Singapore Peak Oil

The Inter-Ministerial Committee on Sustainable Development that was set up in February this year is asking for feedback on how Singapore can continue to be "lively, liveable and sustainable." I urge you to give your feedback to them here:

http://www.sustainablesingapore.gov.sg/

Here's my feedback to them:

Dear Singapore Government,

if you want a permanent long term solution to a sustainable Singapore, please consider the works of ecological economists such as Herman Daly, Brian Czech, and Robert Costanza. Please re-examine the questionable notions that relentless economic and population growth are always essential and favourable to our well-being.

According to some peak oil experts, we have probably reached the peak in global oil production. World net oil exports and production have plateaued since 2005 and according to some estimates will decline sharply from 2012. Peak oil imposes limits to growth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UjvxBqVmgE

I suggest the following:

1. Negative population growth. Please understand that our carrying capacity is limited by food availability. If global oil production declines from 2012 and natural gas after 2020, so will global food production. Considering that we import 90% of our food sources, what will we eat then? We can either choose to reduce our numbers in orderly fashion, or Nature will deal with it unsympathetically.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/6069
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html


2. Intensify efforts to develop solar energy even if they are not currently economically feasible because it will be too late to mitigate the severe consequences if we wait for market price signals. The Hirsch Report states that we need a crash program at least 20 years before the peak to transition smoothly.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf


3. Implement sustainable organic urban farming by learning from the Cubans who successfully overcame their artificial peak oil crisis in the early 1990s after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

http://globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-66172489666918336&hl=en


4. A Steady State Economy: "An economy viewed as a subsystem in dynamic equilibrium with the parent ecosystem / biosphere that sustains it. Quantitative growth is replaced with qualitative development or improvement as the basic goal."

Herman Daly:

'Sustainable development' therefore makes sense for the economy, but only if it is understood as 'development without growth'—i.e., qualitative improvement of a physical economic base that is maintained in a steady state by a throughput of matter-energy that is within the regenerative and assimilative capacities of the ecosystem. Currently the term 'sustainable development' is used as a synonym for the oxymoronic 'sustainable growth.' It must be saved from this perdition.

http://www.steadystate.org/CASSEFAQs.html
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3941
http://dieoff.org/page88.htm
http://www.npg.org/forum_series/steadystate.html
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no-clothes


5. Segregated cycle facilities or bicycle lanes on the roads. Petrol prices and car ownership will become prohibitively expensive in the coming years and getting around on a bicycle is one way to beat the transportation blues besides having to squeeze into our already packed buses and trains during rush hour. It's also a good way to keep fit and to reduce air pollution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bike_path

6. Adopt the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) as a metric of progress and well-being. The GDP as the public policy think tank, Redefining Progress, puts it:

[GDP] is merely a gross tally of products and services bought and sold, with no distinctions between transactions that add to well-being, and those that diminish it. Instead of separating costs from benefits, and productive activities from destructive ones, the GDP assumes that every monetary transaction adds to well-being, by definition

The GPI takes into account more than twenty aspects of our economic lives that the GDP ignores. It includes estimates of the economic contribution of numerous social and environmental factors which the GDP dismisses with an implicit and arbitrary value of zero. It also differentiates between economic transactions that add to well-being and those which diminish it. The GPI then integrates these factors into a composite measure so that the benefits of economic activity can be weighed against the costs.

The GPI is intended to provide citizens and policy-makers with a more accurate barometer of the overall health of the economy, and of how our national condition is changing over time.

http://dieoff.org/page11.htm
http://www.rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine_Progress_Indicator


A truly sustainable Singapore calls for a paradigm shift in our position towards growth. If we don't carry out the necessary steps as suggested above by some scientists and ecological economists, the outcome of our present policies in the years ahead will be calamitous for us as a nation. Stop thinking economically only and start thinking ecologically too.

This video was created by Jay Hanson - creator of www.dieoff.org and www.warsocialism.com. He explains how and why economic growth is limited by declining energy returns (EROEI).

Under a one-for-one scenario, even if the price of oil reaches $5,000 a barrel, it won't make energy-sense to look for oil in the lower 48 because that would consume as much energy as it would recover.

