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The Olduvai Theory Terminal Decline Imminent SPRING 2007 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT The Olduvai Theory Terminal Decline Imminent BY RICHARD C. DUNCAN, PHD Background As we go from this happy hydrocarbon Abstract bubble we have reached now to a renewable energy resource economy, which we do this The highpoint of industrial civilization century, will the “civil” part of civilization followed by its terminal decline will be a survive? As we both know there is NO WAY watershed of human history. Ackerman’s that alternative energy sources can supply the Law defi nes it. The goal of this essay is to amount of per capita energy we enjoy now predict the highpoint and the initial decline. much less for the 9 billion expected by year Energy production and population data 2050. And energy is what keeps this whole from 1850 to 2005 are the foundation of the game going. We are currently involved in a forecast. To these are added estimates of the Faustian bargain – selling our economic souls Earth’s carrying capacity, the attractiveness for the luxurious life of the moment, but sooner principle, and 2007 as our forecast for peak or later the price has to be paid in some way. oil. Further, the energy and population history of the U.S. is shown to be an —Walter Youngquist invaluable guide to forecast the energy and (Letter, 3/22/06) population future of the world. Specifi cally: U.S. energy production per capita has gone he Olduvai theory states that the life from growth, through stagnation, and now expectancy of industrial civilization into terminal decline. The world has gone is approximately 100 years.1 World from growth and now into stagnation. The energy production per capita (e) terminal decline of industrial civilization— defi nes it. The duration of industrial according to these calculations—is Tcivilization begins when e reaches 30 percent of its imminent. The life expectancy of industrial ‘plateau value’ and it ends the year that e falls back civilization is about 100 years. to that value.2 Historic energy and population data, multitude estimates of the Earth’s carrying capacity, [Key Words: energy; population; carrying the attractiveness principle, our ten forecasts of capacity; attractiveness; peak oil; fuel peak oil, the regress to coal, and the U.S. analogue stages; energy intervals; regress to coal; – taken together – betoken that the terminal decline media taboo; collapse.] of industrial civilization is imminent. The theory has fi ve postulates: 1. The exponential growth of world energy production ended in 1970. Richard C. Duncan, Ph.D., an electrical engineer, 2. U.S. e intervals anticipate Olduvai e is Director of the Institute on Energy and Man intervals: (1) growth, (2) stagnation, and (3) terminal and a frequent writer on the topic of “peak decline. oil.” He can be reached at the Institute: 1526 44th Avenue SW, Suite 204 Seattle, WA 98116; 3. The terminal decline of industrial civilization [email protected]. will begin circa 2008-2012. 141 SPRING 2007 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT 4. Brownouts and blackouts are reliable leading • Professor Howard C. Hayden (2004, pp. indicators of terminal decline. 230-31), author of The Solar Fraud: Why Solar 5. World population will decline proximate Energy Won’t Run The World, worked out the details, with e. “The earth’s population has long since exceeded the A British astronomer fi rst brought the subject numbers that could be supported by those [solar] of overshoot and collapse to my attention in 1964. energy sources. As well, the agricultural technology I discussed the Olduvai theory with a U.S. Senator existing a mere century ago could not possibly feed in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1979. Ten years the world’s billions. For those who long for the good later I presented it to a receptive audience in New old days of a sub-billion population, it is useful to York. (Duncan, 1989) Data show that the theory note that the only path to that end is for many billion I sketched out on those occasions has held up people now alive to become dead, even if not one remarkably well. baby were to be born in the next thirty years.” Explaining, refi ning, and testing the Olduvai theory continues. To wit: My energy and population database for testing the theory runs from 1850 to yearend 2005. A scenario extends from 2005 to 2030. The 155 years of rigorous data are the basis for the 25-year scenario.3 The Earth’s Carrying Capacity The cheap oil age created an artifi cial bubble of plentitude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime, a hundred years. … So, I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves are toward depletion, we will indeed suddenly be left with an enormous surplus population … that the ecology