THE CHURCH IN FLUX
Chapter 4
When does Christ return? Continued.
Jesus is taken his time in coming back. No wonder that after 2000 years of waiting for him people have become tired and, actually, influenced by the church’s teaching of a heaven-bound message, have lost their desire for a New Creation. Now rapture is all the rage. That means that the church has totally switched direction, because, when the Apostles’ Creed was formulated, it clearly stated that “We believe in the resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting.”
Now it finally looks that Jesus’ return is imminent, and, as you may have guessed by now, it has something to do with Primary Productivity and its rapid decline. So why has Primary Productivity decreased so quickly? It’s the Oil we use that is causing this.
Oil is Primary Productivity stored as hydrocarbons, a trust fund of sorts, built up over many millions of years. However we have been robbing both capital and interest from that trust fund, to the point where we now can spot “The End of Oil” looming with drastic consequences for us, the human race, because lack of oil also means lack of food, and lack of food means lack of life.
Consider the following. In 1960 the expansion of the supply of unfarmed, arable lands came to an end. In spite of that, grain yields tripled. Ever since we ran out of land, food has become oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by about ten calories of oil. That figure does not include the fuel used in transporting the food from the factory floor to the store, or the gasoline we burn by us driving to buy it. Dr. Harriet Friedman writes that one kilogram of asparagus sent from Chile to New York takes 73 kg of fuel energy and adds 4.7 kg of carbon dioxide to the air we breathe in. The same is true for out-of-season strawberries and other food items. In general the food-miles average of the supermarket items is more than 5,000 times greater than the same items bought in the farmer’s market. Compare this to 1940 when the average farm produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used.
That’s why the End of Oil means also The End of Food. Throw in a bucket of Climate Change, which, knowing the human psyche, will only get worse, and the potential for catastrophes are so big that they remind me of the seven angels in Revelation 8.
The ‘End of Oil’ will mean that civilization as we know comes to an end. This is not the wacky forecast of a religious nut, but the conclusion of people in responsible positions.
Matthew R. Simmons, is one of them. He has written: “The situation (of peak oil) is desperate. It is past time. As I have said, the experts and politicians have no Plan B to fall back on. If energy peaks, particularly while 5 of the world’s 6.5 billion people have little or no use of modern energy, it will be a tremendous jolt to our economic well-being and to our health – greater than anyone could ever imagine.”
When asked if there is a solution, Simmons responded: “I don’t think there is one. The solution is to pray. Under the best of circumstances, if all prayers are answered there will be no crisis for maybe two years. After that it’s a certainty.”
The harsh truth is that for the foreseeable future there are no true alternatives to oil. The sun shines only a certain numbers of hours in a year and we can’t command the wind to blow when power is needed. I know. I have both power sources and still need the ‘grid.’
Consider energy history. When wood ran out, some 400 years ago, coal came on line. When coal proved to be too polluting, oil and natural gas were available. Now, what do we do? Rely mainly on Natural gas of which the world still has plenty, but all in very remote locations, such as Siberia or Australia? It will take trillions of dollars to feed the North American market with adequate supply, assuming there is plenty of it left.
Once we pass the oil production peak, a return to a medieval style of existence looks a frightening possibility. It will mean a greatly reduced human population. Thanks to oil, in my lifetime, the world’s population has more than tripled from 2 billion to 6.5 billion. As late as 1945 my maternal grandfather had no electricity on his small farm. He managed with one horse and one help. Then people were mentally and physically equipped to cope with little. These skills we have lost. In addition much of the earth has been spoiled, unfit for intensive, organic, agriculture. The End of Oil may mean a reduction in the world’s population to perhaps 1 billion. Imagine the hardship.
Now we have a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure powered almost exclusively by fossil-fuels. Cars, trucks, roads, boats, docks, airplanes, airports, hospitals, schools, farms manufacturing plants, food processing centers, water treatment plants – all run on fossil fuels. We have heat at the touch of a switch, and cooling is just as easy. All plastics, pesticides, and fertilizers are derived from that source as well.
The End of Oil means the End of growth, on which our economy depends.
What we have in abundance is debt: corporate debt, government debt, and consumer debt, all at record levels. In order to finance debt, we need economic growth. Economic growth requires a constantly increasing consumption of consumer goods – most of which are made from plastic, which comes from petroleum (oil) and are delivered by trucks, which consume diesel fuel (oil). Even a truly successful conservation program would require us to drastically cut our consumption of consumer goods, which would also stop economic growth. Conservation would cause indebted corporations, governments, and individuals to slide towards bankruptcy. Banks would call in outstanding debts, businesses would close, government services would cease, and people would lose their jobs. This is already happening.
During the Dirty Thirties many people had relatives in the country, where food, at least, was plentiful. That option is gone. Even farmers don’t grow their own food anymore.
I don’t have to be a prophet to conclude that without an abundant supply of cheap energy, transportation systems will break down. Electrical grids will collapse. Unemployment levels will skyrocket. Consumer goods will only be available to the super-rich. Food and water will become desperately sought after commodities. Riots and urban uprisings will become common.
The words in a recent Pentagon Report come to mind: “Every time when there is a choice between starving and raiding, humans will choose to raid.” Applied to the USA as a whole, it points to a World War for Oil, with the Middle East as the centre. Expect the US Army to expand, and perhaps re-institute the draft, in order to be able to conquer Saudi Arabia, the world’s treasure chest. War leads to more destruction, and a further rapid decline in Primary Productivity. Wars are always wasteful. The U.S. army requires 400,000 barrels of oil a day to maintain its troops in Iraq.
Yes, oil, the End of Oil, even a reduced supply of this vital fuel – and we all know that oil is a finite product – will cause tremendous disruption in our energy-dependent world. Even using less fuel has dangerous consequences. Dr James Lovelock makes in interesting remark in the introduction to this book The Revenge of Gaia. Here’s what he writes: “Curiously, smoke and dust pollution reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This ‘global dimming’ is transient and could disappear in a few days if there were an economic downturn or a reduction in fossil fuel burning. This would leave us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool’s climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die.”
So it seems that no matter what we do, we speed up the Lord’s coming, whether we curtail energy use or keep on using it.
What does all this lead up to?
Read about it in the next chapter, where I finally come to a tentative conclusion on “When will Christ Return”?