The Partys Over Oil War and the Fate of Industrial Societies

The world is about to run out of cheap oil and change dramatically. Within the next few years, global production will peak. Thereafter, even if industrial societies begin to switch to alternative energy sources, they will have less net energy each year to do all the work essential to the survival of complex societies. We are entering a new era, as different from the industrial era as the latter was from medieval times.

In The Party’s Over, Richard Heinberg places this momentous transition in historical context, showing how industrialism arose from the harnessing of fossil fuels, how competition to control access to oil shaped the geopolitics of the twentieth century and how contention for dwindling energy resources in the twenty-first century will lead to resource wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and South America. He describes the likely impacts of oil depletion and all of the energy alternatives. Predicting chaos unless the United States-the world’s foremost oil consumer-is willing to join with other countries to implement a global program of resource conservation and sharing, he also recommends a “managed collapse” that might make way for a slower-paced, low-energy, sustainable society in the future.

More readable than other accounts of this issue, with fuller discussion of the context, social implications and recommendations for personal, community, national and global action, Heinberg’s updated book is a riveting wake-up call for human-kind as the oil era winds down, and a critical tool for understanding and influencing current US foreign policy.

Richard Heinberg, from Santa Rosa, California, has been writing about energy resources issues and the dynamics of cultural change for many years. A member of the core faculty at New College of California, he is an award-winning author of three previous books. His Museletter was nominated for the Best Alternative Newsletter award by Utne in 1993.

User Ratings and Reviews

1 Star The author does not understand technology
One of the author’s primary contentions is that “the earth is a closed system.” A closed system is one in which all of the energy and forces are isolated from external influences; roughly speaking the system is in a tight box. The laws of thermodynamics say that total entropy, i.e. disorder, can only increase. Thus we are doomed, and only the details need be sorted out. The earth, of course, is not a closed system. The sun shines on the earth producing not only solar energy directly, but producing wind and growing plant life that can be used for fuel. This is so obvious, that the author’s credibility is reduced to zero by his “closed system” claim.

I don’t doubt that oil production is in decline, but it is a slow decline because new technology makes it possible to economically extract more and more oil from oil fields. In the near term, what we mainly have is coal-to-oil conversion (the US has about 200 years worth at current oil consumption levels), oil shale conversion (much larger amounts), and nuclear energy (about 5000 years supply). On the near horizon (perhaps 25 years) are cellulosic ethanol (made from wood chips and inedible vegetation) and solar electric. Further out there is fusion power and solar energy from space transmitted to the ground by microwaves.

The common thread of doomsayers is that they do not understand technology, and more importantly, how economics interacts with the development of technology. There will be interesting events as the world shifts away from oil to alternatives, a process likely to be played out over the next fifty years, but the end of the world scenario is nonsense.

2 Stars too much opinion
This book contains some interesting factual content. But to get to that content you have to wade through a lot of unsubstantiated opinion and left wing drivel. It’s probably worth reading if you can be alert for when the author is deviating from reality and into politics. I rate it 2 star, but it might be worth 3 stars, considering the poor quality of some other books on the subject.

5 Stars The Present and the Future
One of the best books I have read this year. If he’s right about the present and the future, we should all read it.

4 Stars Great read… but the party can continue after all
When it comes down to it, the fundamental idea of the book, that progress is not sustainable, is unfounded. Simply google search “Integral Fast Reactor” for proof that humans currently have the technology for virtually limitless, safe, clean energy. “Prescription for the Planet,” by Tom Blees, is an excellent book covering the subject.

So, why still four stars? Because most of the book is well written and to the point, arguing accurately that the peak will be earlier than once thought (as I write this, it now seems very likely, we peaked in 2008). Therefore, the dire warning about peak oil was spot on. And, best of all, the first section of the book provides an excellent story of the history of energy and how humans were able to harness it to master their environment, which holds the key to explaining the massive inequality we see around the world today (which fast reactors can eliminate). In all, great read, but civilization as we know it will continue on.

5 Stars The Future is Now
If you want to know what the near future holds for you, your family and society, Heinberg does a reasonably good job at describing it for the reader. There are, in my opinion, some limits to his content, as well as some “disinformation” about the field of economics, but these are minor issues that do not distract from the meat and potatoes of his message.

The primary focus of this work is based on Peak Oil Theory that was presented by American geologist M. King Hubbert in the mid-1950’s — the fact that the production of available oil will peak, then run out. One of the major criticisms of Hubbert, by the way, is that he was a geologist and not an economist and therefore had limited understanding of the market forces in the decline phases after the peak is reached. This may be true, but I doubt anyone in the mid-1950’s had a vision of the modern industrialization of countries like China and India, including their populations’ thirst for our world’s limited petroleum resources.

I would agree with those, like T. Boone Pickens, who are of the opinion that we are now about a year or two down the road from peak oil with an economy that reflects the fact. Take a look at the stock markets… The markets have been going up when oil goes down in price, yet the reason that oil is going down is based on a U.S. and world-wide economic downturn. When the economic picture looks even a sliver brighter, oil rises eliminating even the small glimmer of a recovery. I heard it described best by an analyst on Bloomberg who described this as an “L-shaped recovery” (the economy will go down and there is no recovery as far as the eye can see) that just about summarizes life post peak oil.

Just as important as peak oil is the concept of cheap oil; in other words, there may be a lot of oil under the ocean but it will be costly to recover. Sure, the Gulf of Mexico may have billions of gallons in deep water off-shore. Perhaps there is another Prudhoe Bay at the bottom of the Marianas Trench… Are you going to pay $25,000 per barrel of oil with current technology to recover it? Inexpensive energy peaked in the 1970’s.

Heinberg may have a skewed view of economist — I don’t know of a single student who has covered a micro or macro course in the 101’s level that does not understand the ramifications of consuming a limit strategic product without finding alternative resources. It is not going to go well for the United States or any country in the world… Economist do practice a lot of theoreticals with charts, graphs and “what-if’s,” but they are absolutely cognizant of the world’s realities and many of the consequences of price and demand on a finite resource like petroleum.

Finally, I feel that Heinberg paints too positive of a picture of our society when things like power grids and our economic systems fail. Our country, like most other developed nations, keeps their populations compliant by giving citizens a relatively comfortable way of life; the “American way of life if you will.” As most of us have seen after Hurricane Katrina, local, state and federal governments have a total inability to control civil unrest on limited scales. Just think if what it will look like when numerous banks fail, prices double overnight, there is no gasoline and the electricity is out. When the gas prices reached $3.75 it was almost impossible to find a policeman on the street and I’m sure this practice was duplicated throughout the country. The prospect gives one great pause that perhaps the “survivalist” may get to see their day come in the near future.

We, in the United States, have lived at the expense of others too long. Our day of reckoning is just around the corner. I don’t envy whoever becomes our next president. They’ll have a full plate of problems our nation has never seen before.

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