Ken Knabb on Peak Oil
I recently asked Ken Knabb, an author and radical theorist who is probably best known for his translations of Guy Debord, if he’d be interested in being interviewed for the Diet Soap podcast and was told that he thinks his writings and translations speak for themselves. So, while he has no desire to be interviewed, he did say I could reprint anything I like from his books or his website. I’ll be doing that. Here is a bit from his website on the subject of Peak Oil.
Peak Oil?
[Reply to a Spanish contact (I have slightly corrected his English style): “I write to ask you what you think about ‘peak oil.’ I guess you know what I’m talking about: the end of cheap oil and the collapse of global capitalism. . . . I think we cannot ignore the facts: the market economy is going to collapse in a few years. It seems that history is finally proving right all the people who tried to radically change the roots of society. But as we know, we have not succeeded. Market economy rules the world, and everyone is addicted to its paradigms. But now it will be every year more clear that cytotec buy online this system is built on a big lie which cannot be believed anymore. It seems strange to me that people like you and me, who call themselves ‘revolutionary,’ don’t see the completely new situation we are in. Today more than ever there is the need to go out of the market economy and create and organize new ways of living, without any dependency on the system. It’s futile to try to reform or subvert capitalist society today: this society is going to collapse in a few years. We have to spread the reasons why it is going to collapse (the irrationality of capitalism and the market economy) and quickly organize the alternatives, but now it’s not a matter of our ‘desires’ as it was for the situationists, it’s not only the mediocrity of modern society, now it’s almost a matter of survival! Councilist organization, self-management practice, and autonomous values are today a matter of survival for the whole society! . . . Don’t you think that revolutionary theory has to meet with these facts? I do think we have to check and reform our theories due to this completely new situation we are entering: the global decline of capitalism.”]
I am aware of the peak oil theory, and also of some other views that question that theory. In either case, I question whether our situation is “completely new.” It has been evident for at least the last 50 years that humanity is facing a series of crises of various overlapping kinds (ecological, economic, socio-political, “psycho-spiritual”) that will lead to global ecological disaster if we do not succeed in radically transforming the present social system. The situationists and others referred to this unavoidable choice (see, for example, The Real Split in the International ##15-18, 1972) and Rexroth evoked it even earlier and more often (see, for example, the two articles on ecology at www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sf/1968-69.htm). There were differences of prognosis, some thinking that nuclear war would destroy the world within a decade or two, others that overpopulation would do so within the next half-century, others that the ecological point of no return had already been passed, though its ultimate effects would not be evident till some time later (Rexroth tended toward this latter view).
My point here is not that these earlier prognoses were wrong. (They were mostly on the right track, but other factors entered in to postpone the disasters for a few more decades.) It is to point out that people have a tendency to focus on some particular crisis and to panic — “Alas! This is the ultimate threat, and it’s coming right away! We must immediately drop everything else to avert it! We’re fighting for our very survival, hence we don’t have time to fight for the quality of our lives!” But as the situationists pointed out, if we merely fight for survival, we remain on the defensive, stuck on the terrain of the system, and thus we will inevitably fail. It is only by fighting for real life — for a truly satisfying, qualitatively different mode of life and society — that we can really challenge the mindlessly destructive forces and tendencies that are leading toward global disaster. As Vaneigem put it, “We can survive only as antisurvivors.” [www.bopsecrets.org/SI/8.basic2.htm #16] I expanded on that point in one of my leaflets 15 years ago:
One of the May 1968 graffiti was: Be realistic, demand the impossible. “Constructive alternatives” within the context of the present social order are at best limited, temporary, ambiguous; they tend to be coopted and become part of the problem. We may be forced to deal with certain urgent issues such as war or environmental threats, but if we accept the system’s own terms and confine ourselves to merely reacting to each new mess produced by it, we will never overcome it. Ultimately we can solve survival issues only by refusing to be blackmailed by them, by aggressively going beyond them to challenge the whole anachronistic social organization of life. Movements that limit themselves to cringing defensive protests will not even achieve the pitiful survival goals they set for themselves. [www.bopsecrets.org/PS/buddhists.htm]
It may be that the peak oil theory is right and we will experience some severe social collapse in the near future. Or it may be that its critics are right and that other factors will mitigate or postpone that collapse for some time (so that it is, say, 30 years away instead of 10). In that case, some other disaster may come first (global warming, the destruction of the oceans, some combination of increased environmental poisoning and/or famines and/or diseases, a chain reaction of wars or of insane fascistic or fundamentalist mass movements, etc.). These and many other crises and potential disasters have been around for many decades. They are indeed serious. We have to address them. But we have to address them all at once, as part of a comprehensive, holistic perspective. This is why I am leery of any tendency to make a fetish out of any one particular crisis. Such notions tend to make people panic and thus ignore other equally important factors. A crude example: if people see peak oil as the problem, they will tend to support some politician who promises to deal with it better than other politicians, even though all these politicians help maintain many other aspects of the system that is ultimately responsible for these crises.
