One Barrel of Oil: The Measure of Our Energy Dilemma

The clue to the enormity of our energy dilemma is hidden in a little statistical detail that most of us have probably never considered. "The energy in one barrel of oil," notes the New Scientist (June 28/08), "is equivalent to that of 5 labourers working non-stop for a year."

To get some sense of the implications of this detail, consider another comparison. Just one barrel of oil contains nearly 200 litres of gasoline, enough energy to power a car from Vancouver to Calgary and back again. If this journey were powered by human effort, 5 labourers would be employed pushing the car for an entire year. The journey that we take in ease and comfort would not likely be undertaken without this non-human energy. Or, for a more direct experience of the energy contained in a barrel of oil, try pushing your car ‹ you might be able to move it on flat pavement but will need help from others to get it up the slightest incline.

Consider history for other illustrations of the power of oil. With the rare exception of sails, water wheels and animals, almost everything we have done in the past was powered by human effort. In ancient China, speculators would search distant mountains for special rocks that could be transported to cities and then sold to wealthy citizens as features in elaborate natural gardens. If a rock could be found with the appropriate proportions and specified markings ‹ it could weigh many tonnes ‹ then years of effort went into safely moving it to a place where it might be sold. Today, we would lift it by crane, load it on a truck and then transport it with little thought of the effort. Indeed, we might even lift it by helicopter and fly it directly to a specified location. Oil has made extremely difficult tasks remarkably easy.

Imagine the energy required to accelerate a 440 tonne 747 down a runway and catapult it into the air to fly across continents at 600 kilometres per hour. Or the energy to power a 250,000 tonne supertanker across oceans. Or the energy to transport and crush millions of tonnes of rock so freeways can be built. Or the energy to move the world's population of more than 900 million cars.The energy in oil allows us to do what was once inconceivable.

Our ancient ancestors each expended the energy equivalent of a porpoise; in a modern civilization, with the help of oil, we each expend the energy equivalent of a sperm whale.

This reliance on energy does place us at the disadvantage of being wholly dependent on a finite resource to fuel and sustain our modern lifestyle. Indeed, we have built our modern civilization on the easy availability of a single fuel that is both portable and contains an extraordinarily high energy density. As Cutler Cleveland of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University says, "Much of the economic expansion and growth of the human population in the 20th century is directly tied to the availability of large amounts of cheap oil. There isn't a single good or service consumed on the planet, except in rural economies, that doesn't have oil embedded in it. Oil is the lifeblood of the global economy" (Ibid.). And our rising use of oil means we have designed our civilization to be vulnerable.

But this has been our habit as human beings. Until about 10,000 years ago, we lived for hundreds of millennia in harmonious equilibrium with natural ecosystems. Our history as hunter-gatherers slowly came to an end when we started farming plants and animals. Our global population of a few million slowly grew, together with our dependence on reliable crops. The civilizations we built around agriculture had their successes and failures, but mostly we thrived and multiplied by overcoming limits. By the 15th century, however, we hit a ceiling. Limits in food production limited our populations and limits in muscle energy limited our ambitions.

Then sailing ships found the rest of the world. More resources and new foods poured into a stagnating Europe. Its population exploded, together with its colonization, economic activity and inventions. Within 300 years we were in the thick of the Industrial Revolution. Instead of burning the last of its forests, Europe began burning coal, and replaced wood with iron as the building material of power ‹ this is what the Eiffel Tower actually symbolizes. Then came the shift to oil and the complex petro-chemical industry it has spawned. Indeed, now our civilization is oil. It provides us with most of our products, moves us and almost everything else around the planet, and supports the growth and distribution of most of our food. Without oil, we couldn't exist as we presently do. And this returns us to our one barrel of oil as the clue to our energy dilemma.

Because a barrel of oil contains so much energy and our civilization is so energy dependent, and because we are simultaneously depleting our supply of oil as our demand is increasing (double to triple by 2050), finding an appropriate substitute is both extremely challenging and extremely urgent. Wind, tidal, solar, geothermal, hydro, biofuels, hydrogen and nuclear are all compared to oil. But not one of them provides the multitude of products, the portability and the compact energy equivalence of oil. Oil is the soft sand upon which we have built our modern civilization. And this foundation is oozing out from under us.