly been eco-friendly up to now. More than 150 years ago, the California gold rush produced riches for some people, but environmental devastation and hardships for many others. And the gold rush wound down in just a few years. It will be up to contemporary consumers and eco-entrepreneurs and their shareholders to see that today's green rush evolves from an economic frenzy to a fundamental planet-saving change.
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Peak tech?

by James Howard Kunstler
Published on 23 Jul 2007

energy bulletin

Go anywhere in America, among any class of people -- from the Nascar morons to the Ivy League -- and one expectation is pretty universal: that technology will only bring us more wonders and miracles, and it will certainly save-the-day where our energy problems are concerned. This would seem natural for people living in an age when a simple cassette SONY Walkman is superceded by an 80-gigabyte iPod in one generation. But what if this assumption is off? What if peak technology occurs roughly in the same wave as peak energy?

Of course, another nearly universal expectation is that we will go through an orderly transition between the end of the oil fiesta and whatever comes next -- implying, naturally, that some new sovereign energy resource is out there in destiny's green room, getting prepped up, waiting to be sent on-stage. The confusion about this, induced by strenuous wishing, is such that most people expect the next energy resource to consist of technology itself.

This has been the heart of my beef with the rosy future crowd. Energy and technology are not the same thing, not interchangeable or substitutable. If you run out of one (energy), you can't just plug in the other (technology). I certainly believe other energy resources exist besides oil and methane gas, but I maintain that we will be grossly disappointed by what they can do for us, given what we are currently running in society. Nor am I categorically against the idea of using these other things: solar, wind, bio-fuels, what-have-you. I can even be persuaded on nuclear with its many hazards, if that's the only way to keep the lights on. But all of these things will not preclude the extreme necessity to make severe changes in our manner of daily living -- and to do so rather quickly.

Far from evolving triumphantly to yet-higher realms of technological nirvana, I'd expect a raw struggle to preserve much of the knowledge and applied technique that has already been acquired. I do happen to believe that the petroleum twilight will bring quite a bit of disorder to our society, which almost certainly means that the institutional context for research and development will suffer. Most particularly, I doubt that the big universities will be able to carry on in an energy-and-capital-starved future. Exactly how they might disintegrate is an open question. Last year, for example, I was shown the new bio-medical research "facility" at the University of Michigan, a building at least the size of a Cunard ocean liner, and wondered as I beheld it exactly how they were going to heat the goddam thing ten years down the line. But one might as well ask how the U might fund the paychecks of the building's occupants as Michigan's economy falls into an ever-larger crater. Such is the hubris-induced weakness of mind among those in charge of things that these mundane questions are not even asked.

The same pretty much goes for the big corporations. Their world is going to change pretty rudely, too. Far from expecting them to take over our lives even more comprehensively than is the current case, I expect them to wobble, fall to their knees, and expire as the tonic of globalism vanishes down the drain of economic history. Just as most people expect technology to save-the-day for energy, the same people expect the world to keep becoming an ever-smaller place of more intricately co-wired parts. Not me. I expect the world to become a larger place. I expect the wiring to unravel in a contest over the world's remaining oil. I expect that the nations of the world will eventually retreat back into their own continental regions (while that retreat may be violent and messy). I expect our energy problems to limit any organization's ability to project power and influence -- whether it is a government or a corporation. I expect that anything now running at the giant scale will either have to downsize real fast or go out of business.

Few of the rosy futurists foresee anything but ever-greater peaks of affluence among an ever-larger pool of players. I think they have been watching too many installments of "Richistan" on cable TV. My own notion is that capital will dry up quicker than rain on a Scottsdale patio as our energy predicament becomes apparent, since expectations of future growth (of economies and the capital representing them) are keyed to an assumption of unlimited energy resources. When the truth finally hits -- that there are real limits to the things of this world -- it will knock the capital markets on their asses. We will see large numbers of men wearing Rolex watches weep into crumpled certificates as the tranches of hallucinated wealth dissolve in the mists of their hopes and dreams. This means, at least, that investment in technology R & D on the grand scale will probably not meet our current expectations.

