I AM A BIT SHOCKED (though I probably shouldn’t be) that the reality of Peak Oil is still up for debate.  Seriously?

Color me perplexed.  What do people think the phrase “non-renewable” means, then?  We were taught this in grade school — I remember listing renewable and non-renewable resources on a test.  Oil and gas were on the non-renewable side, if I recall correctly.  Have we so divorced ourselves from our own intellectual capabilities that we are unable to apply reason to the obvious meaning of “non-renewable” and connect it to the natural and inevitable conclusion of peak oil production?  How did this happen?

Kunstler discusses this in The Long Emergency, and sometimes I agree with him, and sometimes I wonder.  He says “I do not believe that the general ignorance about the coming catastrophic end of the cheap-oil era is the product of a conspiracy, either on the part of business or government or news media.  Mostly it is a matter of cultural inertia, aggravated by collective delusion, nursed in the growth medium of comfort and complacency.”  (p. 26)  I don’t think this tells the whole story.  I also spend a bit of time with Noam Chomsky now and again, and he’s pretty persuasive that the elites are working it out without the rest of us.  He argues that there are three rough classes of citizens in society — the elites, who wield the real power;  the bureaucracy, who serve the interests of real power and must be properly indoctrinated to do so (usually in the best schools money can buy); and everyone else — the “bewildered herd” — who must be distracted lest we rampage out of control. (Media Control:  The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, pp. 18-19)  Chomksy writes that propaganda can be used to “manufacture consent” in a democracy, in order to “bring about agreement on the part of the public for things that they didn’t want…” (p. 15)  I see the logic of this side of the argument too, but I don’t want to believe it.

I don’t doubt that it’s easier for the powers-that-be to manage things if we’re all busy watching zombie apocalypse TV and not thinking much of anything.  But I don’t see a lot of support from friends and family, either, when it comes to taking some kind of action.  They’re pretty comfortable with the way things are.  They don’t want to talk about things like climate change or peak oil.  Just shut up, watch the show (who’re the zombies, again?) and eat your turkey. (We don’t go to a lot of family events these days.  I don’t know why.)  Anyhow, it seems pretty “consenting” from my perspective, manufactured or not.  Or maybe it’s not consent, but simply content.  There’s no pressing motivation to change.  Everything’s been okay for thirty or forty or fiftyyears now.  As above, so below.  And if anything bad happens, well, technology will save us.  What, me worry?

Should we be preparing for Peak Oil?  Of course we should.  It takes the work of five minutes to turn off the TV, get off the couch and take a look in the cupboard.  Where’d all that food come from?  China?  Mexico?  Iowa? Anyplace walk-able?  Nope.  A couple more minutes of reflection would net most people the realization that starvation is only a couple of freight truck breakdowns away.  It does not matter if you can walk to the grocery store if there are no groceries in it when you get there.  “That’s okay,” the contented, confused couch-creature will say, “I’ll just plant a garden.  Now, where do you get seeds?  I know!  I will put them on my Christmas list.  It’s already December.”

We have built all of our systems (economic, social, political, technological, cultural) on a  very oily house of cards, based on the somewhat erroneous assumption that we will just shrug, and go back to the old ways when the poker party’s finally over.  We might have done it, too.  Unfortunately, climate change is about to trump that card.  Extreme, unpredictable weather events are not conducive to agriculture, whether it’s backyard food production or wholesale full-on mono-cropping.  I’ll see that climate change, and I’ll bet you some rhubarb and a package of tomato seeds that most people don’t know how or when to plant either of them, or how to fertilize, or when to harvest.  I’d raise that with something, but I think I’d just rather call peak oil, if you don’t mind.  I’m maxed.

I just wish I knew who’s got the aces.

Milan Boers, 2009

“[L]ife on land is utterly dependent on the life… in the ocean.”

Alanna Mitchell, Sea Sick

Some friends dine in a high-end restaurant, never dreaming that the poached wild salmon they are enjoying with gusto may soon be a rare delicacy.  The salmon, caught on the Pacific coast and shipped inland, is smaller than those caught fifty years ago, although this fact is unknown and irrelevant to the diners.  The fisherman who caught the salmon is worried; he is finding it increasingly difficult to catch enough fish to make the payments on his fishing rig. And the adolescent salmon, caught in the open ocean, didn’t travel upstream to the spawning beds with its fellows; its particular genetic code is lost forever to the species.