I agree with you that it is important to call attention to these impending crises, but I think that (1) we should not be stuck too exclusively in one prognosis (“The system will collapse in the following way, within the following time frame, due to peak oil”) and (2) we have to be careful not to fall into the trap of our desperation giving rise to simplistic alternatives. When you say: “Today more than ever there is the need to go out of the market economy and create and organize new ways of living, without any dependency on the system,” it sounds like you’re suggesting notions such as going off to create a country commune that raises its own food, etc. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to do that if such projects appeal to you, but I don’t think that such things represent a genuine escape from the system. The system itself, with all its cities and factories etc., must ultimately be dealt with. It will not just neatly collapse, leaving people free to set up nice alternative ecological lifestyles “outside” of it. You are right that it is not enough to just “reform” it. It must be actively buy Without Prescription cheap Ampicillin online and creatively transformed from top to bottom. This is a very complex project, and we may not succeed. But I don’t think that anything less will work. When people fetishize some bad thing (“This is the crucial problem, so urgent that everything else pales by comparison!”) then they tend to rally to some alternative, equally simplistic fetish (“We must all immediately stop driving, raise our own food, form country communes, become vegan . . .”) which buy cialis professional tends to produce a narrow, sectarian, survivalist mentality among a supposedly enlightened minority (“We are doing our part, but all those other clueless people are still living within the system”) while leaving the system free to grind on in its destructive way.
To sum up: I agree that our theories must address these kinds of crises. But I do not agree that these crises are “completely new.” They have been around for some time now, and certain theories, including (in rather different ways) that of the situationists and that of Rexroth, have already addressed them pretty profoundly and explicitly.
Speaking as someone who worked in the oil industry for over a decade (not any more, though I left it out of disgust with the company I was working for, more than out of disgust for the industry as a whole) –
This is a reply more to the “Spanish Contact” than to Ken Knabb, who I think makes some good points. But — the idea of “Peak Oil” is simple: it’s the point at which the proven reserves mapped in a year are not as large as the amount of oil produced in a year, which means that we start on the downward slide of how much is available.
It’s important to realise the role that the concept of “proven reserves” plays, though — these aren’t “reserves we know are there”, these are “reserves we know are there and can get out of the ground with our existing technology.” There have been many years in which proven reserves were expanded not by new discovery, but through the improvement of recovery technology. And recently, proven reserves have expanded once again through the fact that the mineral reserves that were once inaccessible under polar ice have now become accessible due to the loss of polar ice due to, ironically, global warming. (Anyone who hauls out the stupidity of “Polar ice has recovered to 1979 levels” needs to go check the University of Illinois Cryosphere site or the NSIDC; the meme you quote started with a DailyTech article and is flatly false.)
But anyway — even though proven reserves are still expanding through these mechanisms, so are production numbers and demand, and actually, we are right at peak oil =now=. For about the last 9 years, production and proof of reserve have wobbled along about neck-and-neck — some years production has outstripped expansion of proven reserves, some years expansion of proven reserves has outstripped production; but we are no longer in the clearcut situation of expanding our reserves which has existed for over a century, and we should expect to see the drop of reserves from the “oil peak” not within 30 years or so, but within the next handful, if that many. Nevertheless, we will not see a huge drop in *production* for some years after that.
And the second point that I would make is that the assumption that capitalism and the global economy would collapse along with this has been greatly exaggerated.
Peak oil and global climate change are not going to see the collapse of capitalism and global civilisation. Humanity is just a little too robust and stubborn about the systems it likes to use. And think about it; we are omnivorous generalists with an advanced technology, who have colonised every continent, every climate and almost every ecosystem on the planet, permanently changed the face of the planet so that we no longer follow the 10% rule*, and even species like rats and cockroaches are only as successful as they are because they follow us and can exploit the environments we open up for them. The planet will be stripped down to sub-algae before we and our technology disappear. And with that in mind, humans as a whole have *never* voluntarily given up comfort, strength or convenience, and so the collective human intelligence will all be bent towards the preservation of the global economy and technology which gives us the maximum levels of these, at the point that it becomes clear to even the dimmest that these are threatened.
That is not to say that peak oil, climate change, water poverty, overpopulation etc. are not major threats ultimately to -quality- of life — they are already issues in the quality of life of millions, just not as much the rich urban industrialised West which gets first crack at use of all the world’s resources. But people will cling to the systems which brought that quality of life in the first place, and work hard to preserve them. And I think that to an underestimated extent, that will happen, too; the cost we pay for the resources we are overusing will show up in many people’s lives slowly enough and subtly enough that many will be able to blame the issues on something else entirely, and the system of technological capitalism will simply rumble on as people adapt to changed circumstances.