In any case, it is getting pretty late in the day for us to just kick back and nurture fantasies about the future of technology while the prospect of an oil export shock resolves more vividly before us -- the first symptom of an industry that will shortly fly to pieces. Of course the very last thing we should be doing -- which everyone from the Nascar morons to the Ivy League "greenies" is doing -- is focus all effort on how to keep the American automobile fleet running by some magic means other than gasoline. I say, just as a mental jump-start, let's put at least some of that effort into getting the choo-choo trains running again -- but this is too silly for the boys at MIT or even the Pentagon.

A few years ago, I went to the famous TED conference in Monterrey, where the mandarins of computer tech gather every year to hear talks about the neat things happening in the world beyond Silicon Valley. (I was part of the "entertainment.") By far the most popular presentation of the whole conference was the one on flying cars. Yeah, I know. It was straight out of a 1937 edition of Popular Science Magazine. But that's where their heads were at. All those twenty billion dollar heads, and that was what really lit their wicks. In case you wonder why I'm skeptical about where we're going in this country.

Former head of Saudi Aramco: oil has peaked

31 Oct 2007 |


Sadad al-Huseini, the former head of exploration and production at Saudi Aramco, says that global production has hit its maximum sustainable plateau and that output will start to fall within 15 years, by which time the world's oil resources will be "very severely depleted".

In an exclusive interview with David Strahan of lastoilshock.com, al-Huseini said that oil production had reached a structural ceiling determined by geology rather than geopolitics, and that as a result the technical floor for the oil price will rise by $12 annually for the next 4 to 5 years. The market price for crude could hit $125 by 2010.

Al-Huseini said that Saudi Arabia's plans to raise production capacity to 12 million barrels per day by 2012 represented "an achievable number", but disparaged Western expectations that the Kingdom would produce significantly more. It was unfair, he said, to expect Saudi to "pull everybody's chestnuts out of the fire".

David Strahan is an award-winning investigative journalist and documentary film-maker who, since the early 1990s, has reported and produced extensively for the BBC's Money Programme and Horizon strands. Strahan is the author of The Last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man and is a trustee of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre.

Jimmy Carter delivered this televised speech on April 18, 1977.

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly.

It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.

We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.

We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

Two days from now, I will present my energy proposals to the Congress. Its members will be my partners and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice. Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices.

The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation.

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war" -- except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy.

I know that some of you may doubt that we face real energy shortages. The 1973 gasoline lines are gone, and our homes are warm again. But our energy problem is worse tonight than it was in 1973 or a few weeks ago in the dead of winter. It is worse because more waste has occurred, and more time has passed by without our planning for the future. And it will get worse every day until we act.

The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation's independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained. Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce.

The world now uses about 60 million barrels of oil a day and demand increases each year about 5 percent. This means that just to stay even we need the production of a new Texas every year, an Alaskan North Slope every nine months, or a new Saudi Arabia every three years. Obviously, this cannot continue.

We must look back in history to understand our energy problem. Twice in the last several hundred years there has been a transition in the way people use energy.

The first was about 200 years ago, away from wood -- which had provided about 90 percent of all fuel -- to coal, which was more efficient. This change became the basis of the Industrial Revolution.

The second change took place in this century, with the growing use of oil and natural gas. They were more convenient and cheaper than coal, and the supply seemed to be almost without limit. They made possible the age of automobile and airplane travel. Nearly everyone who is alive today grew up during this age and we have never known anything different.

Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind's previous history.

World consumption of oil is still going up. If it were possible to keep it rising during the 1970s and 1980s by 5 percent a year as it has in the past, we could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.

I know that many of you have suspected that some supplies of oil and gas are being withheld. You may be right, but suspicions about oil companies cannot change the fact that we are running out of petroleum.

All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska's North Slope. In a few years when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will be just about equal to two years' increase in our nation's energy demand.

Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years. But some time in the 1980s it can't go up much more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that.

But we do have a choice about how we will spend the next few years. Each American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each year. Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden.

One choice is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years.

Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person -- the driver -- while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our houses, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste.

We can continue using scarce oil and natural to generate electricity, and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process.

If we do not act, then by 1985 we will be using 33 percent more energy than we do today.

