Module B1 Study Book - the Graduate School of the Environment

oil and natural gas, and some coal) will take so much energy to produce
that oil production will decline following the pattern of the small diamonds
in Figure 1, and that not much resource will be left after 2100. Coinciding
with the peak of production is the rising demand for fuel from the developing
world, especially from the 2.3 billion people in India and China. In Beijing
alone 1,000 new cars are licensed each day.18
Prices will rise, but this time the gap between supply and demand will be
real. The gap will first be blamed on the oil producing countries or the oil
companies holding back production in order to raise prices. Compared to
the present, oil production in 2025 may fall by 10-20 %, and naturally, the
distribution of shortfalls will be uneven and will depend on who can afford the
high prices. Conservation is key during this “crisis” period, with replacement
of some of the lost oil with efficient technologies, such as 40-mpg cars. In
the United States, we must begin to modify our lifestyles to reduce energy
consumption. In developing countries, education needs to extend into the
rural areas, the point being made clear to women and men, girls and boys,
that declining oil availability will require small families. Those cultures that
suppress the education and progress of girls and women should seriously
reconsider their core religious values and cultural taboos. Women need to
have major input to this discussion in terms of their position in society, in
areas such as education, marriage contracts, family size, and career choices
outside the family. It is essential that religious leaders ― particularly in
Christianity and Islam ― exert their powerful influence toward making this
happen.
Engineering a “Soft Landing II: The Case for Nuclear Power
as Partial Replacement of some “Lost” Oil
We believe that without nuclear power, energy production will not rise
sufficiently or quickly enough to offset the loss of oil, and that consequently
starvation, war, and disease are likely to decrease the global population far
below what is shown on the graph in Figure 2. Before the discovery of fossil
fuels, the earth had a carrying capacity on the order of one billion people, and
it might very well revert to that level after the age of fossil fuels. Note that
the biofuels (mainly wood) used before the age of oil have in large part been
eliminated or committed to other uses, such as fiber production, or national
forest preserves and parks.
We limit ourselves in this paper to the discussion of nuclear and solar
(including wind) power. These technologies are available now with known
economics and known effects, and they are carbon free after subtracting the
carbon-based energy used in their construction. We are certainly in favor
of all alternative sources of energy, but our caveat about them is that power
generation from solar and wind sources is heavily subsidized by the use of
fossil fuels. Coal is burned to generate the electricity used for manufacturing
of solar panels of aluminum and silicon, and for making steel for wind turbines,
and oil is burned to power the heavy equipment used for their installation.
It takes roughly ten years to repay the pollution generated in building solar
Paper: Ethics in uncertainty 147