Even if one paid a ton of gold per barrel, one still could not get net energy out of a well that consumes as much as it produces!

The high resolution version can be found here:

http://www.warsocialism.com/limitsToGrowth.htm

YouTube Version

The term "lower 48" in the video refers to the 48 states of the USA in the North American continent - excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

As you watch this video, ask yourself: do our political and business leaders have any inkling of our limits to growth? A casual reading of the newspapers will provide you with some insight to the current zeitgeist - the cultural and intellectual spirit of the times - that growth is imperative and it must not and cannot be stopped. These "growthists" are going to fall flat when they confront declining global oil production and exhaustion of our natural resources.

Darwinian:

I sat down with a friend who works in Saudi Arabia last night and had a long conversation. For obvious reason I cannot revel his name. Also his job does not give him access to production numbers, and certainly not decline rates, so he can only tell me what he has observed in his many years in Saudi.

He says there have been dramatic changes in Saudi in the last few years. He says there has been a massive influx of new employees in ARAMCO. Many of them, he says, are from Venezuela, anti-Chavezites who were fired by Chavez during the strike...

...And here is my assessment, my educated guess, at what is happening in Saudi. I think Saudi is at least 60% depleted and only heroic efforts are keeping them from a steep decline. They have found that they can keep production up by greatly increasing the injection water and poking more holes in their fields. Their new wells are horizontal and therefore suck only from the very top of the reservoir. I believe that Saudi is only a year or two away from hitting a decline wall. Reviving old mothballed fields like Khurais will hold the decline off for awhile but when it hits it will hit with a thud.

I believe that Saudi reserves, as well as well as all other OPEC reserves are grossly exaggerated and that is the bombshell that will rock the world when that fact is finally realized by the mainstream media. (Full Thread)

The problem with the Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) is that they rely too heavily on figures from EIA, CERA and BP without questioning their accuracy. All these sources have proven to be overly optimistic in their oil demand and supply projections and they cite grossly exaggerated oil reserve numbers from OPEC. These dubious sources have been consistently wrong on so many occasions it is surprising they are still quoted on major news networks and regarded as authoritative by government bodies. MTI should be consulting the works and publications of ASPO and TheOilDrum.

CERA's Peak Oil Score Card

Related Link: Energy for [Unsustainable] Growth

Speech by Mr S Iswaran

October 18, 2006

What will the global energy landscape look like in the long term? For one, fossil fuels, such as oil, natural gas and coal will remain the world’s main energy source for the foreseeable future. The US Energy Information Administration, or EIA, estimated that in 2003, 87% of world energy consumption came from oil, natural gas and coal. The EIA projects that in 2030, these three fuels will retain a prominent 86% share of global energy supply. Estimated reserves of fossil fuels are expected to be adequate well beyond 2030. The EIA estimates that oil production will not peak before 2030. World reserves-to-production ratio for natural gas is 67 years, and 180 years for coal. Rising energy prices will also spur more oil and gas exploration and increasingly render unconventional oil, such as tar sands, economically viable. In essence, actual physical reserves of fossil fuels do not appear to be the limiting factor in meeting increasing energy demand in the next few decades. FULL SPEECH

Dr. Larry Haverkamp writes a weekly financial column, AskDrMoney, in the Singapore tabloid The New Paper.

He seems to be aware of peak oil and our limits to growth. It's not often that one finds articles like these in the Singapore papers and even less so in a tabloid. Signs of the times?

May 27, 2008

The problem is demand from developing nations is real while the supply of resources may be more limited than we had thought. For example, there is no way to know if producing countries have all the oil reserves they claim. No Opec nation has ever permitted an independent audit of its oil fields.

Combine increasing demand with decreasing supplies and what do you get?

Disaster. Expect continuously rising prices, not just for oil but other natural resources as well.

What's worse is that higher prices are merely a reflection of resource shortages.

The world's economies need food, fuel and minerals to operate. Even the most clever technology cannot produce output without inputs.

If resources eventually decline to zero in a few generations, output will also fall to zero.

Then, we will revert to subsistence living, like sophisticated cavemen. Call us the Cro-Magnon smarties. Full Article

July 01, 2008

We saw something like this in 1973 and again in 1982. The US was hit with an oil shortfall, which resulted in both recession and inflation, called stagflation. It spread to Singapore and around the world.