We can't substantially increase our domestic production, so we would need to import twice as much oil as we do now. Supplies will be uncertain. The cost will keep going up. Six years ago, we paid $3.7 billion for imported oil. Last year we spent $37 billion -- nearly ten times as much -- and this year we may spend over $45 billion.

Unless we act, we will spend more than $550 billion for imported oil by 1985 -- more than $2,500 a year for every man, woman, and child in America. Along with that money we will continue losing American jobs and becoming increasingly vulnerable to supply interruptions.

Now we have a choice. But if we wait, we will live in fear of embargoes. We could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs. Within ten years we would not be able to import enough oil -- from any country, at any acceptable price.

If we wait, and do not act, then our factories will not be able to keep our people on the job with reduced supplies of fuel. Too few of our utilities will have switched to coal, our most abundant energy source.

We will not be ready to keep our transportation system running with smaller, more efficient cars and a better network of buses, trains and public transportation.

We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment. We will have a crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal, and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now. Inflation will soar, production will go down, people will lose their jobs. Intense competition will build up among nations and among the different regions within our own country.

If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions.

But we still have another choice. We can begin to prepare right now. We can decide to act while there is time.

That is the concept of the energy policy we will present on Wednesday. Our national energy plan is based on ten fundamental principles.

The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices.

The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems -- wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.

The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.

The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer.

The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.

The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.

The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy.

The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.

The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.

These ten principles have guided the development of the policy I would describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday.

Our energy plan will also include a number of specific goals, to measure our progress toward a stable energy system.

These are the goals we set for 1985:

--Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent.

--Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.

--Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day.

--Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months' supply.

--Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year.

--Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings.

--Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses.

We will monitor our progress toward these goals year by year. Our plan will call for stricter conservation measures if we fall behind.

I cant tell you that these measures will be easy, nor will they be popular. But I think most of you realize that a policy which does not ask for changes or sacrifices would not be an effective policy.

This plan is essential to protect our jobs, our environment, our standard of living, and our future.

Whether this plan truly makes a difference will be decided not here in Washington, but in every town and every factory, in every home an don every highway and every farm.

I believe this can be a positive challenge. There is something especially American in the kinds of changes we have to make. We have been proud, through our history of being efficient people.

We have been proud of our leadership in the world. Now we have a chance again to give the world a positive example.

And we have been proud of our vision of the future. We have always wanted to give our children and grandchildren a world richer in possibilities than we've had. They are the ones we must provide for now. They are the ones who will suffer most if we don't act.

I've given you some of the principles of the plan.

I am sure each of you will find something you don't like about the specifics of our proposal. It will demand that we make sacrifices and changes in our lives. To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful -- but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs, and to some greater inconveniences for everyone.

But the sacrifices will be gradual, realistic and necessary. Above all, they will be fair. No one will gain an unfair advantage through this plan. No one will be asked to bear an unfair burden. We will monitor the accuracy of data from the oil and natural gas companies, so that we will know their true production, supplies, reserves, and profits.

The citizens who insist on driving large, unnecessarily powerful cars must expect to pay more for that luxury.

We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will attack the part of this plan that affects them directly. They will say that sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country. If they succeed, then the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest group, would be crushing.

There should be only one test for this program: whether it will help our country.

Other generation of Americans have faced and mastered great challenges. I have faith that meeting this challenge will make our own lives even richer. If you will join me so that we can work together with patriotism and courage, we will again prove that our great nation can lead the world into an age of peace, independence and freedom.

Jimmy Carter, "The President's Proposed Energy Policy." 18 April 1977. Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. XXXXIII, No. 14, May 1, 1977, pp. 418-420.

Briefing for the Descent - by John Michael Greer

Published on 7 Sep 2006 by The Archdruid Report. Archived on 7 Sep 2006.

As evidence piles up for the reality of peak oil, and more and more people start to grapple with an issue that challenges almost every assumption our society makes about the future, the issue of what to do about it becomes harder to avoid.

