Max S. Dunn

Book: Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller

Posted by: Max Dunn on June 2, 2009 07:43:59

Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization
by Jeff Rubin

I expected a lot more from an economist. Lots of peak-oil books are written by people with no technical background and no imagination which limits them to a vision of a post-peak world that looks just like the 1800's. But one written by an economist should have more, well, economics.

There are two key questions that will dramatically shape the reality of our post-peak future.

1. How quickly will oil decline?
2. How much energy does it really take to produce each good?

Questions #1 is critically important. While the US took over 30 years for oil production to decline in half, Cantarell will only take 5 years. If the decline in worldwide oil production is slow, we will have time to switch to alternative energy sources. However if it is fast, we might not even have enough time and oil to build the necessary wind turbines and solar panels no matter how motivated we are.

Question #2 is also important. Those with no imagination can only see that in the past we didn't have oil, so life after oil peaks must look like life in the 1800's. However, there is one thing I can say for sure - the world won't move back but must move forward. Yes, people might grow more food locally and cut down on needless consumption, but it will still be more efficient to grow food in areas that have the water, sun and soil and by people that have the most expertise and we will still have some luxury goods produced afar.

Unfortunately, Rubin doesn't try to be an economist and look at the economics of a post-peak world. Instead, he just provides some naive opinions. For instance, he questions whether lithium-ion batteries will be able to stand up to years of driving because, "the one in my wife's laptop couldn't even handle her daily email before catching fire and frying her hard drive." What kind of argument is that?

There is so much other wrong information in the book it is hard to catalog it all. Just regarding electric vehicle's Rubin says:

• "We won't have the spare power capacity to charge them up." Umm, have you heard of off-peak power?
• "The emissions from the power plants would offset all the emissions savings from switching to electric cars." No. Even with pure coal-fired electricity, less CO2 is created.
• "Every day vehicles come out with new power-sucking features such as onboard computers and entertainment systems". Huh? If Rubin did the math, he would discover that these use just a small fraction of the total power required to move the car.

Don't even get me started about his conclusion where he states that a megawatt hydroelectric power turbine would only save a barrel of diesel fuel a day (it would actually save over 70 barrels!).

Okay, even with the disappointment that this economist didn't use much economics in his analysis, I did think this was an entertaining book and would be good for people that aren't familiar with peak oil to get an introduction to the very sobering fact that very soon, oil production will decrease and this will drastically change our way of life.