In hindsight, it seems overblown, since everything turned out okay. Prices shot up, then they came down. Growth slowed, then it picked up.

Prosperity returned, as it always does. If it didn't, you would have a permanent recession. The notion is so absurd that no economist in their right mind would even consider it. So I will.

In a worse-case scenario, permanent recession hits and each generation becomes poorer than the last. Gross domestic product (GDP) declines continuously. It eventually hits zero and we return to subsistence living, like our cavemen ancestors.

We may be seeing the beginning of that now.

Demand is out-pacing the world's limited supplies, pushing prices higher. Full Article

Dr. Bartlett on "political correctness":

In their writings the scientists identify the cause of the problems (climate change and peak oil) as being growing populations. But their recommendations for solving the problems caused by population growth almost never include the recommendation that we advocate stopping population growth. Political Correctness dictates that we do not address the current problem of overpopulation in the U.S. and the world.

Let’s look at two prominent examples of this political correctness. The book, “An Inconvenient Truth” (1) was published to accompany Al Gore’s wonderful film by the same name. On page 216 Gore writes; “The fundamental relationship between our civilization and the ecological system of the Earth has been utterly and radically transformed by the powerful convergence of three factors. The first is the population explosion…”

It’s clear that Gore understands the role of overpopulation in the genesis of global climate change. The last chapter in the book has the title, “So here’s what you personally can do to help solve the climate crisis.” The list of 36 things starts with “Choose energy-efficient lighting” and runs through an inventory of all of the usual suspects without ever calling for us to address overpopulation! Full Article

It's the same over here in Singapore. Except for the lone voices of Dr. Geh Min, former president of the Singapore Nature Society, and Dr. Linda Lim, professor at Michigan University, I do not recall hearing or reading anything from Singapore scientists, academics or politicians about restraining population growth from an ecological perspective. Why are they not speaking up? Are they being "politically correct"?

With our per-capita energy consumption already among the world's highest, policies such as targeting a further 50 per cent increase in our population and resource-wasting practices like the high turnover of buildings - through collective sales, for example - need to be re-thought. Full Article

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of oil extraction is reached.

Peak water? Just substitute "freshwater" for "oil" above.

The Ogallala Aquifer in the United States is one of the largest reservoirs of fossil water in the world. This is water that has been accumulated and trapped underground for thousands and perhaps even millions of years. Part of the aquifer lies beneath the Grain Belt of the United States. Unfortunately, it is being rapidly depleted. The importance of this aquifer to agriculture can hardly be exaggerated.

America is the world's largest exporter of soybeans, corn and wheat. Water shortages in the Grain Belt due to excessive water mining of aquifers can only mean disaster for global food supplies.

U.S. faces era of water scarcity

July 9, 2008

While agriculture in the Colorado Basin faces shortages, farmers to the east in the high plains — tapping the Ogallala Aquifer — have progressively seen their wells dry up. The aquifer is the largest in the United States and sees a depletion rate of some 12 billion cubic meters a year, a quantity equivalent to 18 times the annual flow of the Colorado River. Since pumping started in the 1940s, Ogallala water levels have dropped by more than 100 feet (30 meters) in some areas. Full Report

Global population growth is looming as a bigger threat to the world's food production and water supplies than climate change, a leading scientist says.

Speaking at a CSIRO public lecture in Canberra yesterday, UNESCO's chief of sustainable water resources development, Professor Shahbaz Khan, said overpopulation's impacts were potentially more economically, socially and environmentally destructive than those of climate change.

''Climate change is one of a number of stresses we're facing, but it's overshadowed by global population growth and the amount of water, land and energy needed to grow food to meet the projected increase in population. We are facing a world population crisis.'' REPORT

Encouraging to hear this. Now, if only more high-level civil servants in the Singapore government would echo his message and pay greater attention to the overpopulation problem.

Juxtapose these two statements.

Lee Kuan Yew:

Mr Lee told his 800-strong audience of industry players and economists that he was convinced that Singapore was heading into its most promising decade yet.