Predictably, survivalists are popping up again with their one-size-fits-all answer. That answer first surfaced in the 1920s, when the Evangelical Christian belief in imminent apocalypse fused with traditional American rhetoric contrasting the rich, crowded, and wicked city with the poor, isolated, and allegedly more virtuous back country to create the first survivalist ideologies. Since then, survivalists have insisted that the only response to any crisis you care to imagine – epidemic disease, nuclear holocaust, race war, the advent of Antichrist, the meltdown of the world’s computer systems on January 1, 2000, and the list goes on – is to hole up in the woods with plenty of food and firearms, and live the frontier life while urban America crashes down in flames.

From a survivalist point of view, peak oil is simply one more reason to head for the hills. Still, it doesn’t fill the bill very well. True, the peaking of world oil production will usher in an age of rising energy costs and dwindling supplies, and that will bring plenty of economic, social, political, and demographic problems in its train, but I have yet to see anyone make a reasonable case that these problems will cause civilization to collapse all at once. We’re facing decline, not apocalypse, and in the face of a gradual decline unfolding over a century or more, a strategy relying on canned beans and M-16s in a cabin in the woods is a distraction at best. A more realistic view, and more useful strategies, can be found readily enough by turning from the macho fantasies of surivalists to the facts of the industrial world’s predicament. Though the future we face is not an apocalypse, four horsemen still define the most likely scenario.

First out of the starting gate is declining energy availability. Sometime between now and 2010, world petroleum production peaks, falters, and begins an uneven but irreversible descent. North American natural gas supplies start their terminal decline around the same time. Some of the slack can be taken up by coal, wind and other renewables, nuclear power, and conservation, but not all. As oil depletion accelerates, and other resources such as fissionable uranium and Eurasian natural gas hit their own production peaks, the shortfall widens, and many lifestyles and business models that depend on cheap energy become nonviable.

The second horseman, hard on the hooves of the first, is economic contraction. As petroleum production begins to decline, energy prices skyrocket as nations, regions and individuals engage in bidding wars driven to extremes by rampant speculation. The global economy, which made economic sense only in the context of the artificially low oil prices of the 1990s, comes apart at the seams, driving many import- and export-based industries onto the ropes, setting off a wave of bankruptcies and business failures, and causing shortages of many consumer products, all the way down to such essentials as food and clothing. Soaring energy prices have the same effect more directly in many areas of the domestic economy. Unemployment climbs to Great Depression levels and poverty becomes widespread.

The third horseman, following the second by a length or two, is collapsing public health. As poverty rates spiral upwards, shortages and energy costs impact the food supply chain, energy intensive health care becomes unaffordable for all but the obscenely rich, and global warming and ecosystem disruption drive the spread of tropical and emerging diseases, malnutrition and disease become major burdens. People begin to die of what were once minor, treatable conditions, and chronic illnesses such as diabetes become death sentences as medicines price themselves out of reach. Death rates soar as rates of live birth slump, launching the first wave of population contraction.

The fourth horseman, galloping along in the wake of the first three, is political turmoil. What political scientists call “liberal democracy” is a system in which competing elite groups buy the loyalty of sectors of the electorate by handing out economic largesse. That system depends on abundant fossil fuels and the industrial economy they make possible. Many of today’s political institutions will not survive the end of cheap energy, and the changeover to new political arrangements will likely involve violence. International affairs face similar realignments as nations whose power and influence depend on access to abundant, cheap energy fall from their present positions of strength, while “backward” nations find their less energy-dependent economies becoming a source of strength rather than weakness in world affairs. If history is any guide, these power shifts will work themselves out on the battlefield.

The most important thing to remember about all four of these factors is that they’re self-limiting in the middle term. As energy prices soar, economies contract, and the demand for energy decreases, bringing prices back down. As the global economy comes apart, human needs remain, and local economies take up the slack as best they can with the resources on hand, producing new opportunities and breathing new life into moribund sectors of the economy. As public health fails, populations decline, taking pressure off all other sectors of the economy. As existing political arrangements collapse, finally, new regimes take their place, and like all new regimes these can be counted on to put stability at the top of their agendas. Thus we’re facing a period of crisis perhaps a quarter century long, followed by a period of renewed stability, with another round of crises waiting in the wings. Historically speaking, this is how civilizations fall, in a stair-step process alternating periods of crisis with breathing spaces at progressively lower levels of economic and political integration.

