Your Interview

Has there been any plans of avoiding the mass consumption of oil (Besides raising the value of oil itself), or will we just be awaiting the 'peak oil' era in 2012?

Drs. Gilbert and Perl: In Canada, there have been no such plans since gasoline rationing during the Second World War. Rationing is a likely response by governments to oil shortages.

We discuss rationing a little in Transport Revolutions but we should have said more about it.

Gas rationing will be political dynamite and we can expect to see public protests and governments fall under certain circumstances. The Iranian government tried to initiate gas rationing last summer and this provoked riots and attacks on gas stations in Tehran.

Do you believe the future for Electric Cars is comming soon ... how long will it take to replace ICE for Electrec Vehicles.

Drs. Gilbert and Perl: In Transport Revolutions we suggest that by 2025 about a quarter of cars in the U.S. and two thirds in China could be wholly electric. We didn’t look specifically at the future of other countries or beyond 2025, but given the integrated global market for motor vehicles we expect that most nations will fall within this range.

Some outliers might include Israel, which has a strong strategic incentive to curb oil use sooner and which has offered tax incentives to facilitate an electric car initiative known as ‘Project Better Place.’

Oil powers not only economies, but it also powers the militaries of the world. And self-contained power systems are critical for the expression of military might. Aircraft carriers and submarines might be nuclear powered, but fighters, bombers, tanks, helicopters, etc. are not.

No current government will let oil become scarce without ensuring their military's ability to function.

How will the military status quo be affected by the slowing of the oil drip, and will the military be a source of new transportation technologies to keep the economies moving?

Drs. Gilbert and Perl: The U.S. and China, the two countries we looked at in detail, will both do as you say: give priority to military requirements. The U.S. military is already well informed about oil prospects and, for example, is leading research into more efficient production of jet kerosene from coal.

What do you say to Hubbert's theory that Peak Oil happened 10 years ago and we're already cruising down the other side of the curve?

Drs. Gilbert and Perl: In 1974, M King Hubbert predicted world production of conventional oil would peak in about 1995. (Conventional oil is cheap and easy to extract. It’s the kind that gushes out when a well is drilled.) It likely peaked in 2004-2005. He erred chiefly in not anticipating the major worldwide flattening of oil consumption in the 1980s.

The real concern for humanity is the peak in production of all petroleum liquids, including unconventional oil (such as from the tar sands) and the natural gas liquids used as oil equivalents in refining. This will likely happen in or before 2012, although we won’t know for sure until a few years after it has happened.

"personal grid-connected vehicles (known as GCVs)" caught my eye, so I wiki'd it - nothing - and googled - one reference with no detail, and, of course, your article. You aren't just making this up, are you? You're talking about little cars stuck to rails? Has that technology emerged anywhere? Canada?

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: Two things are being mixed up here. We used the term ‘grid-connected vehicles’ (GCVs) to refer to any vehicle that gets its power from the grid while in motion. Subways, streetcars and trolley buses are Canada’s best-known examples of these. We also wrote about the possibility that long-mooted personal rapid transit (PRT) might become more than a dream, noting that it could be a type of GCV. PRT could consist of “little cars stuck to rails.”

There are a lot more than just you two scientists in the world that are thinking that the peak oil date is just a few scant years away - the current American government has paid for 2 studies done - one called the Hirsch Report and the other done by the US Army Corps of Engineers - and they are both fairly bleak. Why is it that of Western coutries, Canada is one of the only ones that does not have an emergency stockpile of oil on hand - and we are already an oil importer due to NAFTA obligations?

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: We relied on the work of dozens of scientists, mostly geologists. Their work made it possible for us to conclude that we are almost at the peak in world oil production. In Transport Revolutions, we cited the work of Hirsh and his colleagues and that of the Corps of Engineers.

When it comes to why Canada risks being left ‘high and dry’ in a global oil supply crisis, we can only say that whether it concerns Kyoto obligations, promoting ‘smart growth’ or many other noble policy objectives, Canada has a poor record of actually implementing the high minded goals and visions that we set for ourselves. We analyzed this tendency in an earlier book, The Integrity Gap: Canada’s Environmental Policy and Institutions.

Both the Alberta Progressive Conservative party and the Federal Conservative party site 2050 as a date for significant reductions in green house gases in their climate change policies. What would you project Canada’s remaining oil and gas reserves to be at that time?