of • Dr. Ross McCluney (2004, slide 24), the earth will not support. No political Principal Research Scientist at the Florida Solar program of birth control will avail. The Energy Center, put it bluntly, “My warning of people are already here. The journey back today: We are systematically taking apart the life- to non-oil population homeostasis will support system of Planet Earth. We’ve exceeded not be pretty. We will discover the hard the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet by way that population hypergrowth was a factor of 3. For everyone to live like the average simply a side effect of the oil age. It was a North American it would take three Earths.” condition, not a problem with a solution. • Lindsey Grant (2005, p. 17), author of The That is what happened and we are stuck Collapsing Bubble: Growth and Fossil Energy and with it. the former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State James Howard Kunstler for Environment and Population Affairs, states, (2005, pp. 7-8) “The [population of the] less developed world has In my previous essay I quoted fi ve sources that grown by two-thirds since 1950—and they were put the earth’s long-term carrying capacity between poor in 1950. The need for a fundamental shift in 0.5 to 2.0 billion people (Duncan, 2005-2006). the ratio of resources to people in the poor countries Since then I’ve added the following fi ve references may itself justify an optimum world population for this vital—but media taboo—subject: fi gure of one billion. Barring a catastrophe, it might 142 SPRING 2007 THE SOCIAL CONTRACT take centuries to reach such fi gures, even with a this ad, there is no grasp of that situation determined worldwide effort.” here.… • Dale Allen Pfeiffer (2006, p. 1), author of I am going to say my piece, get out of Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming the front line trenches, and watch the Crisis in Agriculture, writes, “Studies suggest coming debacle from as safe a distance as that without fossil fuel based agriculture, the U.S. possible—but really no safe distance as could only sustain about two thirds of its present we are all caught in the coming tide, and population. For the planet as a whole, the sustainable the system as it begins to break down. number is estimated to be about two billion.” Walter Youngquist • Paul Thompson (2006, p. 6), author of The (Letter, 11/24/05) Twilight of the Modern World: The Four Stages of the Post-Oil Breakdown, describes the fi nal stages Jay W. Forrester in the 1950’s invented system of collapse, “Sooner or later, all the remains of our dynamics to model the behavior of complex social existing society will have gone, to become weed-clad systems. In 1956 he started the System Dynamics ruins to rival those of the Aztecs and Mayans. By now, Group at the Sloan School of Management at MIT. In everybody who is unable to convert to a sustainable, 1970 he described his research in urban dynamics at self-suffi cient lifestyle would have died off, leaving the U.S. House of Representatives. “Why can public only those living in independent communities to services not get ahead of demands? Why do the best continue human history. The world population may of intentions for improving a city lead, instead, to have fallen to as few as a thousand million, scattered greater social pressures, more commuting delays, in oases of agricultural land amongst deserts of increased drug addiction, higher crime rates, and buildings, rusting vehicles and forests.” greater welfare loads? The answer lies in what we Colin J. Campbell (2005, p. 315) gently but have come to call the ‘attractiveness principle’.” fi rmly sums it up: “We will have to change the way The attractiveness principle states that, we live as [oil] production declines toward eventual to any particular population class, all exhaustion. I stress that it is the onset of terminal geographical areas tend to become decline that is more relevant than the end of oil equally attractive. Or perhaps more itself. It is not too soon to start thinking about what realistically stated, all areas tend to that may entail.” become equally unattractive. Why do all The Attractiveness Principle areas tend toward equal attractiveness? I use “attractiveness” to encompass every Bien Venidos A Oregon4 aspect of a city that contributes to its Welcome to Oregon. And they are sure desirability or undesirability. Population coming! ! ! ! ! movement is an equalizing process. As Jails, medical facilities, schools, and people move toward a more attractive welfare agencies overwhelmed. We are area, they drive up prices and overload getting buried. But somehow people the job opportunities, the environmental don’t catch on that the last thing we need capacity, the available housing, and the is more people.
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