This is the predicament we face. Fortunately for us, it’s a familiar one for our species. None of the four horsemen I’ve just described are new arrivals on the scene; our great-grandparents knew them well, and today they are familiar to the vast majority of our species. Only the inhabitants of the world’s industrialized societies have had the opportunity to forget about them, and then only during the second half of the 20th century. Before then, most people knew how to deal with their presence, and those strategies remain viable today. The one hitch is that we have to be ready to put them into practice. Since the world’s governments have by and large dropped the ball completely, it’s up to individuals to get ready for the future ahead of us. Each of the four horsemen requires a different response, and so different preparations will be needed for each.

To cope with the first horseman,reducing energy use is the core strategy. The less energy you need to keep yourself alive and comfortable, the easier you can cope when energy costs spin out of control. Minor tinkerings aren’t going to be enough, though; you need to pursue the sort of comprehensive changes in energy use pioneered so successfully in the 1970s. Plan on cutting your energy use by half, to start with, and be ready to cut it further as needed. That means significant changes in lifestyle for most people, of course. In particular, commuting by car has to become a bad memory, and if this requires you to move, get a new job, or change your lifestyle, that’s what it requires. Get rid of your car if you can; if you can’t, trade in your gas hog for a light, efficient compact, and keep it in the garage under a tarp except when you actually need it. While you’re at it, practice coping with blackouts, brownouts, and other forms of energy shortage; they’ll be frequent visitors in the future.

To cope with the second horseman, choosing a viable profession forms the essential step. Most of the jobs in America today don’t produce necessary goods and services, and most goods and many ervices used in America today aren’t produced here. This mismatch promises massive economic disruptions during the crisis period, as an economy and a work force geared to sales, retail, and information processing collides with a new economic reality that has little room for these but a desperate need to produce food, clothing, and basic technologies. Anyone prepared to step into a viable economic role in this new reality has a much better chance of surviving, or even thriving. You need to choose a craft that can be done with modest energy inputs, and makes something people need or want badly enough to buy even in hard times. Think of market gardening, garment sewing, home appliance repair, and beer brewing as examples. You’ll need to get your training and tools in advance, of course, and the sooner you hang out your shingle the better, even if it’s just a hobby-business patronized by your friends until the crises hit.

To cope with the third horseman, taking charge of your own health is the central task. Modern medicine is one of the most energy- and resource-intensive sectors of the economy, and it’s already priced itself out of reach of nearly half of all Americans. By the time the first wave of crises is well under way, you can assume that your only health care is what you can provide for yourself. Plan on learning about preventive medicine and sanitation, taking wilderness first aid classes, and arranging for do-it-yourself health care in any other way you can. Don’t neglect alternative health care methods, either; while there’s some quackery in the alternative field, there’s also much of value, and the denunciations of alternative health care issued by the medical establishment are simply attempts to protect market share. Finally, get used to the inevitability of death. you probably won’t live as long as you used to expect, and if you need high-tech medical help to stay alive, you’ll die as soon as that stops being available. Death is simply part of the human condition. The stark terror of death that haunts people in industrial societies is a luxury a deindustrializing world can’t afford.

To cope with the fourth horseman, community networking provides the necessary response. This doesn’t mean the sort of Utopian projects that were tried, and failed so dismally, during the Sixties; it means the proven and effective approaches that have been used for hundreds of years by people who learned that working together is an essential tool for survival. If you’ve participated in a block watch, shopped at a farmers market, or belonged to a community service organization, you’ve taken part in community networking activities. In the future, local citizens will need to maintain basic community services such as sanitation, dispute resolution, and public safety during times when government no longer functions. Getting to know your neighbors, and participating in local community organizations, helps build connections that will make the ad hoc arrangements needed in a crisis a viable possibility.

Each of these strategies deserves further discussion on its own, of course. I’ll go into much more detail here in the weeks to come.

link

Prominent CERA official – “Peak Oil theory is garbage”

by Steve Andrews
Published on 11 Sep 2006 by ASPO-USA's Peak Oil Review / Energy Bulletin. Archived on 12 Sep 2006.