Yamada Taro

Commercial fishing feeds millions of people each year; many nations depend on seafood as a major source of protein.  Over the past fifty years, technologies and techniques have improved, and the fishing industry now feeds an expanding human population more efficiently than ever before.  The fish we eat are the product of a long and intricate web of marine life, a convoluted food chain beginning with microscopic sea creatures and ending with humans – one of the top predators feasting at the apex of this marvelous chain.

And, like any other chain, when you break the links, it falls apart. Climate change, among other things, threatens those links.

Marine Biodiversity

Steve Canipe, 2009

Biodiversity is an essential part of the marine food chain, knitting it into mesh, the way chainmail interlocks to make a stronger whole. There are three kinds of biodiversity joining marine systems together: genetic diversity, where a species has a high variation of genes within its populations; species diversity, which refers to variety in species interacting within an ecosystem; and ecosystem diversity, describing the wide range of habitats and environments available for species to populate (RSC, 2). Climate change, and especially the warmer temperatures it brings, has far-reaching impacts on all three types of diversity in the ocean.  Projected effects of climate change include warmer waters, ocean acidification from excess carbon entering the system, and altered sea levels (RSC, 3). These factors are changing the composition of the ocean itself, wreaking havoc on cycles and systems that have been in place for millions of years. This alteration of the physical characteristics of the ocean (such as temperature, acidity and salinity) directly threatens its habitats in ways we are still determining (Worm, 787).

Ecosystem diversity underpins both species and genetic variation. Just as terrestrial animals inhabit particular areas, ocean plants and animals are firmly connected to their habitats, despite the huge geographical scope and complexity of the ocean. Plankton, for example, thrives in cold waters at higher latitudes, and warming temperatures can lead to disconnects between plankton and consumers. Earlier or later plankton blooms, or blooms in deeper, cooler water, may mean that juvenile fish larvae or hatchlings can’t access the food they need (RSC, 3), because they are out of synch with food sources at critical stages. Loss of juveniles weakens diversity of the parent species, as well as other creatures that feed on them.

At times, system changes that are adverse for some organisms can prove enormously beneficial to others. A species with typically small population levels in an ecosystem can explode if changes to habitat or predators prove favourable for them, and such invasions edge out more vulnerable populations in the region. Baskin, in “Elbowing out the Natives”, refers to such species as “transformers”, because they can physically alter ecosystems, essentially “rewriting the rules” for other creatures in the community (85). Competition from invaders for food and space forces the natives out, sometimes driving them to extinction (Baskin, 89).

Species biodiversity also directly influences the function and makeup of the ecosystems themselves. Death of a keystone species, such as corals, can cause declines in entire regions. Healthy corals are essential for a reef habitat; without them the foundation of the system disappears, and so does biodiversity. And there is no going back on a reef, at least not quickly:  dead coral structures create a litter of bleached skeletons that turn to “limestone rubble and slime” (Mitchell, 27), conditions hardly conducive to new growth. Corals grow slowly even under optimal conditions, taking years to form a reef. To make matters worse, as Mitchell points out, nearly one-fourth of all marine species that humans use commercially rely on reef ecosystems for some part of their lifecycle (29).  So far, 20% of the world’s reefs have vanished, and half of the remaining reefs are showing signs of distress (Mitchell, 101).

NOAA’s National Ocean Service, 2011

Similar chinks in the armor of diversity are appearing in all of the world’s oceans. A recent report from the Royal Society of Canada on biodiversity in Canadian waters warns that “[a]t some point, cumulative loss of biodiversity will lead to catastrophic ecosystem change.  We don’t know when that tipping point is for marine biodiversity” (RSC 2).

