Duncan, Richard – The Olduvai Theory Energy, Population, and Industrial Civilization (2006)
Category: collapse, dieoff, resource depletion; Rating: 2/5
This is a summary of a classic “doomer” theory amongst students of world energy and ecological trends, which predicts that the electric grids will go into permanent blackout soon after the peak of world oil production – which was almost certainly reached in 2008. However, unlike the case with the Limits to Growth theory, Duncan does not base his work within a rigorous theoretical framework and his arguments that the oil peak by itself will usher in an immediate collapse of industrial civilization are singularly unconvincing.
Olduvai Theory
Abstract: The Olduvai Theory states that the life expectancy of industrial civilization is approximately 100 years – that is, from 1930 to 2030 (as defined by energy production per capita e). There are four postulates to it:
1) The exponential growth of world energy production ended in 1970.
2) Average e will remain on a plateau from 1970 to 2008.
3) The rate of change of e will go steeply negative from 2008.
4) World population will decline to around 2bn souls by 2050.
Three Scouts
There is no comprehensive substitute for oil in its highenergy density, ease of handling, myriad end-uses, and in the volumes in which we now use it. The peak of world oil production and then its irreversible decline will be a turning point in Earth history with worldwide impact beyond anything previously seen. And that event will surely occur within the lifetimes of most people living today. (Youngquist, 2004)
Henry Adams (1838-1918): the historian who first envisioned an Olduvai scenario for industrial civilization.
Adams concluded that electrification was part of a larger process of historical acceleration, which would lead to an inevitable social decline. … It seemed probable that the ultimate result of exploiting new energy systems would be the apocalyptic end of history itself. (Nye, 1990, p. 1423)
The new American – the child of incalculable coal power, chemical power, electric power, and radiating energy, as well as of new forces yet undetermined – must be a sort of god compared with any former creation of nature. … The new forces would educate. … The law of acceleration was definite … No scheme could be suggested to the new American, and no fault needed to be found, or complaint made; but the next great influx of new forces seemed near at hand, and its style of education promised to be violently coercive. (Adams, 1907, Chap. 34)
Even in his own day he saw the eighteenth century American dream of unlimited opportunity and indefinite progress turning into a waking nightmare of the moral dilemmas of a capitalist society. He saw too that though science was indeed making tremendous advances in the conquest of Nature, winning every battle in that age-old contest, the odds were growing that a dehumanized mankind might lose the war. (Samuels, 1973, p. vii)
Frederick Lee Ackerman (1878-1950): the technocrat who quantified the energy dependence of society. This is expressed in Ackerman’s Law, which states e = Energy / Population.
We shall define as a “social steady state” any society in which the quantity [of energy expended] per capita … shows no appreciable change as a function of time. … On the other hand a society wherein … the average quantity of energy expended per capita undergoes appreciable change as a function of time is said to exhibit “social change.” … Upon this basis we can measure quantitatively the physical status of any given social system. … The energy per capita [equals the] the total amount [of energy] expended divided by the population. (Ackerman, 1932, p. 1819)
M. King Hubbert (1903-1989): the geophysicist who noted that world energy consumption per capita exploded in the 19th C, after millennia of very slow growth. Though he believed that high energy consumption could continue indefinitely (Course I), he recognized a fall back to the agrarian level of existence as a distinct possibility (Course III). In these scenarios of overshoot and collapse, he gradually moved the peak of e from his initial estimate of 2400 CE in 1949 to 2150 CE by 1976.
Duncan says that since the historical data already invalidates Course I, the only alternatives left are Course II (an orderly decline in e to a medium state) and Course III (full collapse).
There shows there is a continuous intellectual chain between these prophets.
Electromagnetic Civilization
For systems theorists the first message of their eerily smooth distribution curves is clear: big blackouts are a natural product of the power grid. The culprits that get blamed for each blackout – lax tree trimming, operators who make bad decisions – are actors in a bigger drama, their failings mere triggers for disasters that in some strange ways are predestined. In this systems level
view, massive blackouts are just as inevitable as the mega quake that will one day level much of Tokyo. (Fairley, 2004)
Duncan argues that 1) modern life is dependent on affordable, stable electrical power, 2) big blackouts are inevitable and 3) permanent blackouts are coming.