The Countdown for the Peak of Oil Production has Begun – but what are the Views of the Most Important International Energy Agencies...

Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) is a widely touted US-based energy advisor firm. They bill themselves as a source to “help decision makers anticipate the energy future and formulate timely, successful plans in the face of rapid changes and uncertainty.” One aspect of our energy future about which CERA appears certain is the concept of peak oil.

"Peak Oil theory is garbage as far as we’re concerned", said Robert W. Esser, a geologist by training and CERA’s senior consultant/director of global oil and gas resources, according to Business Week online national correspondent Mark Morrison (Sept 7).

A wide range of very serious organizations are looking at and/or have commented upon the concept of peak oil, including the National Academy of Sciences (10/05), the US GAO (11/06), and the National Petroleum Council (2/07), working at the request of US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. Apparently, CERA thinks that’s all a waste of time and, in some cases, tax-payer money. By inference, CERA completely discounts the considered opinions of dozens of sober individuals and firms looking into the peak oil issue. Consider just this partial list of informed (mostly US-based) commentators:

1. Fellow industry analysts like PFC Energy; Groppe Long & Littell; and Petrie Parkman & Co. Last fall, Tom Petrie said he expected peak oil by around 2010 and that he would be “shocked” if world oil production didn’t peak by 2015. In PFC Energy’s 2004 presentation on peak oil, they show world oil production peaking in the 2014 time frame; their 2006 study, to be presented at the ASPO-USA conference next month, likely points to a slightly earlier date. Henry Groppe sees world petroleum liquids production peaking by 2010.

2. T. Boone Pickens, oil industry entrepreneur with a background in geology, has stated several times that peak oil may have already arrived.

3. The Hirsch Report: with funding from the National Energy Technology Laboratory, Robert L. Hirsch and Roger Bezdek were lead authors of a 70+-page report entitled “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management.” The authors’ key concern: “Dealing with world oil production peaking will be extremely complex, involve literally trillions of dollars and require many years of intense effort.” Esser’s statement trivializes their report.

4. U.S. Congressmen Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) and Tom Udall (D-NM) sound seriously concerned about peak oil, have been speaking out and writing about the issue, and have enlisted over a dozen colleagues to join them in the House Peak Oil Caucus. CERA would seem to be saying they’re wasting their time.

5. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a former petroleum geologist, was recently quoted in a Bloomberg Markets article as saying, “I think the people most exuberant about peak oil underestimate how much unconventional sources of oil will help flatten the peak, but to say there is no peak is shortsighted.”

6. Former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore both recently referenced peak oil. First in June, Gore spent a minute talking it up on CNN’s Larry King Live. Then in early July, Clinton—in an interview with Atlantic Monthly—gave substantial credence to the peak oil concept. He also wondered why he had never received a peak oil briefing, given its strategic importance.

7. US cities large and small, from San Francisco and Portland (OR) to Willets and Sebastopol (CA), are leading the way in incorporating the eventual reality of peak oil in their long-term municipal planning processes.

8. Senior geologists like author Walter Youngquist (OR), Craig Hatfield (OH), Joe Riva (MD), and Jeffrey Brown (TX) have drawn attention to issues like long-term depletion, the limits to growth by unconventional oil sources, the problems with declining net-energy return, etc.

9. PhD academics like Dr. Al Bartlett (University of Colorado-Boulder) plus Robert Kaufmann and Cutler Cleveland (Boston University) have for at least two decades been pointing to upcoming problems associated with peak oil. By association, is their work “garbage?”

10. Financial analyst Jeffery Rubin—chief economist for the respected CIBC World Markets—foresees a peaking in world oil production between now and the end of the decade. Eric Sprott, Sprott Asset Management, has over $1 billion of his firm’s assets invested in areas that will benefit from peak oil.

11. Matt Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Co Int’l and author of “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,” speaks more frequently about the peak oil story than any other respected executive in the country.

12. James Mckenzie, in his work for World Resources Institute, published a study in 1996 showing a peaking in world oil production in 2014 (plus or minus about five years, given three different scenarios).

