The Crash Course
Chris Martenson has produced THE BEST presentation that links the economy, energy, and the environment, what he calls The Three “E”s. I promote it every chance I get. The entire presentation is hosted on YouTube here. I urge you to watch it in its entirety. The Crash Course has radically changed the way I think about the economy and oil.
I first read about peak oil sometime around 1988. A gallon of unleaded gasoline cost less than 99 cents back then. Peak oil was promptly forgotten for 10 years. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a series of mega mergers in the oil industry made me think about peak oil once again. Exxon and Mobile, Chevron and Texaco, Conoco and Phillips, etc. But oil prices were still very low. So this concern was once again put on the back burner. By 2005, peak oil can no longer by ignored. It has taken 15+ years for me to take this issue seriously. Now, it is at the center of every major decision I make.
Bingham Canyong Mine, Utah
Peak Oil is a big problem. Chris has three chapters dedicated to the subject (Chapter 17a, 17b, and 17c). For me, the most important chapter is Chapter 18: Environment Data. Chris talks about coal. The coal industry will tell you that there is enough coal to last us 200 years. What they do not tell you is that production of high grade anthracite coal has already peaked. Anthracite coal has the highest energy content. What we are mining is mostly bituminous and sub-bituminous coal. We have to burn more of this lower grade coal to produce the same energy content as anthracite coal. The same story is true for copper, gold, and many other base metals. Ore concentration of metals has been on a steady decline. Just like coal, we must extract an ever larger amount of rock to produce the same amount of the metal. Bingham Canyon Mine was not always this big and deep. It became that way because copper ore concentration has been going down and more rocks must be excavated in order to get to the ever decreasing amount of copper. And of course, it takes oil to mine copper. The more rocks we have to excavate, the more diesel fuel we have to burn. Can this kind of mining operation be sustained when oil cost $200 a barrel? What will be the price of copper when a gallon of diesel cost $10? What will be the demand for copper then?
This is Chapter 18 of The Crash Course.