Fossil Fuel and the Heavens

Oil has primed the pumps of industrial civilization for a little more than 100 years. It has brought tremendous material progress and huge increases in wealth. It has also caused much damage. Not the least to the environment above and around us—to our air and atmosphere.

The US sits on the largest coal deposits in the world. Since the global instability after September 11, the US coal industry has gained support in Washington to increase production. Some experts even claim that these environmentally dirty deposits will last for 300 years. However, new research by Geologist Craig Hatfield shows that reserves would only last for about 64 years. Hatfield also notes that a ton of coal will yield little fuel to keep America’s SUVs running—only 5.5 barrels of crude per ton. In comparison, it would take two tons of tar sand to produce one barrel of oil.

On a global scale, it is estimated that these dirty fuels constitute one-third of the world’s total oil and gas reserves. But their use, however, would be costly to the global environment. Increased water use that would help increase water shortages and migration of sludge pollution in soil and groundwater, are just some of the environmental problems associated with mining and processing of tar sand and heavy oil.

Many environmental experts believe our atmosphere, and thus our climate, could become our worst calamity. Synthetic oil production from oil shale results in 39 percent more CO2 emissions than from producing crude oil. Producing the same from coal, results in 72 percent more CO2 emissions.

Worldwide annual emissions of carbon dioxide are expected to increase by 3.5 billion tons, or 50 percent, by the year 2020, according to Randy Broiles, an executive for ExxonMobil Corp. He also projects that global energy use will rise by 40 percent as the world population increases and economies grow. The use of such fuels will result in the speeding up of global warming. Fossil fuel civilization will be under airborne attack. Global warming may slowly cook us alive from above. Industrial society’s greatest asset will thus become its greatest threat.

Fossil Fuel and the Earth

We are literally eating fossil fuels. So proclaims Dale Allen Pheiffer, a science writer for From the Wilderness Publications. “However,” he writes, “due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss.” Jeremy Rifkin agrees. According to him, “modern agriculture has been the least productive form of agriculture in history.” (page 157) From a sustainable energy standpoint, that is.

The Green Revolution, with its enormous increases in the use of pesticides and fertilizers, resulted in a tremendous amount of food available for human consumption. However, the majority of energy it took to produce that extra food came from fossil fuels. Modern agriculture is so wasteful, in fact, that a modern, high-tech can of corn contains ten times less calories than it takes to produce. While a can of corn contains 270 calories, it takes a Mid-western farmer 2,790 calories of fossil fuel to power the machinery, produce the fertilizers and the pesticides to get that can of corn to the supermarket.

Ironically, the Green Revolution is not only bankrupt as an energy user, and therefore unsustainable, its enormous increase in production has not come close to fulfilling its promise: to alleviate world hunger. The Green Revolution’s supporters maintain, of course, that poverty and hunger is caused by the failure of traditional agriculture in the third world. But according to Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins, the Green Revolution has instead destroyed the very foundation needed to create balance between population, local economies, and natural resources in the first place. So, while the Green Revolution increased the total availability of food in the world, modern society has failed to address the unequal access to food and food-producing resources. It is therefore unlikely that the anticipated Second Green Revolution—with its combined increase of fossil fuel agriculture and bio-technology—will do much better to alleviate hunger, decrease our dependency on fossil fuels, and to safeguard the environment.

The increased use of artificial fertilizer and pesticides has had tremendous negative effects on the environment. It depletes the native soil of nutrition and vital organisms and causes pesticide runoff into the groundwater. It is estimated that nitrite pollution caused by overuse of fertilizer now accounts for half of our water pollution. (page158)

In terms of energy use, one of the worst offenders of modern industrial farming is cattle production. Today, one-third of the world’s agricultural land has been converted from growing grain and vegetables to growing feed grain for cattle and other livestock. It takes about 260 gallons of fossil fuel to feed a family of four meat eaters annually. When that fuel is burned, it releases as much CO2 into the atmosphere as an average car releases in 6 months. (page 160)

So, as modern food consumers, we are literally gulping down fossil fuels by the gallons. In 1994, it took 400 gallons of oil annually to feed each American. Of that total, 31 percent was used to manufacture fertilizer, 19 percent went to the operation of field machinery, 16 percent for transportation, 13 percent for irrigation, and the rest for pesticide production, crop drying and to feed livestock.

Thus, if we consumed a largely vegetarian diet, transformed our highly centralized, fossil-fuel-dependent agricultural complex into a more sustainable and localized form of agriculture, we could easily cut down the fossil fuel consumed by food production in half. Instead of eating fossil fuels, we need to start consuming renewable energy from the sun.

The Ecology of Energy

The earth is a living organism. There is a symbiotic relationship between the flora and fauna of the earth and the atmosphere. This realization, although still controversial, is perhaps the most important scientific breakthrough of our time. This theory was first introduced in the book Biosfera in 1926 by Vladimir Vernadsky, and more recently expanded upon by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the form of the Gaia hypothesis. They argued that the earth is a self-regulating living organism. Although this insight rings deeply true to many of us, it has been difficult for reductionist scientists to accept such a holistic concept of the earth.