13. Editorials and features in newspapers and major magazine cover the peak oil story. If, as CERA asserts, that story is “garbage,” why did a respected publication like Bloomberg Markets devote eight pages to this story in their September issue?

14. Richard Rainwater, a Texas-based billionaire investor, made piles of money by foreseeing, back in the mid-1990s, that oil prices were eventually headed strongly up due to long-term limited production vs. demand. Now he worries in the pages of Fortune magazine about the potential social costs and consequences that he believes peak oil could precipitate.

15. Sadad al Husseini, Saudi Aramco’s former head of exploration and production, wrote last fall that world oil production would peak and plateau by 2015, at between 90 to 95 million barrels a day.

16. French oil firm Total’s CEO Thierry Desmarest has broken ranks with other CEO’s of major oil companies by forecasting a 2020 peaking for world oil production. (From 1996 – 2000, several BP players forecast a 2010 peak; since 2000 they no longer mention a peak.)

17. Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review, uses an analytical technique similar to that of CERA—following production trends and projections vs. following stated reserves. He sees a peaking in world oil production around 2010-2011.

18. Pang Xiongqi, professor at China’s University of Petroleum in Beijing, expects Chinese production to peak in 2009 and world oil production to top out in 2012.

19. The Oil Drum, perhaps the most rigorous website covering the peak oil story, includes a host of writers and researchers who research and write timely commentaries.

20. ASPO-USA foresees a peak between now and 2015. We believe there are too many variables, especially growing non-geologic factors, to forecast a date. However, given the Hirsh Report’s warning about lag time for mitigating actions, we’re close enough to peaking that trying to pick a precise date is irrelevant.

There is a bottom line here for people trying spot the signal vs. the noise here. Ask whether the risk is greater if decision-makers act earlier based on the views of peak oil “concernists,” or if those decision-makers accept the notion that “peak oil theory is garbage” and defer action beyond granting oil companies access to resources and simply letting markets work.

Steve Andrews is a co-founder of ASPO-USA. He has followed the building peak oil story since the early 1980s.



by Steve Andrews

Published on 11 Sep 2006 by ASPO-USA's Peak Oil Review / Energy Bulletin. Archived on 12 Sep 2006.

The Countdown for the Peak of Oil Production has Begun – but what are the Views of the Most Important International Energy Agencies...

Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) is a widely touted US-based energy advisor firm. They bill themselves as a source to “help decision makers anticipate the energy future and formulate timely, successful plans in the face of rapid changes and uncertainty.” One aspect of our energy future about which CERA appears certain is the concept of peak oil.

"Peak Oil theory is garbage as far as we’re concerned", said Robert W. Esser, a geologist by training and CERA’s senior consultant/director of global oil and gas resources, according to Business Week online national correspondent Mark Morrison (Sept 7).

A wide range of very serious organizations are looking at and/or have commented upon the concept of peak oil, including the National Academy of Sciences (10/05), the US GAO (11/06), and the National Petroleum Council (2/07), working at the request of US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. Apparently, CERA thinks that’s all a waste of time and, in some cases, tax-payer money. By inference, CERA completely discounts the considered opinions of dozens of sober individuals and firms looking into the peak oil issue. Consider just this partial list of informed (mostly US-based) commentators:

1. Fellow industry analysts like PFC Energy; Groppe Long & Littell; and Petrie Parkman & Co. Last fall, Tom Petrie said he expected peak oil by around 2010 and that he would be “shocked” if world oil production didn’t peak by 2015. In PFC Energy’s 2004 presentation on peak oil, they show world oil production peaking in the 2014 time frame; their 2006 study, to be presented at the ASPO-USA conference next month, likely points to a slightly earlier date. Henry Groppe sees world petroleum liquids production peaking by 2010.

2. T. Boone Pickens, oil industry entrepreneur with a background in geology, has stated several times that peak oil may have already arrived.

3. The Hirsch Report: with funding from the National Energy Technology Laboratory, Robert L. Hirsch and Roger Bezdek were lead authors of a 70+-page report entitled “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management.” The authors’ key concern: “Dealing with world oil production peaking will be extremely complex, involve literally trillions of dollars and require many years of intense effort.” Esser’s statement trivializes their report.