1) King Kilowatt
The electromagnetic ether completely envelops modern industrial civilization – from power plants, along countless miles of high-voltage wave guides (“wires” and “lines”) to end-use customer loads (motors, phones, radios, TVs, heaters, fiber-optic systems, the Internet, etc).
Duncan estimates that electricity production lays claim on 7% of the world’s oil, 20% of natural gas, 88% of coal and 100% of hydroelectric and nuclear power. It accounts for 43% of the world’s end-use energy, greater than oil’s 35%.
It is extremely important by sector too, as its end-use energy consumption in the US accounts for: 0.2% in transport, 33.3% in the Industrial sector, 65.9% in the Residential sector and 76.2% in the Commercial sector.
2) Big Blackouts are Inevitable
Electricity is generated, transmitted and distributed by complex, farflung,
costly and fragile infrastructure. Electric power networks are huge and complex and have been continually upgraded and expanded over the course of industrial civilization. It also requires some minimum level of energy to function itself (power plants, substations, transmission and distribution lines and towers).
Due to depreciation, they need skilled personnel for maintenance. The distribution function requires control centers staffed by competent workers with powerful computers and software to monitor and control the flow of power.
Though they have in-build features designed to enhance stability like “protective relays” that instantly trip for abnormal conditions, such as short circuits on high-voltage power lines, in reality the long-term trends аrе negative:
Data for the last four decades show that blackouts occur more frequently than theory predicts, and suggests that it will become increasing expensive to prevent these low-probability, high-consequence events. The various proposed “fixes” are expensive and could even be counterproductive, causing future failures because of some unanticipated interaction. (J. Apt & L. B. Lave, 2004)
3) Permanent Blackouts are Coming
According to the Olduvai Theory, the power grids are doomed – sooner or later, it will go down. In 2004, the IEA predicted that worldwide energy investment of 15.3tn $ (2000 $) are required from 2003 to 2030, with 63% of the total – some 9.7tn $ – accruing to electricity.
The Olduvai Theory predicts that already debt-ridden states and municipalities will not be able to raise this amount, especially since myriad other costs will increase in a world with limits to growth. Instead, the increasingly impoverished citizenry will no longer be able to pay their electricity bills – or they will illegally wire themselves up to low-voltage power lines, further exacerbating the problem.
World Energy and Population
FIVE MAJOR SOURCES OF ENERGY: Oil production began in 1833 in the Chechen Republic using shovel-dug wells and increased exponentially up until 1970; after that, growth and decline became linear. Similar patterns of transition from exponential to linear growth are seen for natural gas (1880-1970), coal (1700-1909), hydroelectric (1890-1972) and nuclear power (1955-1975).
Is exponential growth now consigned to the past? It is for oil, natural gas and hydroelectric; though coal and nuclear can still be ramped up at such rates for “very brief periods”.
In total, a graph of total world energy production shows that exponential growth stopped in 1970 and per capita energy production peaked in 1979 and has since plateaued.
World total energy production grew exponentially at about 4.6%/y from 1700 to 1909. Next it grew linearly at 2.2%/y from 1909 to 1930 and 1.5%/y from 1930 to 1945. Subsequently it surged exponentially at 5.5%/y from 1945 to 1970. This was followed by linear growth at 3.5%/y from 1970 to 1979. Thereafter world total energy production slowed to linear growth of about 1.5%/y from 1979 to 2003.
(How could something grow by a fixed percentage every year, and yet be “linear”?? This is nonsensical. Presumably he meant that for 1909 to 1930, for instance, world population grew in increments that averaged out would have yielded exponential growth of 2.2%/y.)
That said both Postulate 1 and Postulate 2 are nonetheless confirmed, if clumsily. (I should also point out that energy efficiency increased substantially from 1970 to today, so in reality the amount of USEFUL e has increased).