"We're going to move into a new plateau, new platform. You can see it visibly before your eyes. In 5 years, it will be good. In 10 years, wonderful," he said. LINK

Energy Watch Group:

The major result from this analysis is that world oil production has peaked in 2006. Production will start to decline at a rate of several percent per year. By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame.

The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life.

...The now beginning transition period probably has its own rules which are valid only during this phase. Things might happen which we never experienced before and which we may never experience again once this transition period has ended. Our way of dealing with energy issues probably will have to change fundamentally. LINK

I'm laughing and crying at the same time; laughing because both statements are diametrically opposed and crying because the minister appears to be detached from the physical world that we live in.

I like the way David Lamb put it:

"We were deeply concerned that there may not be enough oil to go around,'' he said.

Having a strong economy would not protect Australia from a global oil shortage.

"It's like having a pocket full of money and going into a shop with empty shelves.

"Our lifestyle is totally dependent on cheap oil.'' Report

Likewise, Singaporeans ought to ask themselves, what can the billions in our reserves do for us in a post-peak world with empty shelves? At some point in the future, well within my lifetime, delivery of oil and food are going to stop coming in. Won't it be better to now spend the money on sustainability projects like solar energy and urban farming to safeguard our future? Why spend substantial amounts of money investing in banks with toxic debt investments like Citigroup and UBS? What in the world is the government thinking? This is regrettable and deplorable.

Excerpt from Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, pp. 198-200. This book is available for borrowing at the Singapre National Library.

From 1970 to 1990, the total number of hungry people fell by 16 percent, a decrease typically credited to the green revolution. However, the largest drop occurred in communist China, beyond the reach of the green revolution. The number of hungry Chinese fell by more than 50 percent, from more than 400 million to under 200 million. Excluding China, the number of hungry people increased by more than 10 percent. The effectiveness of the land redistribution of the Chinese Revolution at reducing hunger shows the importance of economic and cultural factors in fighting hunger. However we view Malthusian ideas, population growth remains critical – outside of China, increased population more than compensated for the tremendous growth in agricultural production during the green revolution.

Another key reason why the green revolution did not end world hunger is that increased crop yields depended on intensive fertilizer applications that the poorest farmers could not afford. Higher yields can be more profitable to farmers who can afford the new methods, but only if crop prices cover increased costs for fertilizers, pesticides, and machinery. In third world countries the price of outlays for fertilizers and pesticides increased faster than green revolution crop yields. If the poor can’t afford to buy food, increased harvests won’t feed them.

More ominously, the green revolution’s new seeds increased third-world dependence on fertilizers and petroleum. In India, agricultural output per ton of fertilizer fell by two-thirds while fertilizer use increased sixfold. In West Java a two-thirds jump in outlays for fertilizer and pesticides swallowed up profits from the resulting one-quarter increase in crop yields in the 1980s. Across Asia fertilizer use grew three to forty times faster than rice yields. Since the 1980s falling Asian crop yields are thought to reflect soil degradation from increasingly intensive irrigation and fertilizer use.

Without cheap fertilizers – and the cheap oil used to make them – this productivity cannot be sustained. As oil prices continue climbing this century, this cycle may stall with disastrous consequences. We burned more than a trillion barrels of oil over the past two decades. That’s eighty million barrels a day – enough to stack to the moon and back two thousand times. Making oil requires a specific series of geologic accidents over inconceivable amounts of time…It takes millions of years to produce a barrel of oil; we use millions of barrels a day. There is no question that we will run out of oil – the only question is when.

Estimates for when petroleum production will peak range from before 2020 to about 2040. Since such estimates do not include political or environmental constraints, some experts believe that the peak in world oil production is already at hand… At present, agriculture consumes 30 percent of our oil use. As supplies dwindle, oil and natural gas will become too valuable to use for fertilizer production. Petroleum-based industrial agriculture will end sometime later this century.

Video Link

BBC's Around the World in 80 Gardens

Mr Mah said that the AVA was encouraging imports from as many countries as possible to ensure Singapore is not too reliant on one source. Report

We can diversify our food sources as much as we want, but the question is how will the food get here? Oil accounts for more than 95% of the energy used for global transportation. How are we able to transport the food produced hundreds and thousands of miles away to our dinner plates in the face of future oil scarcity?

