The Reality of Climate Change

English: A colour version of previous map, ranking countries by carbon dioxide emissions in thousands of metric tonnes per annum, based on List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions as of March 2006. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Keeling Curve of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have long been convinced of the importance of Climate Change but more importantly, I think, is that I am also certain of the reality of Climate Change.  I accept the judgement of the vast majority of scientists and observers that we have reached a point of no return and that our Climate is changing and will change enough, soon, that all of our lives will be greatly impacted.  I also believe that smoking causes cancer, that seat belts prevent auto deaths and basically that refusing to heed imminent warnings of "probable" approaching danger is, at least, questionable.  Even given that, however, most people today are unable to get from the first to the second of these understandings.

You will hear someone say that, yes, Climate Change seems to be a likely outcome of our use of hydrocarbons and if Climate Change were to happen it would be horrible, cause great turmoil and we would certainly have to do something.  But they cannot make that leap to Climate Change writ large. That is terribly unfortunate because Climate Change is happening, you see, and its effects will continue to accelerate as long as we continue to feed its unending appetite for carbon dioxide. It will end, not when its supply of carbon dioxide stabilizes but when it drops.,,a lot. Until we start dumping much less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the earth can naturally absorb, the climate will continue to get worse.  That will almost certainly happen and the climate will eventually revert to some level that we can tolerate.  The uncertainty is whether we will stop producing Climate Change's food supply purposefully or stop because we are no longer around to produce it.  Either way it is going to be a very long time.

I am sympathetic with that failure to step up to the reality of Climate Change.  It is not often that man has had to face the possibility of a self induced End-of-the-World scenario.  It is a bit embarrassing to have to come to grips with that, right when we seem to have mastered this whole consume-till-we-drop thing even to the point of designing our whole civilization in order to assure its continuation.  Limits are a tough thing to swallow anytime and it is a particularly unappetizing prospect when you are defining your very existence based on no limits at all. I have not reached the point yet of being able to shout it out to the masses.  I am still holding it close to my chest and wondering what to do.  I was born in the early age of hydrocarbons and raised entirely in its industrial world.  I really don't have another emotional model to fall back on,  Unfortunately, since I am pretty old, that means that probably no one in our modern society has a way to really draw on experience or have access to  another set of values that might see us through.

We need to talk about this now.  We have to have a vision to stand up against what will come.  It will not be a vision we have ever encountered before or even a vision that anyone can tell us about.  We are going to be on our own.

What I am Reading - The Water Knife

Climate Change is an unknown.  No human has experienced a climate like we are in the process of  setting up.  Ever.   I just read a new book by Paolo Bacigalupi that tries real hard to imagine what some of the consequences of this new world might be.  His new book The Water Knife delves into the politics of several U. S. Southwestern States, in the near future, fighting for a very limited supply of a very necessary, and therefore precious, resource - water. The central figure of the novel is an undercover operative for the Nevada water authority and is on assignment in bordering states, covertly trying to gain access to an ancient Native American water treaty while officially grappling with competing water officials and sabotaging water projects unhelpful to the Nevada plan.  In the meantime he comes in contact with an assortment of seamy characters and destitute local citizens trying to make a life in a very degraded environment.  This is the third book I have read of Mr. Bacigalupi's and I have enjoyed them all.  He incorporates a lot of well thought out technical detail and cultural subtleties in his story line.  It is not a pretty world he writes about but he has a way of making it seem possible.  I recommend it to anyone who is interested in thinking about all of the possibilities our new world might bring to the table.

The more things change...

Global annual fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions through year 2007, in million metric tons of carbon, as reported by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/home.html. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It has been a long time since I have posted to this blog.  Once again the world has shifted while I was away.  I originally started this blog when I became convinced that we were in the grips of "Peak Oil," and eventually "Peak Everything." Depletion of critical resources was going to topple the Capitalist model and we would all suffer the consequences. This is still a certainty and its damage is probably working its way through our economy as we speak, but as important as this concept is to our civilization, I fear it has moved down in the list of horrors.  In fact, it might have been a cure for our real problem if it had indeed happened sooner, as many projected a few years ago.