I don’t think that our technology will provide us with magical answers which solve all our problems and keep us from feeling any pain from our poor decision-making of the past and present. And I do think that we will end up feeling the pinch of resources in some unexpected aspects of our quality of life, and to an extent in the global economy. But the people who pay the worst of that price are always going to be the poorest, the urban poor in the West who have the least recource to pay higher prices for necessities, the subsistance farmers and fishermen of Africa, the slum-dwellers and displaced of places like India and China, etc. In short, the people who have no wiggle-room and no cushion to fall back on — and these are the people with the least political voice of any. They will pay the worst of any price first and most, and while that will inevitably translate to pinch and inconvenience for richer populations eventually, it gives us decades in which to find other ways to preserve the system which benefits the richer populations. So to sum up, no, don’t count on the collapse of capitalism being some inevitable outgrowth of global crises, especially of little old peak oil by itself.
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*(The “10% rule”, in ecology, is the rule of thumb that for any given species about 10% of the biomass in its surroundings will be edible to it, and about 10% of the biomass in its surroundings will be trying to eat it. Humans haven’t played by that rule since we discovered agriculture and started building cities.)
Luna, your confidence in human exceptionalism reminds me of the pervasive American exceptionalism out there. Without explaining how we’re going to survive Global Warming and Peak Oil it just sounds like whistling past the graveyard to me.
Hi,
Thank you! I would now go on this blog every day!
Thanks
Tania
It isn’t “confidence in human exceptionalism”, it’s simple observation. When I say that we are technologically advanced omnivorous generalists who have colonised more corners of the planet than any other single species (except possibly those who rode in on our coattails), can you point out to me what part of this is false? If this is the part that you take exception to, then I want detail, exactly how am I wrong?
When I point out what “peak oil” really means, and point out that it doesn’t mean that production will suddenly cease, what part of this do you disagree with, and why, and what is your evidence for this?
When I say that large groups of people will never voluntarily give up a system which has given them comfort and the ability to do many things that we cannot do with our bodies alone, can you tell me what part of that statement is false?
When I point out that the world’s poor and powerless are going to pay more of a price, and pay it earlier, for our overconsumption of resources than the richer industrialised Western populations, do you think this is false, and why?
When I say that eventually what hits them will hit us, but slower and less and it buys us time to switch to new resources while maintaining the system which brought us comfort in the first place, do you think THAT is false, and if so, why? What is your evidence that your reading of it is better than mine? (Please note, I am not advocating this as *right*, I’m just pointing out that this is how the world works; African populations are already suffering from the fact that European fleets are depleting its fisheries, for example. WE can afford fish suppers, they turn to bushmeat, with a concomitant loss of biodiversity and an influx of zoonotic diseases. They feel it, we don’t.)
You’re just handwaving it away as something it isn’t, while not engaging in any of the points that I make. I’m not saying this is all right, and I’m not claiming it’s good; but you can look at the world around us right now and -see- it.
Neither peak oil nor climate change actually threaten us with extinction; we are too well-established in too many ecological niches, the rest of the world will go down before us (and already is). The issue is just how MUCH biodiversity we lose, and how badly we will end up impacting our own quality of life before we transfer our needs onto more sustainable resources.
I don’t take exception to the majority of what you wrote, certainly not about the poor paying the price first. The poor always pay the price first. I don’t even take exception to the notion that climate change may extend our ability to produce oil a little bit longer. What I take exception to is the idea that humanity is too robust and clever to go extinct due to global climate change. It seems to me that we may have already reached a tipping point, and we have almost certainly arrived at a moment where we either decide to change what we produce and how we produce it immediately or commit to extinction.
You haven’t convinced me that we won’t go extinct. You wrote, “The rest of the world will go down before [we do].” That may be true. But we can’t actually survive a world stipped of all life but us, can we?
Ok, you seriously think that climate change could push us to -extinction-?!
No, I have to disagree. The worst-case scenario is widespread disruption of agriculture and the loss of all or almost all coastal cities, with the accompanying displacement of huge populations. This would undoubtedly translate into the deaths of hundreds of millions of people through famine and disease, and an impact on the economy and quality of life for all of us. But the widespread disruption of agriculture does not mean the -elimination- of agriculture, plus there are groups which would have the resources to hold onto surviving resources. Look at Easter Island; life got real bad there through overconsumption and getting themselves trapped, but that didn’t mean they all died off. Humans have survived periods and areas of famine, disease and warfare nearly unimaginable by today’s standards. It doesn’t matter if you die at age 30, if you start breeding at age 15. The species continues. And yes, we have adapted to all kinds of conditions. And furthermore, yes, technology DOES continue to develop; we might lose what we have, in terms of technological capacity, but there is certainly no guarantee that we will.
The reason I pointed out that the world would have to be stripped down to its bacteria before we go, was as an illustration of just how -unlikely- this scenario is. What is entirely too likely is rather that we will continue to sacrifice biodiversity in order to grow large monocultures of a handful of staple crops.
Question for you, do these posts support any kind of html tags? Cuz I think formatting is a wonderful thing….
Anyway, on a side note, I’m going away to Egypt for a couple of weeks. I may or may not be around before the 4th of May. I’ll check back after.
I’ve read that the increasing temperatures may reach levels last seen during the Permian period during the last known mass extinction on earth where something like 90% of life on Earth was destroyed. I believe the worst case scenario is the extinction of the human race.
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