The Olduvai Theory
Many industrialized nations are now growing rapidly and placing ever greater demands on world resources. Many of those resources come from the presently underdeveloped countries. What will happen when the resource-supplying countries begin to withhold resources because they foresee the day when their own demand for will require the available supplies? Will the developed nations stand by and let their economies decline while resources still exist in other parts of the world? Will a new era of international conflict grow out of pressures from resource shortage? (Forrester, 1971, p. 70)
Industrial civilization is defined as when e = Energy / Population = 30%+ of max (e), and its duration is estimated to be 100 years – from 1930 to 2030.
The Olduvai Theory is further defined by seven events –
1. In 1930, e reached 30% of its maximum value, thus launching industrial civilization.
2. 1945 marked the beginning of very fast exponential growth.
3. In 1970, growth became very slow and linear.
4. From 1979, there has been a rough Plateau of no growth.
5. In 2004, we came to the Brink.
6. The year 2008 will mark the edge of the Cliff of rapid decline in e.
7. 2030 will see e return to below 30% of its maximum value, signifying the end of industrial civilization.
– and by seven intervals.
1. 1930-1945 shows irregular growth in e during the Great Depression and World War Two.
2. Strong growth from 1945-1970 correlates with strong growth in oil and NG extraction.
3. Slowing growth from 1970-1979 is due to slackening oil production.
4. The rugged 1979-2003 Plateau shows that energy production and human population growth ran neck-in-neck.
5. The 2004-2008 Brink illustrates the energy industry’s last attempts to keep up with rising demand.
6. The Olduvai Cliff from 2008-2030 correlates with a spreading epidemic of blackouts.
7. From 2030, society will approach and return to an agrarian level of existence.
The most reliable leading indicator of the Cliff will be “brownouts and rolling blackouts”.
World Population Scenarios
The resource wars will run their courses, and populations will crash. The journey back to “natural” levels of world population will not be a joyous one. Have policymakers begun to grasp the scale of the problem that confronts them? Are they still dazzled by the contention that rates of increase are slowing, not grasping that all the time the numbers are mounting up? (Stanton, 2003)
Duncan presents two predictions of world population scenarios: that made by the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth model, and his own.
• The LTG “run” Duncan quotes uses “business-as-usual” assumptions about future socio-political development, which prevents a transition to sustainability. In this scenario, the world population peaks at 7.5bn souls in 2027. It is described below by one of its theorists, Meadows (2004):
The world society proceeds in a traditional manner without any major deviation from the policies pursued during most of the twentieth century. Population and production increase until growth is halted by increasingly inaccessible nonrenewable resources. Ever more investment is required to maintain resource flows. Finally, lack of investment funds in the other sectors of the economy leads to declining output of both industrial goods and services. As they fall, food and health services are reduced, decreasing life expectancy and raising average death rates. (p. 168-69; emphasis added)
• The Olduvai Theory of future world population is decidedly more pessimistic, predicting that population will peak in 2015 and will henceforth remorselessly decline to 2bn by 2050.
[As a result of permanent blackouts of electric power] the industries of all civilized countries would stop working, so that, with millions unemployed and with a total cut in the production of goods, unprecedented and incurable misery would occur, killing perhaps three quarters of the population, and leaving the rest in a deplorable state. (Thirring, 1956, p. 135)
Notes that data for testing Postulate 3 is as yet unavailable (the rate of change of e will go steeply negative from 2008 – to which I will add, the timing of the current global economic crisis is eerily precise as viewed from the framework of the Olduvai Theory).
Then Duncan moves on to Postulate 4 – world population will decline to around 2bn souls by 2050 (the same as in 1925), after peaking at 6.9bn in 2015. LTG and Olduvai are in lockstep with each other until 2012, when the latter sharply diverges to the downside; so when LTG peaks at 7.5bn in 2027, the population in Olduvai world will be at 5.3bn (equivalent to 1990) and plummeting fast.