Carbon dioxide variations over the last 400,000 years, showing a rise since the industrial revolution. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And what is that real problem you ask.  Climate Change I answer.  By finding ways to prolong our prodigious use of hydrocarbons we have jacked up the probability that the climate will instead be our downfall, probably sooner than most can imagine.  The climate people on the dystopian fringes, clearly not yet the center, are beginning to point out dire clues that the earth has had enough and will now begin its ancient warming tasks in earnest, protected by a newly formed atmosphere fully fortified with a new supply of CO2.  I am told that there is now more CO2 in the atmosphere than any time in man's history, probably for millions of years.  We are in completely new territory here folks.  I am going to stay tuned to this channel and I may bring some of what I find to this blog.  If what I am reading now, however, has any validity whatsoever we are all going to have to tune in soon.

What I'm Reading - Windup Girl

If you are reading this blog you have already figured out that I am a peak oil advocate.  I'm not a fanatic, you understand, but I have come to the conclusion that we are going to reach a point of diminishing returns with our hydrocarbon supply very soon and we are going to have to learn to live on much less of everything than we have now.  I have talked about this before.  I am not going to hammer on it right now.

I've just read a book, however, that has jostled my pat little peak oil view a little.  The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is a science fiction book.  It is the first book that I have read that takes a serious, new look at society's possibilities after the loss of hydrocarbon energy.  It takes place after the Industrial Expansion, even after the inevitable contraction, in a world where industry has still found a way to survive.  Methane from recycling is there, in a limited supply, and electrical power for small devices is generated using springs, hand cranks and the like (think treadle-computers).  Even a few pre-contraction tools of destruction are still laying around to be used by those in power when needed.  It is a unfamiliar and frightening world he puts together but it is believable.

Mr. Bacigalupi is not predicting, he is conjecturing. Like all good Sci-fi authors should be doing.  The genius of this particular piece of work is that he has arrived at a place that I had never been able to get to in my contemplations of the peak oil problem.  When I think about the problems that society would face following  a loss of hydrocarbon energy, I always end up assuming the end of industry, and most of the population, because of the extreme dependence that industry (including food production) has on hydrocarbon power.  My vision has always been sort of a return to pre-hydrocarbon times circa 1700.  Not Mr. Bacigalupi.  He has conjured up a society every bit as technical and power hungry as our own but based on bio-engineered beasts of burden, laborers and foodstuffs.  It is going to take me awhile to digest all of this new insight.  It might end up changing the way I think about the future.  In the mean time it was an amazing read. 

Unconventional Wisdom - An FP Special Report | Foreign Policy

As a statement of society’s plight at this time in history, this article is about as succinct as you can get.  Damned if you do and damned if you don’t (squared).  I believe the human race will survive this dilemma but I don’t think we will solve it.  The trajectory of human society has reached its apex and we should all now relax and enjoy the ride down to the third act which, I fear, will be very much like the first.

Unconventional Wisdom - An FP Special Report | Foreign Policy

Thinking about Sustainable Behavior

I accept peak oil as a fact. Having done that, I am forced to concede many other consequences that must surely follow. One of those consequences is a future of significantly reduced consumption for everyone. That follows both because the production of consumer goods will be limited directly by energy constraints and also because we will be spending a greater share of our resources in acquiring the energy sources and thus will have less to direct towards the consumption of other things. Here in the U. S. that reality will be particularly jolting since our per capita level of consumption is so high compared to the average world consumption and is treated as a social entitlement.

No matter how much we grumble, however, as energy limits are reached we will be forced to retool our thinking and behavior with regard to consumption and sustainability. I have spent many an hour imagining how I personally, and we collectively, might approach this new reality. One of the realizations that I came to was that we have developed some pretty bizarre assumptions in our pursuit of profit in a world of “unlimited” resources (that itself, of course, is the most bizarre). One such example, is the notion of “planned obsolescence.” This, to me, is the bi-polar opposite of sustainable behavior. Intentionally designing a product to have a limited life cycle (presumably for the purpose of increasing production/sales/consumption of the product) screams out idiocy in a rational world of real world limits.