4. U.S. Congressmen Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) and Tom Udall (D-NM) sound seriously concerned about peak oil, have been speaking out and writing about the issue, and have enlisted over a dozen colleagues to join them in the House Peak Oil Caucus. CERA would seem to be saying they’re wasting their time.

5. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a former petroleum geologist, was recently quoted in a Bloomberg Markets article as saying, “I think the people most exuberant about peak oil underestimate how much unconventional sources of oil will help flatten the peak, but to say there is no peak is shortsighted.”

6. Former President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore both recently referenced peak oil. First in June, Gore spent a minute talking it up on CNN’s Larry King Live. Then in early July, Clinton—in an interview with Atlantic Monthly—gave substantial credence to the peak oil concept. He also wondered why he had never received a peak oil briefing, given its strategic importance.

7. US cities large and small, from San Francisco and Portland (OR) to Willets and Sebastopol (CA), are leading the way in incorporating the eventual reality of peak oil in their long-term municipal planning processes.

8. Senior geologists like author Walter Youngquist (OR), Craig Hatfield (OH), Joe Riva (MD), and Jeffrey Brown (TX) have drawn attention to issues like long-term depletion, the limits to growth by unconventional oil sources, the problems with declining net-energy return, etc.

9. PhD academics like Dr. Al Bartlett (University of Colorado-Boulder) plus Robert Kaufmann and Cutler Cleveland (Boston University) have for at least two decades been pointing to upcoming problems associated with peak oil. By association, is their work “garbage?”

10. Financial analyst Jeffery Rubin—chief economist for the respected CIBC World Markets—foresees a peaking in world oil production between now and the end of the decade. Eric Sprott, Sprott Asset Management, has over $1 billion of his firm’s assets invested in areas that will benefit from peak oil.

11. Matt Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Co Int’l and author of “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,” speaks more frequently about the peak oil story than any other respected executive in the country.

12. James Mckenzie, in his work for World Resources Institute, published a study in 1996 showing a peaking in world oil production in 2014 (plus or minus about five years, given three different scenarios).

13. Editorials and features in newspapers and major magazine cover the peak oil story. If, as CERA asserts, that story is “garbage,” why did a respected publication like Bloomberg Markets devote eight pages to this story in their September issue?

14. Richard Rainwater, a Texas-based billionaire investor, made piles of money by foreseeing, back in the mid-1990s, that oil prices were eventually headed strongly up due to long-term limited production vs. demand. Now he worries in the pages of Fortune magazine about the potential social costs and consequences that he believes peak oil could precipitate.

15. Sadad al Husseini, Saudi Aramco’s former head of exploration and production, wrote last fall that world oil production would peak and plateau by 2015, at between 90 to 95 million barrels a day.

16. French oil firm Total’s CEO Thierry Desmarest has broken ranks with other CEO’s of major oil companies by forecasting a 2020 peaking for world oil production. (From 1996 – 2000, several BP players forecast a 2010 peak; since 2000 they no longer mention a peak.)

17. Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review, uses an analytical technique similar to that of CERA—following production trends and projections vs. following stated reserves. He sees a peaking in world oil production around 2010-2011.

18. Pang Xiongqi, professor at China’s University of Petroleum in Beijing, expects Chinese production to peak in 2009 and world oil production to top out in 2012.

19. The Oil Drum, perhaps the most rigorous website covering the peak oil story, includes a host of writers and researchers who research and write timely commentaries.

20. ASPO-USA foresees a peak between now and 2015. We believe there are too many variables, especially growing non-geologic factors, to forecast a date. However, given the Hirsh Report’s warning about lag time for mitigating actions, we’re close enough to peaking that trying to pick a precise date is irrelevant.

There is a bottom line here for people trying spot the signal vs. the noise here. Ask whether the risk is greater if decision-makers act earlier based on the views of peak oil “concernists,” or if those decision-makers accept the notion that “peak oil theory is garbage” and defer action beyond granting oil companies access to resources and simply letting markets work.

Steve Andrews is a co-founder of ASPO-USA. He has followed the building peak oil story since the early 1980s.