The main differences is that whereas LTG identifies many ultimate (indirect, delayed, etc) causes of the collapse (especially “lack of investment funds for industrial goods and services”), Olduvai specifies that blackouts – “each happening one-by-one, region-by-region, and spreading worldwide over time” – will be the proximate (direct, immediate) cause of the collapse.
Olduvai is not the first theory to predict a catastrophic collapse in human numbers – other such pessimistic forecasters include King Hubbert, Hans Thirring, David Pimentel, Richard Heinberg, and Walter Youngquist . This is in contrast to “official” projections such as those of the US Census Bureau and the UN showing a world population of around 9bn in 2050.
Conclusions
“The Olduvai Theory states that the life expectancy of industrial civilization is approximately 100 years: circa 1930-2030. Ackerman’s (“White’s”) Law defines it: e = Energy / Population. Four postulates follow:
1. The exponential growth of world energy production ended in 1970.
2. Average e will show no growth from 1979 to circa 2008.
3. The rate of change of e will go steeply negative circa 2008.
4. World population will decline proximate with e.
Henry Adams in 1893 envisioned that electric power would accelerate society into chaos and ruin. Frederick Ackerman in 1932 showed that social change could be quantified by e. King Hubbert graphed the shape of the e curve in 1949. Thus an Olduvai scenario existed before 1950.
None of the world’s five major sources of primary energy has grown exponentially since 1975. World total energy production has not grown exponentially since 1970. Postulate 1 is verified.
The average rate of growth of world energy production per capita (e) was zero from 1979 to 2003 . Postulate 2 is confirmed through 2003.
Seventy-four (74) out of the approximately 100 years of the Olduvai Theory are now history. All of the data needed to test it are freely available on the worldwide web and updated annually. Rigorous tests are welcome.
The Olduvai scenario for world population peaks at 6.9bn circa 2015. Thereafter the population declines to 2.0bn in 2050 (Postulate 4). A growing number of independent studies concur.
My Assessment
The foundations of the Olduvai Theory are fragile and tentative. The main vector of doom is asserted to be the cascading collapse of the electric grids, which will sweep the world like an exploding neutron bomb from about now.
This is unlikely, since the electric grid can always be downsized. In rich nations, there is still a great deal of “fat” that can be cut out before energy shortages really start gnawing at the roots of industrial civilization; the most underdeveloped countries are little dependent on electricity in any case.
Duncan also leaves out the key point that technology is always pushing energy efficiency upwards. This process can be expected to continue right up until the point of collapse, and perhaps a little beyond.
Though the prediction that we’ll tumble over the Cliff in 2008 is uncannily coincident in time with the current global economic depression, I believe this to be more a symptom of the peaking of oil production than a herald of the impending collapse of industrial civilization.
It is true that oil very likely peaked in 2008 and will now go into accelerating decline, meaning that maintaining economic growth – especially in the already industrialized West – will become an increasingly unrealistic proposition.
That said, though oil is doubtless crucial towards core functions like maintaining the industrial system (e.g. mining, fertiliser production, etc), it should be noted that much of it is currently “wasted” on American suburbia, cheap Chinese consumer goods and other things whose loss will not immediately herald the fall of industrial civilization.
Coal (2040?), uranium (2050-2100?) and NG reserves (2020′s) are still far from peaking. Though the first two are have declining EROEI’s, there’s a long way to go before they drop to unsustainable levels of 5:1 or less.
Duncan does not reveal his methodology, if there is any, for calculating that 2008 is the year in which we fell over the Cliff; nor does he reveal his models for the decline in e and population.
As such, this is a far less serious work than the Limits to Growth, which does suffer from these glaring logical inconsistencies and provides detailed descriptions of the model they use to run various world scenarios. (And yes, I do intend to write a summary of LTG – I’ve already posted on this here, on as to how its findings reflect on Russia in particular).
The prospect of collapse back into the Olduvai Gorge is a real possibility during this century. But we can only really expect to see that to happen when “useful energy per capita” begins declining at a very fast rate. Even barring major technological breakthroughs or a transition to sustainability, I do not expect this to happen before 2030 at the earliest.
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