Overtly planned obsolescence is a particularly vile example but there are many, more subtle, examples of essentially the same idea. Consider the intent of fashion or style. Fads are the epitome of this construct. This is really planned obsolescence as well, however cleverly it is woven into the social fabric. Nothing should become “so last year” in just a year. Even the marketing concept of trading off quality for price (think of post-war Japanese fare) feeds this insidious cycle of consumption. If you really think it through, you realize that we have structured our entire economic existence on a doctrine of non-sustainable behavior. Harmless enough, and surely profitable, but only in a surreal world of limitless resources.

What would product design look like if we were really interested in sustainable behavior. Let’s try “planned permanence.” A truly sustainable world would use non-renewable resources as if they were precious artifacts. A product that was produced in such a world would be intended to last forever or for as long a possible. These products would be perfectly functional, durable, repairable, maintainable, upgradable and in the end completely recyclable. There would be no economics of scale. Only those that were needed would be made. Finally, when you obtained such a product you would expect to keep it for as long as you had a need for such a product. Imagine inheriting your grandfather’s toolkit and having the builder’s grandson tune it up for you. Until you can accept such a way of life you won’t be happy in a truly limited resource, recyclable world.

Petrophy

In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig

 

New government and BP documents, interviews with experts and testimony by witnesses provide the clearest indication to date that a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made a disaster more likely on the rig, particularly with a mix of different companies operating on the Deepwater whose interests were not always in sync.

In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig - NYTimes.com

I haven't said anything about the oil spill yet. I couldn't really decide how I felt about it. I was shocked of course. I was saddened. I was mad. But most of all I was scared.

I have accepted the reality of hydrocarbon depletion for a long time now. I don't think I have, however, fully accepted the consequences of that until now. I know that there is no way BP would have been drilling in this incredibly risky environment, a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, unless we were running out of easy places to find oil. This behavior, and others like it, is a direct result of our impending hydrocarbon depletion. But suddenly, I have come to the realization that there is a face to that risky behavior. The end of the oil age is going to be ugly.

The bottom line, of course, is that we must have our oil at any cost. We, the industrialized world in general and the United States in particular, have become so enamored of the joys that hydrocarbon consumption can bring to our lives that we will no longer tender any thoughts of an alternate approach. That is not hard to understand since we are so populous now (thanks to all that oil BTW) that we would only be able to support a fraction of our present consumption without it. So we will continue to drill. We will drill until we have nowhere else to drill and you and I will pay whatever it costs to see that it happens.

Now we know, all of a sudden, what that means. It means things like giant oil spills. Look for more of these kinds of things to happen. Look for them to happen in spite of the increased regulation and additional fortunes spent on keeping it from happening. This is where we are. The rest of the oil is out there hiding somewhere. And we are going to find it. No matter how ugly it gets.

Economist Debates: Green jobs

Economist Debates: Green jobs - According to this post, a majority of readers support a government effort to develop green jobs. This is a good thing. It is important to keep the effect that we have on the environment in mind as we go about our daily business. But it is not enough. We must also find a way to reduce our consumption....period.


We have entered into a period in our history that will result in a continual reduction in our ability to extract resources from the earth's supply for the forseeable future. There will simply be less to go around as supplies dwindle and population (at least for awhile) continues to rise. In short, the days of growth in consumption are over. Somehow, we must find a way to wean ourselves off of our consumptive behavior if we are to make an acceptable journey into our future.

I would like to see society recognize that this is the case but I seriously doubt that it will happen. We are hooked, plain and simple. We know what we want and we will try to find a way to get it until the day we can't. Let's start thinking about an identity for a new stingy (and green) society. It will have to be invented from scratch. It has been a long time since it was last needed.

A Decade of Enormous Deficits May Alter American Politics and Power

But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.

I was really excited when President Obama was elected. I did not agree with the policies of the Bush Administration and I was eager for the change that he promised. In the year that has passed since that moment of elation, I have come to reverse my optimism if not my support.