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: We stress in Transport Revolutions that the critical matter is not reserves per se but how much can be produced from reserves in any year. In 2050, Alberta could be producing as much oil as it does now, although almost all of it would be from tar sands. It’s unlikely to be producing much more. If water becomes scarcer or environmental regulations become tighter, or both, production could well decline.

Isn't this problem self-correcting and self-limiting? As oil becomes harder to find, prices will automatically rise, and this will cause people to change their habits. This is already happening as some people can no longer afford to drive a car. As oil prices rise, other "expensive" technologies will begin to seem more attractive. So, rather than being a looming "crisis", isn't "peak oil" just an upcoming gradual social adjustment?

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: You are right to say that as prices rise people will change their habits. However, prices have to rise a lot for this to happen. If there is no preparation for steep price rises, habits will be harder to change because there will be nothing to change to. Poorer countries and poorer people in rich countries will be especially affected. This ‘hard landing’ into oil depletion could bring with it a real risk of widespread economic and social disturbance.

The main point of our book is to show that there could be a ‘soft landing.’ This would happen when consumption is reduced in advance of the decline in production, thereby avoiding scarcity and extreme high prices, and moderating the impact of price increases that do occur.

What about synthetic oil e.g. coal conversion and garbage? Surely there comes a point when those processes are economically viable.

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: Oil was made from coal in Hitler’s Germany and in South Africa during apartheid, and it’s still done in South Africa. It’s a dirty, expensive process, but it works. Apart from the dirt and the cost, there is another problem: coal is becoming scarce too. Coal prices are presently rising more steeply than oil prices.

What sort of studies have been done on trying to model which industries will be affected first as prices rises? Presumably, once conservation starts to occur on a large scale, as long as we can decrease consumption faster than oil production drops, prices won't go too haywire. Is there any idea of what sort of prices would be required for this in different areas, or is this such a complex system that any modeling would be a gross simplification?

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: To our best knowledge this has not been done. We are developing plans for a sequel to Transport Revolutions that will go into the excellent points you raise in some detail. We agree that modeling as such may not be of much use in this effort.

Are you aware of work currently underway to develop cars run on compressed air? The air can be compressed by electricity, and there are no emissions and no problem of batteries, with their attendant problems of 1) obtaining the raw materials for producing them on a mass scale, and then 2) recycling or disposing of them when they're worn out.
I think cars run by compressed air are the best alternative for automobile transportation.
What do you think?

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: The simple answer is that such cars are likely to be considerably less energy-efficient than comparable battery-electric cars and thus will not compete well in an energy-constrained world.

The end of cheap oil means the end of cheap plastic. Given that almost everything we encounter these days is either made of, or wrapped in, plastic (or both), what are some of the likely effects of an oil supply shock on, say, the surgical, pharmaceutical, and prosthetic options available to us?

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: The likely effects, without good preparation, may not be good. About 10% of total oil production is used as a feedstock for plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and other products. Many of these uses are more important for the well-being of society than personal motorized transportation and wise governments will likely protect them when oil depletion bites.

The authors' assertion that "car-dependent suburban residents … will have to abandon their homes or live at a subsistence level on what they can produce from their land" is alarming and makes sense although I am curious to know if the book speculates as to the fate of inhabitants of large urban areas who rely on the oil-based logistal chain for their existence. Aren't they in an equally bad, if not worse position than suburbanites?

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: We use this as a ‘worst-case’ example: what could happen if there is no preparation for oil depletion. Inhabitants of large urban areas could be strongly affected too, although they tend to be a little less dependent on oil. Our book was inspired by a desire to help avoid such outcomes.

All levels of government in Canada are ignoring this issue and have absolutely no plan in place. Worse yet, their current and future proposed plans/policies are disastrous in regard to climate change and peak resources for Canadians. As you have noted, this is particularly true for Ontario and Eastern Canada. What timely actions do you advise individual Canadians to take in order to dramatically change this reality?

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: You are 110% correct. The best timely action individuals could take is to ensure that these issues are raised during elections, and that promises made in response are kept.

Have you considered sending copies of your book to the various Federal and Provincial MP's? I'm sure only a few of them would read it but it might open some eyes. Better yet send it to their family members, and let them do the convincing. Spread the word!

Drs.Gilbert and Perl: We would love to send copies of Transport Revolutions to legislators in every country of the world, but doing this even just in Canada would be way beyond our means. We have to pay for every copy after the first six. The publisher (Earthscan) would do it if someone paid, so the question we have to ask is, who would pay?