Global Implications

Marine ecosystems are essential for life support services on earth. By various means, marine systems provide planetary carbon storage and oxygen production, and clean water and food supplies for millions of people. Ocean species also benefit from these services, and biodiversity is crucial in maintaining them. Adding yet more links to the chain, biodiversity provides valuable “healthcare” services to ecosystems themselves. In their paper titled “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services”, Worm et al find that biodiversity increases the productivity of ecosystems on a log-linear scale (787). In other words, the more species there are, the healthier the system becomes. The study outlines several important effects of increased diversity, including:

1. provision of a mixed diet from diverse sources – organisms at all trophic levels that consumed a mixed diet showed  increased growth, survival rates and fecundity, and all life processes were optimized
2. increased ecosystem stability – habitats were more resistant to disturbance, and recovered more quickly from disruptive events
3. enhanced efficiency of resource use – species shared resources more effectively
4. increased resistance to species invasion – highly diverse systems were able to control or repel invaders

(Worm et al, 787-788)

Worm et al. also studied systems with reduced diversity in coastal systems. They found that substantial loss of diversity was associated with regional losses of ecosystem services like nursery habitats, water filtration and detoxification, and viable food fishery populations. They conclude that loss of these services poses significant risks for coastal inhabitants (788).

This study concludes that all global fish stocks are in danger of complete collapse by 2048 from loss of marine biodiversity on a global scale (Worm, et al, 788). This prediction has grave implications both for global food security and for the Canadians who depend on commercial fishing for food and employment.

Canadian Implications

Here in Canada we already know how the story goes.  In 1992, the northern cod fishery collapsed. Between thirty and forty thousand people in Atlantic Canada lost their jobs. Estimates on social and financial aid costs put the totals between two and three billion dollars (RSC, 12).  Nineteen years later, the cod fishery still has not recovered (Mitchell, 123; RSC, 12), and yet we pulled $14.3 million worth of this collapsed species out of the Atlantic in 2011, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada (Table: 2011 Atlantic and Pacific Coasts Commercial Landings by Province). This charts a market driven race to extinction; as stocks decline, scarcity drives prices higher, making the species more attractive to commercial fishing. Better technology is soon brought to bear, often in deeper waters, and more time and money are spent catching scarce and elusive targets.  As Mitchell puts it, “[i]t’s a recipe for trying to catch the very last fish” (135).

Canada isn’t the only country badly mismanaging its fisheries; in 2003 Myers and Worm published a study in Nature estimating that more than 90% of the populations of every single large predatory fish species around the globe has vanished in the fifty years since the onset of commercial fishing (282). Changes in Canadian species have been among the greatest recorded worldwide, showing the same 90% decline since the 1960s (RSC, 4).

Looking at the economic implications, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) reports that the commercial fishing industry nets about $2 billion per year of Canada’s gross domestic product (2). Over 2% of the Canadian population is employed by the industry, most living in rural and coastal communities in the Atlantic provinces (DFO, 2, 5).  A further $3.9 billion in 2010 came from exports – Canada is the eighth largest seafood exporter in the world, and it’s our biggest exported food commodity (DFO, 2).

All told, if our commercial fisheries collapse by 2048, as predicted by Worm et al, the Canadian economy will lose nearly $6 billion dollars per year, 2% of the population will face unemployment, and countless jobs will disappear in value-add industries and export businesses. The amount of financial and social aid that may be required to assist those communities hardest hit by the collapse is unknown. The global ecological cost to marine ecosystems is incalculable.

Worm et al. conclude that “marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean’s capacity to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations” (787). But they also say it might not be too late: “available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible” (787).

If it is possible to reverse these trends, we must control our relentless appetite for the fruits of the sea with better fishery management practices, ecosystem conservation and species protection. Fish stocks must be given time to recover from human harvesting to increase biodiversity and give all marine ecosystems resiliency and strength to deal with climate change.

Our position at the top of the food chain won’t matter much if there’s nothing left to eat. If we don’t take action now, kettles of fish, fine or otherwise, may soon be a thing of the past.

References

 Baskin, Y. “Elbowing Out the Natives”.  A Plague of Rats and Rubbervines:  The Growing Threat of Species Invasions.  Washington, DC:  Island Press, 2002: 71-97. Print.

Canada. Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Department of Fish and Oceans (DFO). Canadian Fishing Industry Overview.  Economic Analysis and Statistics. March 2011.  Web. 4 Nov. 2012. http://www.apcfnc.ca/en/fisheries/resources/Aboriginal%20Fisheries%20in%20Canada%20-%20Overview%20-Canadian%20Market%20Trends%20-%20David%20Millette.pdf

– Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Department of Fish and Oceans (DFO). Statistics. Table “2011 Atlantic and Pacific Coasts Commercial Landings by Province”.  2011.  Web.  4 Nov. 2012. http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/stats/commercial/land-debarq/sea-maritimes/s2011pv-eng.htm

Izakson, Orna. “The California Coast:  Marine Migrations and the Collapsing Food Chain.”  Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Climate Change. 2004. Ed. Motavalli, J. New York: Routledge, 2004.  Print.