As this article points out we appear to be heading for an era of daunting deficit spending and national debt. When I voted for Obama I was hoping that he would be able to make some decisions and throw out some of the ridiculous programs and policies that he was left with and turn the direction of the country towards a more austere and less risky path. This to safely return the wounded economy to a soft landing. Rather than make those priority decisions, however, he seems to be trying to do it all. He is acting as if he can restore the glory that was the bubble.

I don’t think we have solved our economic problems. With the help of the bailouts, the financial sector appears to have manufactured a little in-house boom but the rest of the country still waits for the doorbell to ring. If we suffer a secondary downturn in the face of these deficits I am really afraid to think of where the United States might end up.

News Analysis - A Decade of Enormous Deficits May Alter American Politics and Power - NYTimes.com

What "Lower Consumption" Means

[Link: The Oil Drum: Campfire | What "Lower Consumption" Means] "The fevered frenzy of Industrial Civilization’s resource consumption appears to have finally reached its apex and begun its decline in this, the first decade of the twenty-first century. A closer look at the physical realities of resource extraction reveals that the resource situation is, in fact, terminal for our high-consumin’ civilization. Resource depletion is a predicament requiring adaptation to an entirely new low-consumption paradigm, rather than a problem to be solved with technological or social solutions. As a country, we need to start the conversation about what a lower-consumption, resource-poor society would look like, and begin the appropriate preparations."

These are the types of discussions we should all be having today. You and I cannot be certain of what the future will hold. It is certainly possible that a new, unpredicted energy source or technological trick will allow us to move on into the future with our existing lifestyle. Possible but not probable. I don't know about you but I have been taught that to assume the improbable is normally not the best way to do your critical planning. Even if we could continue on, the earth and its climate seem to be telling us we can't anyway. I think that we are approaching a point of crisis in society. A point where most of us will understand in our gut that something needs to be done but won't really know what to do. It is thought exercises like these that might allow us to move in the right direction when that time comes.

Post-human Earth: How the planet will recover from us - environment

[Link: New Scientist] "Not so, says James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He argues that past episodes are a poor guide to what will happen in the future, for the simple reason that the sun is brighter now than it was then. Add that to the mix and the release of methane hydrates could lead to catastrophic, unstoppable global warming - a so-called 'Venus syndrome' that causes the oceans to boil away and dooms the Earth to the fate of its broiling neighbour."

Most conversations about Climate Change focus on the short term. What will the weather be like around here as Global Warming kicks in? This article is grappling with the bigger picture. As we pour CO2 into the atmosphere by burning hydrocarbons, we are returning the earth to a state that hasn't been seen for millions of years. Who knows what will happen as this occurs? All of earth's systems will be effected. Much of the earth may well become uninhabitable. The good news is that we will run out of hydrocarbons to burn eventually and we won't be able to add CO2 to the atmosphere. The bad news is that when we run out of hydrocarbons to burn we will also be out of energy needed to combat the changing conditions.

Magazine Preview - The Big Fix - Can Barack Obama Really Transform the U.S. Economy? - NYTimes.com

[Link: NYTimes.com] "For centuries, people have worried that economic growth had limits — that the only way for one group to prosper was at the expense of another. The pessimists, from Malthus and the Luddites and on, have been proved wrong again and again. Growth is not finite. But it is also not inevitable. It requires a strategy."

The MSM carries the "infinite growth" ball onto an uncertain field of play. It couldn't be stated more clearly, "Growth is not finite." With a good plan we can keep the game going forever. WRONG! With a really good plan we might be able to survive, but it isn't going to look like the modern Western model of ever growing consumption by an ever growing number of people. Infinite growth may be the only thing that will save our way of life but that doesn't prove it is real.

Two geologists on saving the earth

[Link: Energy Bulletin] "Our economic system is entirely based on the creation of materials. Material wealth comes out of the earth and the level of our lifestyle is entirely based on our consumption of resources. The thing that has allowed that to accelerate so there is even a middle class in many countries, including our own, is cheap energy. Petroleum. If that becomes less available, less cheap because it’s less available, that is going to limit everything that we do. It’s going to have a major impact. It’s going to limit whether we can produce non-petroleum alternatives."

