California’s Peak Oil Future

by Alice Friedemann

What follows is my attempt to list how things are now, how they’ll be after the age of coal (the endpoint), and what might happen during the transition.

The only way to have more pleasant outcomes is for a wide range of experts in transportation, agriculture, and so on to start planning for the transition now. Because market forces are driving technology towards complexities that can only be supported by fossil fuels, I don’t have a lot of hope that we can start winding the clock back before we’re forced to.

By the way, I don’t believe that there are any alternative energies that can prevent our heading for the endpoint, and the “Limits to Growth” ecological overshoot factors are all converging as well. See www.energyskeptic.com for details.

Now	Future Transition Period	Endpoint
Container ships	Since large ships run on the worst grades of oil, they'll be cruising for a while, but eventually California will return to using coal, and perhaps there'll be nuclear driven container ships.	Sail boats, keel boats, sloops, barges, etc.
Containers unloaded to trucks and trains	Containers and container ships acetylene torched and carved into smaller boats. Containers give way to bulk cargo at very long piers to get cargo throughput and prevent traffic jams	Bulk cargo unloaded at many mile long piers by longshoremen.
Trucks	As oil shocks and shortages grow more frequent and longer, agriculture gets whatever it needs to keep things going. As time passes, fewer trucks will have fuel, and will be replaced by smaller vehicles, culminating in mainly bicyclists hauling cargo to the nearest rail or river.	As people grow fewer in number, the land to support horses, mules, and oxen will become available, and large animals will again be used to pull produce wagons and do other farm work.
Trains	Trains will last as long as there's coal. Since coal will only last 50 years if we turn to it for an energy source, it doesn't make sense to build more railroad infrastructure.	Having horses and mules pull carts on rails might make sense once rubber is gone or in short supply, since iron wheels rip up concrete and asphalt roads.
Inland Waterways	Existing irrigation canals made navigable by small boats, perhaps even more canals built. Getting sediment and invasive plants like hyacinth out will be a problem as the task becomes manual and chemical plant control is no longer possible	Heavy dependence on rivers and canals. Perhaps invasive plants can be used to made mulch. They must be gotten out because they're a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Malaria was once endemic in CA.
Global Agriculture. The USA imports more than half its food now.	Increasing localization, less California produce leaves the state, fruit and veggies replaced by grain, which lasts longer and stores well. Global trade will be reduced but not go away.	Local agriculture, people living near estuaries and along major rivers will enjoy the most diverse food.
Fertilizer and pesticides	Natural gas fertilizers and pesticides will be around for awhile, either imported or made from coal, making the required transition to organic farming that much harder. But other factors may limit agriculture before fertilizers and pesticides run out, i.e. a lack of phosphorous, water, and not enough topsoil.	Composting, mulching, legumes (nitrogen fixing crops), bringing back human and animal waste from towns and cities to the country. Basically, back to the 13th century. But far less hardship during the decline if the modern farming methods of Salatin, Jeavons, and permaculture techniques adopted now.
Monoculture	Farmers forced to grow diverse crops to control insects and diseases no longer held in check with chemicals. Possible famines as some variety of a crop succumbs to a pest (a danger even now, i.e. 96% of potatoes grown are Russet).	Diversified crops.
Hybrid and GMO seeds	Green Revolution crops will continue to be grown, but if ever there were a "peak oil" cause, it should be to hasten the return to organic crops, because green revolution crops don't produce enough compost, have only a few varieties, are designed to resist herbicides, don't breed true so the farmers have to buy seed every year, etc.	Farmers forced to use organic seed, since hybrid and GMO seeds not available. The later the transition, the more likely there are to be famines, since there is very little organic seed available now, this needs to be ramped up ASAP.
Cheap oil	As oil becomes very expensive, the public demands that something be done, and huge Biomass farms receive even more taxpayer money (they're already getting billions of dollars) and a large share of the remaining fossil fuels to create ethanol as people grow desperate for solutions.	Corporate ethanol is a net energy loser and fails once no more taxpayer subsidies arrive. But ADM and other grain merchants become the next ruling class because they can make moonshine more cheaply than anyone else. Large landowners use alcohol to pay their farm workers.