Mitchell, Alanna.  Sea Sick:  The Global Ocean in Crisis. Toronto:  McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2009.  Print.

Myers RA, Worm B. “Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities”. Nature 423: 280-283. 2003. Web. 6 Nov 2012. http://wormlab.biology.dal.ca/ramweb/papers-total/nature01610_r.pdf

Royal Society of Canada (RSC). Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel.  Hutchings, et al. Sustaining Canada’s Marine Biodiversity:  Responding to the Challenges Posed by Climate Change, Fisheries, and Aquaculture. February 2012.  Web. 02 Nov 2012. http://rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/pdf/RSC_MBD_1_3_25_Twenty-Five_EN_FORMAT.pdf

Worm, Boris, et al., “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services.” Science 314 2006: 787-790.  Web.  DOI: 10.1126/science.1132294. 5 Nov 2012. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/314/5800/787

“If you look back historically at what has caused humanity to make its largest investments in exploration and in transportation, it has been going after resources, whether it’s the Europeans going after the spice routes or the American settlers looking toward the west for gold, oil, timber or land,” Diamandis said.”

(http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/26/company-plans-to-mine-asteroids-orbiting-near-the-earth/)

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FEEL about mining asteroids in space. When I first saw the article proposing this, I thought That’s absolutely absurd, and kept on surfing.

It came back to me in the dead of night, though, during one of those times I  can’t sleep. There’s something inherently flawed in a system that has to go looking for resources off-planet. Have we outpaced globalization already? Already? I think it’s the mindset that bothers me most. The “payoff” (because there always must be one) will be in platinum and rare minerals. Peter Diamandis, the co-founder of the company explains, “…everything we hold of value on Earth – metals, minerals, energy, real estate, water – is in near-infinite quantities in space.”

Everything of value in near-infinite quantities. What a relief. I was starting to worry, a bit. Now I can breathe a sigh of relief as I eat my breakfast.

What I can figure is this:  This company is planning to go out into space, break up a bunch of asteroids, bring the metal back here, and make a whole bunch more cell phones and iPads and cheap toys. Is China ready for this? WalMart?

Imagine what will happen next. With planned obsolescence wholeheartedly built into these wonderful items, a year or two later they will break and end up in landfills (perhaps most folks will kindly recycle them, but I’m not holding my breath), where the metals will leach more poisons into our groundwater, soil and air.

Do we really need to import toxic waste from space now?

On the other hand, part of me rejoices. YES!  Take your earth-eating machines and your loaders and your smelters TOO, PLEASE, along with your staggering greed and unconcern and GET OFF MY PLANET.  I can’t think of a better place for a mining operation than on a barren asteroid a few light years away.  Perhaps the indigenous people at Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea would agree, since they probably won’t be able to drink the water from their rivers for another 290 years or so. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ok_Tedi_environmental_disaster)

(Source: Ok Tedi Mine CMCA Review)

 I thought I’d better check out what’s been happening at the OK Tedi, since last I heard it was fated to close in 2013.  Turns out that the indigenous people are simply tickled pink about it now, and want it to stay open for eleven more years.  On Dec 4, 2012, ABC reported that seven of the nine “community umbrella groups” have signed the extension agreement (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-04/an-ok-tedi-close-to-extending-png-mine/4407924?section=business). 

That’s what ABC is reporting.  I’m wondering what exactly an “umbrella group” is.

The alternative media tells a different story.  Australia’s Green Left site reports that the OK Tedi Mine Impacted Area Association, with over 70,000 members, demanded the immediate closure of the mining operation on November 5, 2012 ( http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/53020) .

It doesn’t look like asteroid mining in space is going to make a difference here on earth anytime soon.  It certainly isn’t going to help the people affected by mining operations.  Maybe they should all get free “out-of-this-world” iPads when they come out, just because we feel so bad.   In fact, they can have mine.