This is a good discussion of the problems that we are going to be facing from now on in our society. The primary disconnect between our ambitions and our resources. We can have a materialistic culture with a few people or live frugally with a lot of people. In the long term our choice is to limit our numbers or our appetite. Unfortunately we have become so many that the long term is knocking at our door.

The Green Issue

[New York Times By MICHAEL POLLAN] "There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late. Climate change is upon us, and it has arrived well ahead of schedule. Scientists’ projections that seemed dire a decade ago turn out to have been unduly optimistic: the warming and the melting is occurring much faster than the models predicted. Now truly terrifying feedback loops threaten to boost the rate of change exponentially, as the shift from white ice to blue water in the Arctic absorbs more sunlight and warming soils everywhere become more biologically active, causing them to release their vast stores of carbon into the air. Have you looked into the eyes of a climate scientist recently? They look really scared."

Why bother? This is very interesting and thoughtful article. The author touches on many of the frustrations that all of us who are concerned about the state of our world grapple with every day. His points are good but I think he still hasn't been able, himself, to let go of the ideas that are driving his "cheap energy mind." I believe that there is a very clear and logical reason to bother. We should let go of the consumptive and manipulative aspects of our lives, made possible by cheap oil, simply because they are not real. We have been living on a one time bequest of cheap energy that is not, and has never been, a part of our real human existance. In the long term there is no oil. A couple of hundred years from now there won't be anybody alive who lives the lifestyle he is pleading for us to abandon. In a thousand years they won't even remember we ever did. So I say why not just get on with it. The best thing we can do for the environment is quit using oil stupidly...now. We can save whats left for a few thousand years worth of critical uses like medical and plastics for solar equipment. To use oil for transportation, electrical energy production, asphalt roads and fertilizer is insane. Then, when we have done that, whatever life we end up living will be closer to real for the first time in a couple of hundred years.

Enlightened Primitivism

Haven't posted recently but I have been thinking about our predicament just the same. Oil has nearly reached $100/barrel and gas is creeping up towards $4/gallen hereabouts. I am still convinced that we are heading inexorably towards a showdown with finite Earth. We don't seem to be aware except on the fringes. Really big things happen slowly enough, and so overwhelmingly, that we don't notice them I guess.

I am working on an idea that I am now thinking of as Enlightened Primitivism. Putting aside the divisive questions of "when the peak will arrive?" and "can alternative fuels make up the difference?" I think we can all agree that we live in a finite world and, if we continue to consume its bounty, we will eventually use it up. When that time arrives we will be returned to a state of lower expectations because without cheap, abundant, dense energy sources, todays technology does not happen. Many fear that we will then digress to a primitive, pre-industrial agrarian society. But that doesn't have to be the case. If we are careful we should be able to take, if not our technology, our knowledge with us. Much of what we know about the world around us has been gained with the help of industrial technology and abundant energy. If our cultures are to return to a lower energy, lower technology state then let us do so benefiting from the knowledge that we have gained. Primitive maybe, but hopefully not ignorant. I have not thought through all of the implications of this yet. As I do, I will share it here.

Have a good new year.

Solving Fermi's Paradox

...On another level, though, Fermi’s Paradox can be restated in another and far more threatening way. The logic of the paradox depends on the assumption that unlimited technological progress is possible, and it can be turned without too much difficulty into a logical refutation of the assumption. If unlimited technological progress is possible, then there should be clear evidence of technologically advanced species in the cosmos; there is no such evidence; therefore unlimited technological progress is impossible.

[Link: The Archdruid Report]

I have proposed occasionally on this blog that I think the belief in ongoing technical progress that defines the human world view of the future, is probably wrong. It is my opinion the future of mankind will be much more humble than most of us imagine and that our dreams of space travel and unlimited growth will prove to be an unobtainable destiny. Up until now my doubt was based on a gut-level instinct and I felt that for someone to make the move to this trend of thought would require a major leap of faith because my, and most of humanity's, world view has been severely distorted by living in the midst of the age of hydrocarbons.

To my delight, however, I stumbled on this article by John Michael Greer of the Archdruid Report in which he develops a logical and, for me, cogent argument for the impossibility of unlimited technological progress not only for humanity but for any living species. I really believe that in order for us to begin to repair the damage we have done to the earth and to prepare for our "real" future we will first all have to accept this reality of ultimate limitations. In this article, Mr. Greer has done a good job of helping us to get to that point. Read it and see if you don't agree.