One of the key insights to the Gaian theory is the relationship between oxygen and methane. When the oxygen in the atmosphere rise above a tolerable level, microscopic bacteria are “miraculously” triggered to start producing more methane. The increased methane is absorbed into the atmosphere, reducing the oxygen content until a steady balance is again reached. This constant feedback loop between small living creatures and the geochemical content and cycles act in an intricate union. This organic amalgamation is what maintains the Earth’s climate and environment as well as preserving the earth’s life. Regrettably, the massive increase in the burning of fossil fuel has now become a direct threat to this living organism.

The earth is also a finite organism, receiving its energy to create life through photosynthesis from the sun. Fossil fuels are a byproduct of photosynthesis. Over a hundred millions years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs, dead plant and animal matters decomposed and were deposited under deep layers of earth. These prehistoric basins, on land and in shallow waters, are what we today exploit to fuel our cars and homes with. But, as Hubbart’ curve pointed out, these deposits are quite finite, it is just a matter of time before we will run out of this precious black gold. This process of entropy is called the second law of thermodynamics, another important breakthrough of modern science.

The first law of thermodynamics states that all energy in the universe is constant. The second law states that all energy moves in one direction, from usable to unusable. If our use of energy is solely based on converting stored energy from the earth—whether coal, oil, or wood—the second law of thermodynamics will apply. The wood shortages of Middle Age Europe and the shortages of agricultural land during the Roman Empire are apt proofs of the increased entropy created when this law is ignored.

But what about Gaia, the living organism we live and breathe on? Does it not maintain a high level of energy, and does it not seem to defy the second law of thermodynamics and of entropy? Science teaches us that the laws of thermodynamics only apply within a thermodynamically "closed" system, in which no free energy can enter from outside the system. Whether the universe itself, for instance, is a thermodynamically closed system, is up for debate. Most scientists believe it is, and so its entropy inevitably increases. But according to Eastern mysticism, the “sun” that supplies the universe with free energy and thus ensures that it will never run down, only change its form, is Consciousness—the source of all energy, life and evolution.

Life on earth, however, is surely not a thermodynamically closed system--it is constantly receiving free energy in the form of sunlight and solar energy. Life on earth is capable of channeling this free energy to do work and thus to decrease entropy and actually move from disorder to a higher state of organization.

The evolution of life on earth does not violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics--it merely uses available free energy (the sun) to delay the inevitable thermal death of the solar system.

While the earth is using free energy from the sun to decrease its entropy, the solar system as a whole is experiencing increased entropy, and will inevitably die out as the sun uses up all its free energy and reaches heat death. But that will take a few billion years, quite a bit longer time than it will take to deplete the earth of fossil fuels.

Thus an alternative energy plan must, in part, utilize the sun’s free energy. Whenever that is not possible, we must utilize low entropy energy sources, such as hydroelectricity, geo-thermal energy, methane gas, ethanol, etc. In theory, if it was possible to tap into the core of the earth, we could have an unlimited supply of energy. Maybe there are other ways of supplying earth with unlimited energy, truly unlimited energy? Some scientists believe so, and they are in fact attempting to tap directly into consciousness itself and thus create zero sum energy.

The Ethics of Energy

Fossil fuels are high entropy energy sources. Their time on Hubbart’s curve is just about up. The case has been scientifically made. There is also an ethical dimension to this realization. The environmental crisis and globalization has made us painfully aware that our planet is a limited place, and, if we are to survive, we better share its resources. Those who realize this have grown from ethnocentrism and geocentrism to a worldcentric worldview. This is the pinnacle of our ethical worldview: this planet belongs to all of us—not just people, but plants and animals as well, and, if we are to survive and thrive together, we need to share and use the planet’s energy resources in a sustainable way for one and all.

As David Fleming writes, “In the heat of the coming oil shock, [these] Green ideals will be forged into hard economic truths, as the energy crisis devastates the global market.” In order to survive this predicament, we need to start using low entropy alternatives. We need to start depending on renewable energy. In fact, we should have started yesterday—no, long before yesterday.

Even though it is late, and the stakes are higher than ever before in human history, we have some advantages that people before us did not have.

For the ancient Romans, the end-time came at around 600 AD. The slow but brutal force of entropy, in the form of deforested land, eroded soil, and impoverished urban and rural areas played a large role in crushing this mighty empire into environmental, economic, and political defeat. Many experts believe that the Mayans experienced severe environmental limitations when their empire fell as well. And, during the Middle Ages, Europe suffered greatly due to lack of timber for fuel and for construction. Our ancient forefathers did not know what we know today—that the earth, our precious Gaia, is a small green island with limited physical resources. Neither did they have the eco-scientific insights and the eco-ethical values that are becoming more and more global in scope today.