With oil prices now accounting for almost half of total freight costs, it should come as no surprise that soaring oil prices have translated directly into soaring transport costs (Chart 1). Over the last three years, every one dollar rise in world oil prices has fed directly into a 1% rise in transport costs.

The last thirty years have seen an unprecedented growth in world trade—a phenomenon widely credited with providing the catalyst for the rapid industrialization of economies like China and India. In turn, the reduction in tariffs and non-tariff barriers over decades of multilateral trade negotiations was facilitated by the surge in global trade volumes. But in a world of triple-digit oil prices, soaring transport costs, not tariff barriers, pose the greatest challenge to trade.

Higher energy costs translate directly into higher shipping costs. At today’s oil prices, every 10% increase in trip distance translates into a 4.5% increase in transport costs. The duration of a typical sea voyage from China to North America is four weeks. Including inland costs, shipping a standard 40-foot container from Shanghai to the US eastern seaboard now costs $8,000. In 2000, when oil prices were $20 per barrel, it cost only $3,000 to ship the same container. But at $200 per barrel, it will soon cost $15,000 in transport costs to ship from China to the US eastern seaboard.

In a world of triple-digit oil prices, distance costs money. And while trade liberalization and technology may have flattened the world, rising transport prices will once again make it rounder.

Source: Will Soaring Transport Costs Reverse Globalization? pp.4-7 (PDF File)

Where is Singapore's White Paper on Peak Oil? Nonexistent.

Where is Singapore's Peak Oil Task Force? Nonexistent.

On the contrary, the Ministry of Trade and Industry seems to think that peak oil will not be around for the next two to three decades. They also wrongly assume that with "more exploration and improvements in extraction technologies, substantial new reserves will be added."

I never cease to be amazed at the ignorance and delusional beliefs of some of our top-level public servants when it comes to the subject of Singapore's population or carrying capacity. You will find in today's Straits Times (12 July'08), Insight, p. S8, a report about Singapore's former chief statistician, Dr Paul Cheung, and his views on Singapore's population. Here's what he said:

Singapore has the potential of holding an even bigger population than 6.5 million. The Singapore economic space is far greater than the island itself. Water is less of an issue because of Newater and other technology. And the economic foundations are becoming stronger.

This new era of economic growth requires a new level of manpower supply. Especially with people coming here for lifestyle services, medical treatment, entertainment - and soon for the integrated resorts and F1 race. So I think 6.5 million is a good interim number to work with.

The Next Lap Committee in the 1990s chose to work with a 5 million target. But the carrying capacity of the island has increased and targets evolve depending on circumstances.

Dr Paul Cheung has a skewed understanding and interpretation of the term "carrying capacity". Let's look at the ecological definition:

Ecologists define 'carrying capacity' as the population of a given species that can be supported indefinitely in a defined habitat without permanently damaging the ecosystem upon which it is dependent.

http://dieoff.org/page13.htm

Carrying capacity refers to the number of individuals who can be supported in a given area within natural resource limits, and without degrading the natural social, cultural and economic environment for present and future generations.

http://www.gdrc.org/uem/footprints/carrying-capacity.html

With those definitions in mind, how can Dr Paul Cheung say that Singapore's carrying capacity has increased? Have we reduced our foreign food reliance? Have we increased our farm acreage substantially? Since the answer is no, Dr Paul Cheung should have qualified his notion of carrying capacity with the word "phantom" - that is, "phantom carrying capacity":

Phantom Carrying Capacity means either the illusory or the extremely precarious capacity of an environment to support a given life form or a given way of living. It can be quantitatively expressed as that portion of a population that cannot be permanently supported when temporarily available resources become unavailable. LINK

As long as the temporarily available resources, fossil fuels, are readily obtainable and cheap, our population can continue to grow. But it won't be many years before this illusion of perpetual growth and prosperity is shattered as oil production declines.

If our ministers and top civil servants continue to entertain the idea of unrestrained population and economic growth, then Singapore is doomed - not for lack of "manpower supply", but an overabundance of it.