Stable weather	Extreme droughts, floods, and storms will make crop production unpredictable (it's already true, but will be orders of magnitude worse as time goes on)	Unstable weather will lead to a grain-based society
Peace	War: crops and fuel diverted to armies overseas. Civil war: crops and fuel diverted to local militia. Civil disorder: crops and fuel diverted to local mafia and police.	Endless war: back to the eternal skirmishes, sneak attacks, and occasional battles that went on since we became homo sapiens (see LeBlanc's Constant Battles)
Central valley not under water	1) As extreme weather / global warming increase, all climate models for California show less rainfall and snow, plus early sudden snow melt and massive flooding, which will take out the levee system in the delta and wreck the drinking water for 20 million people. 2) rising sea levels will further inundate the central valley, much of which is only one foot above sea level now, and create an inland sea.	Uncontrollable severe floods will rage along the main rivers, less water during the prime crop growing season will greatly reduce the amount of food grown.
Year round crops in much of the state from snow-melt water and petrochemical farming.	Global warming means there will be less water, and it won't be available year-round at the optimum time for growing crops, as global warming melts snow early. There will be 30 to 70% less snow. Increasing temperatures will make crops transpire more, which means crops will need even more water in the future than they do now. Petrochemicals will eventually be unavailable, leaving crops wide-open for insects to devour and the soil will be depleted of nutrition and structure, unable to grow much.	Food production will decline drastically. For example, in 1900 California farmers grew 27.4 bushels of corn per acre. Petrochemically farmed corn produces 170 bushels with hybrid and GMO seeds. At a minimum, food production will drop 84% back to 27.4 bushels. If we can only grow 9 bushels of corn because we can only grow corn one-third of the year, then production of corn will drop even more.
The average American spends 14% of their budget on food.	In cities orders of magnitude more densely populated than in 1900, there is very little ground for people to grow victory gardens in California. The soil that is available is compacted, too steep or rocky, shaded by buildings, lacking in water, and so on. In 1900, Americans on average spent 40% of their incomes on food.	As energy shocks and shortages make transport of food to cities difficult, people will stockpile goods, barter, trade favors, raid other people's homes, or pay whatever price it takes to buy food. Perhaps 80% of their salary, since they’ll be unable to grow much of their own food.
33 million people in California	200 million as desperate people in hot and cold regions from all over the world seek refuge. People will also try to get to California to be in a place where one-third of the USA's food is grown and is warm. Third-world citizens are far more likely to work hard without complaint as field workers and have agricultural experience, making it hard for U.S. citizens to find work harvesting crops.	3 million people: some of the central valley will be under water, the soil won't grow crops as well due to erosion, salinization, pollution from heavy metals, soil compaction, soil nutrition depletion, and lack of water -- windmills can only pull water up from 20 feet or less. There are other Liebig minimums that will get us eventually, i.e there are about 300 years left of phosphorous.
One percent of the population farmers	Small family farms or feudalism? In California, feudalism if the future repeats the past. There has never been a time when California had small family farms, or when workers weren't cruelly exploited. There are more large corporate farms here than any other state.	90 percent farmers. If people wake up and exert political pressure now, the state will buy large farms and split them up into small family farms. Otherwise many people will become farmworkers to stay alive.
300 million people in the United States.	Malthus finally gets some respect: famine, war, and pestilence reduce our numbers back to what can be supported without fossil fuels. The Chinese are likely to invade the west coast with ships built from billions of tons of scrap metal we've sent them in exchange for WalMart trinkets.	Pimentel estimates the carrying capacity of the USA without fossil fuels is 100 million people. Even fewer if extreme weather turns out as John Atcheson, James Lovelock, and Eugene Linden have written.
6.5 billion world population	Destruction of fisheries, topsoil, depletion of water, pollution of water, acidic oceans, extreme weather, increased UV radiation, anti-biotic resistant diseases, war, famine, droughts, floods, etc.	500,000 people world-wide at best, extinction if we burn and liquefy coal to make up for oil shortages due to methane hydrate release.