Last Light - A Peak Oil Novel

There is a new novel out called Last Light by London author Alex Scarrow. This video is a promo for the book.

The novel deals with a breakdown in society when oil supply is disrupted by terrorist activity all over the world. I haven't read the novel yet but I have corresponded with the author and I have seen reviews (see video) and it sounds like a good thriller built on a Peak Oil premise. He is not sure when the novel will be available in the United States and I don't see it on Amazon yet (one of his earlier novels is there) so if you are in the U.S. you will have to keep an eye out for it. I will update this post if I get any further news.

OPEC countries ignore West's agenda

"Washington apparently didn't note the recent statement of Saudi oil executive Sadad Al-Husseini: 'There has been a paradigm shift in the energy world whereby oil producers are no longer inclined to rapidly exhaust their resource for the sake of accelerating the misuse of a precious and finite commodity."

[Link: St. Cloud Times Opinion:]

It is hard to fault the logic of the Saudis on this one. If there were a hint of logic in the human race, that would be what we would all be trying to accomplish. Oil has been so undervalued these last 100 years. By using oil for heating and transportation we are going to use all of this precious resource up in the next couple of decades even though both of those uses could be done in other, granted less convenient, ways. In the meantime critical uses such as advanced medicines that are derived from hydrocarbons will be withheld from future generations.

I doubt if OPEC will be able to hold on to that goal when the U. S. starts running short of gasoline. Mr. Bush or those that will follow in his footsteps would never be able to let that happen. We are far too committed to this valuable commodity. We are determined to go down driving.

Accumulating risks' to world energy supply

The world is not running out of crude oil and natural gas but there are "accumulating risks" to securing global supplies through 2030, a high-level board of U.S. oil company executives found in a report obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

Those risks include "political hurdles, infrastructure requirements and availability of trained work force," according to the study by the U.S. National Petroleum Council, conducted at the behest of U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman.

[Link: Reuters]

I have seen a lot of these kind of articles lately. Basically they follow a line of logic as follows. We don't really have an oil supply problem. There is plenty of oil out there. Enough to last us for a long time. The only problem is that we are having some difficulty getting to it, or there are political problems barring access to the oil, or there is insufficient funds to provide adequate levels of development of new reserves, or there is a shortage of critically skilled workers to work the fields, or that inadequate technological innovations are being applied to the existing fields, or..... Doesn't it strike you that maybe that is, in fact, exactly what peak oil looks like. When the easy oil is disappearing there are probably uncounted ways that are going to make the rest of the oil hard to get at. Peak oil chroniclers often state that we won't be able to know whether we have reached peak oil until long after the event has actually occurred. The reason for that must at least partly be due to the fact that many of the early manifestations of peak oil just look like another bad day at the office.

From Peak Oil To Dark Age?

Even if the peakists are wrong, we would still be better off taking these actions. And if they're right, major efforts right now may be the only way to avert a new Dark Age in an overheated world.

[Link: Business Week]

I will have to say that I am surprised at this reasonable opinion under the banner of a publication like Business Week. Like many recent Peak Oil discussions in the media, this article seems to be picking up on the causal relationship that Peak Oil and Climate Change enjoy. A while ago they talked about the two subjects as independent problems. Now they have started talking about the two being like two sides of the same coin. Eventually they will understand that the two problems are really just two, admittedly bad, side effects of recklessly using (AKA: releasing back to the atmosphere) the vast accumulation of carbon pulled from the atmosphere and stored in the earths crust over many millions of years. When they understand that, they will start to comprehend what a real solution looks like. Less consumption or fewer people. Almost certainly both.

As oil production fails to meet demand our climate is going to have more than coal to worry about too. Every thing that can be burned for heat or eaten will be stripped from this earth by the hydrocarbon hordes that have arisen to feed off of the cheap and plentiful oil. If it can't be burned for heat or eaten it will be stripped from the earth to make room for something that can. It won't be pretty.