The economic benefits of living in a very stable world - meaning we're not at war with China - that means that we can enjoy a lot of benefits of having them manufacture all our stuff. We're used to getting all of our household goods now from 12,000 miles away. They're "Made in China". You know everything from frying pans to underpants. What's going to happen if those supply lines to China are interrupted?...We're going to have to downsize and downscale everything we do...The age of the 3,000-mile Caesar salad is coming to an end. We're gonna have to grow more food closer to where we live....

Video Link

If Singapore thinks it can secure its energy and food supplies through foreign ownership of food and energy resources or businesses, then we had better rethink our policies in light of the news below. Nations rich in natural resources will impose strict restrictions on foreign ownership of their resources out of security concerns. In a world with dwindling natural resources and a burgeoning population, these restrictions will become more extensive and intense. The goal for self-sufficiency is imperative.

The United Arab Emirates is seeking to buy farmland in Vietnam, Cambodia, Africa and South America to secure food supplies for the desert country, the economy minister said in comments published on Wednesday. LINK

Russia laid down official limits on the sale to foreigners of shares in strategic and raw materials companies on Wednesday, giving new regulatory force to the government's grip on Russia's natural resources wealth.

The new ruling by the state markets regulator codifies what the Kremlin has long made clear: the government is loath to see more of Russia's strategic and extractive industries fall into the hands of outsiders. LINK

A new report by Australia's top scientists predicts that the country will be hit by a 10-fold increase in heatwaves and that droughts will almost double in frequency and become more widespread because of climate change...

Yesterday, Australia's agriculture minister, Tony Burke, described the report as alarming and said: "Parts of these high-level projections read more like a disaster novel than a scientific report."

..."If we failed to review drought policy, if we were to continue the neglect and pretend that the climate wasn't changing, we would be leaving our farms out to dry." LINK

Video Link



News Reports:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/280951_focus13.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/04/world/main4154650.shtml

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ji-wFIKtfqHlfc5z3QQyZDgRB1zwD9160QN80

http://www.foodfirst.org/archive/media/news/2001/cubacensored.html

http://globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657

http://www.cubaagriculture.com/agriculture-today.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_of_Cuba

Singapore's Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA) is responsible for our food supply. Their mission:

To ensure a resilient supply of safe food, safeguard the health of animals and plants and facilitate agri-trade for Singapore.

Their goals:

• Ensure a resilient supply of safe and wholesome food.
• Safeguard the health of animals, fish and plants.
• Be a centre of excellence for tropical agritechnology development and services.
• Facilitate trade in food and agricultural products.
• Develop a cohesive, innovative and professional workforce.
• Build a positive image and enhance community outreach.
• Promote animal welfare.
• Optimise the utilisation and return on resources.
• Leverage on IT for efficient service delivery and organisational development.

Sadly, what is not included in their goals is the need to strive for self-sufficiency in food production.

According to AVA's account, we were self-sufficient in the 1970s when it came to the production of poultry, eggs and pork. We had 14,000 hectares of farmland back then. In the 1980s, unfortunately, large areas of agricultural land were cleared to make way for housing and industry and today we are down to 764 hectares of farmland - 95% of farm area gone.

I inquired NParks about peak oil and food production recently. As they were not responsible for our food supplies, they forwarded my inquiries to AVA and I received the following response:


I thank AVA for their reply but I am troubled with the fact that they wrote "Singapore does not intend to achieve self-sufficiency through local food production".

Surely AVA must be aware of how dependent our food supplies are on crude oil and natural gas. Crude oil, which has probably peaked in production since 2005, is used to run farm machinery, to manufacture pesticides and herbicides, to package food, and to fuel trucks, ships and planes which transport food over thousands of miles to unload their cargo here.

Conventional natural gas, a major feedstock for use in fertilizer production will peak between 2018 and 2020 according to some estimates. Modern industrial agriculture really is indirectly the eating of fossil fuels. Our current system of energy-chemical-intensive farming is unsustainable and will be short-lived.

Does AVA not realise the adverse ramifications that dwindling fossil fuels will have on global food production? How then can we not strive to be self-sufficient in food production? I am baffled. As difficult as it is, we have to try one way or another and perhaps learn from the Cubans who successfully carried out organic sustainable urban farming when they had their own artificial peak oil after the collapse of the former Soviet Union. See video below:

(One of the first steps to food self-sufficiency is to deal with the overpopulation problem here in Singapore.)

