What Does "post-Petroleum Living" Mean To You?

We are in a crisis in the evolution of human society.
. . . It’s unique to both human and geologic history.
. . . It has never happened before and
. . . . . . it can’t possibly happen again.

Oil and Natural Gas, More Than Energy
For most people, their chief relationships to oil and natural gas are as a source of energy for home heating and cooking, and fuel for personal vehicles. The very important roll of oil and natural gas in agriculture, beyond the obvious fueling of agricultural machinery, is often unknown. But these raw materials are the base for fertilizers by which to increase crop yields and for pesticides to protect crops from insects and diseases and to control weeds that compete with food plants. The most widely used fertilizers are compounds of ammonia, made from natural gas.
"Ghost Acres"
The "green revolution," which has enabled the Earth to support so many more people now than in the past, is a combination of genetic engineering in plants, mechanization, and the petrochemicals provided by oil and natural gas.
Emphasizing the importance of petrochemicals, Pimentel (1998a), states:
If the fertilizers, partial irrigation [in part provided by oil energy], and pesticides were withdrawn, corn yields, for example, would drop from 130 bushels per acre to about 30 bushels.
However, this is assuming legumes can also be used to provide a little nitrogen. Without the use of legumes, yields would decline to about 16 bushels per acre. This is about the corn yield in developing countries.
The additional hundred bushels has been produced from "ghost acres" which do not exist except in the form of the fertilizers, largely made with natural gas, and oil for pesticides. When the "ghost acres" provided by oil and natural gas no longer exist, the agricultural productivity will be dramatically reduced.
The gains which genetic engineering have made for agriculture will remain, but probably to a lesser degree than we have them at present. Brown and Kane (1994) report that "... fertilizer has been at the center of advances in world food output during the last four decades". But they further observe "... the new varieties [from genetic engineering] have high yields precisely because they are much more responsive to fertilizer than traditional ones." Thus it is doubtful that another great productive "green revolution" leap forward can be made in the future. When less and less fertilizer and petrochemicals will be available, total worldwide agricultural productivity seems certain to fall.
Pimentel and associates have researched the role of energy in agricultural systems, and present significant statistics. Pimentel (1998a) states:
Approximately 90% of the energy in crop production is oil and natural gas. About one-third of the energy is to reduce the labor input from 500 hours per acre to 4 hours per acre in grain production. About two-thirds of the energy is for production, of which about one-third of this is for fertilizers alone.
Fleay (1995), noting that Australia is the world's fourth largest wheat exporting country, discusses the importance of oil and gas in that country's agricultural production, particularly to offset Australia's relatively poor soil. Fleay (1995) states:
Fertilisers have played a key role in offsetting nutrient-poor soils for our agriculture this century... A dramatic twenty-fold increase in nitrogen fertiliser use has occurred since 1965. Fossil fuels are needed for fertiliser manufacture -- 1500-2500 MJ per tonne for superphosphate... However, nitrogen fertilisers use natural gas or petroleum as a feedstock and had an energy intensity of 37,000 MJ per tonne in 1980 (p. 15).
Fleay makes the summary statement:
A very large proportion of the world's population depends for food from high agricultural yields achieved by the use of fossil fuels. The world may only be able to support a population of 3 billion without this input · Petroleum is a key fuel ... The principal grain exporters are the U.S.A., Canada, Europe, Australia and Argentina -- all highly dependent on petroleum-based industrial agriculture.
Grant (1996) notes the critical importance of petrochemicals to farmers, stating:
... the dependence on pesticides and herbicides has risen dramatically because they would lose part or all of their crops if they stopped spraying.
Grant adds:
The 50-year rise of yields is slowing or ending, and the world is paying a high and rising price for the effort to keep raising yields. Countries that have become dependent on high yields should be seeking to escape the squirrel cage of rising demand. Countries that are not yet hooked on commercial fertilizers should recognize their potential limits and costs, and look to controlling demand -- population growth -- rather than hopefully relying on higher food yields to solve their problems.
Agriculture, Petroleum, and Population
Civilization exists on the crops grown in topsoil which around the world averages no more than a foot in depth. It is food or famine for the human race, and humanity has known famine in the past, and knows it now in places. There are now two trends clearly on collision course: First, population is growing at the astounding rate of nearly a quarter of a million a day, and is highly and increasingly dependent on oil and natural gas for food production. Second, the end of petroleum supplies are clearly in sight · Gever and associates (1991) have presented an excellent book-length analysis of the future without oil with special reference to food, and see large problems ahead.
FOSSIL FUEL ALTERNATIVES
We are now living not only on "ghost acres" but also living on "ghost centuries" -- the past centuries, back to more than half a billion years, when petroleum including natural gas formed at various times in the Earth's crust. We are rapidly consuming these resources inherited from eons past, and those centuries, now ghosts of the past, will soon have their petroleum resources exhausted.
We are fortunate to be living in what has been called the Age of the Hydrocarbon Man. This time includes coal, oil, and natural gas, of which oil is the most important. But it will be but a brief bright flash in human history -- at the most perhaps two hundred years. We are already more than half through the time of oil. Natural gas supplies will last only a bit longer.
With the imminent decline of petroleum (including natural gas), the question becomes what are the alternatives? Over the years, and more recently since the oil crises of the 1970s, the search for alternatives to petroleum has increased. A variety of alternatives have been identified, and most have been tried to a greater or lesser extent.

Source: dieoff