As food supply is a matter of national security, I believe the government should not dismiss the idea of food self-sufficiency just because it is "commercially unviable" or "economically unfeasible". We don't outsource our national defence to mercernaries or foreign armies, so why should we be so dependent on foreigners for 90% of our food supplies? There are five aspects to our nation's Total Defence concept: Military, Civil, Economic, Social and Psychological Defence. What is sorely lacking is Food and Energy Defence.

Some have argued that we need not worry because Singapore is rich enough to outbid other food importing nations to secure our food supplies. This view is wrong for two reasons:

1) Money or the system of finance and banking that we have now will become highly unstable and unreliable when the world economies grind to a halt and contract due to peak oil. It is likely that paper currency and dollars will no longer be accepted as payment for international trade because buyers and sellers will realise that they do not hold any life-preserving or life-enchancing value when compared to tangible and material goods such as food and oil. Commerce and trade will be done via barter. See reports here and here.

2) Resource nationalism and the hoarding of commodities will be common in future geopolitics. No government wants to see food unrest and riots in its own country and one way to prevent it is to ban food exports to satisfy local demand. In fact, we have already witnessed it in recent months where Indonesia, Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, and India have banned grain exports.

I think food shortages are very likely to occur here in Singapore within the next 10 years. When a nation with a population density of 6,500 per sq km (one of the highest in the world) goes hungry, social order will get very ugly. I just pray that I am wrong.

Related blog posts:

http://singaporepeakoil.wordpress.com/2006/08/25/peak-oil-and-food/

http://sgentropy.blogspot.com/2008/06/singapores-population-to-plunge-by-90.html

http://sgentropy.blogspot.com/2008/06/singapores-food-supplies-vulnerable-to.html


Further information:

How Peak Oil Could Lead to Starvation

Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply

Why Our Food is so Dependent on Oil

Eating Fossil Fuels

There are some great peak oil presentation slides from http://www.peakoilandhumanity.com/chapter_choice.htm

The material there are really useful for sharing the subject of peak oil with your friends and family who may be uninformed about what's to come. The slides are presented from a Canadian perspective, but they are relevant to Singaporeans for the most part.

In 1998, Colin Campbell coauthored with Jean H. Laherrère an article about the end of cheap oil which was published in Scientific American. According to Laherrère, they were considered crazy when they published that article because oil was averaging about $12/barrel - dirt cheap. Who would have thought back then that oil would hover around $140 today? Certainly not The Economist. Afterall, they wrote in 1999:

The world is awash with the stuff, and it is likely to remain so...$10 might actually be too optimistic. We may beheading for $5. Link

Here is Colin Campbell in a 2005 interview. He was right about the end of cheap oil in 1998, and it is only appropriate that we pay attention to what he has to say. Video link.

Many people came to think that it was money that made the world go round, but in reality it was the underlying supply of cheap energy - much of it coming from oil — Colin Campbell

Crude Awakening is an award-winning documentary film about peak oil. You can view it below from Google Video or download it using BitTorrent.


Some central quotes from Colin Campbell in the documentary:

"There isn't a company quoted on the stock exchange that doesn't tacitly assume the business-as-usual supply of cheap oil. When that isn't there anymore, that means that virtually every company is overvalued on the stock exchange. And as the financial community recognizes this - well, that might trigger some kind of overreaction and a stock market collapse. I think it's very likely.

"I won't be very surprised personally if it doesn't trigger another great depression comparable to the one of the 1930s, if not worse, because this one is imposed by nature rather than being a speculative bubble.

"We are facing some sort of unprecedented, unparalleled situation and that explains why it's so difficult for one to really accept it - one thinks there has got to be a solution. It's somehow contrary to our mindset to think about these things. We just don't like to do it....it's doubly hard because it really has never happened before. It's a strange issue of mindset and attitude and experience and behaviour that somehow leaves us so unprepared for this situation.

"We identify a species called hydrocarbon man - and lives on the strength of all of his oil - well, his days are definitely numbered. Whether mankind or Homo sapiens as a species altogether will carry on living some different, simple way - that's another question." Video Link