In the famous Christmas tale by Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge is a penny-pincher until he isn’t. Looking at his past and his potential future changes his perspective. We all do that sometimes, that is, going back and looking forward, but it only rarely changes us on the order of Scrooge’s metamorphosis. Take our use of oil as an example. Unlike Scrooge, we haven’t employed a Bob Cratchit to keep meticulous books. The result: We don’t know how much we’ve used since the year Charles Dickens died and John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil (1870).
We have some estimates of crude oil production since 1859, the year that Colonel Drake drilled the first well in western Pennsylvania. But, according to John Jones of the School of Engineering at Aberdeen U. in the UK, those estimates are crude. Jones says we’ve drilled 35% more than the old figures suggest. Scrooge would have fired Bob Cratchit if his books were that far amiss.
We’ve burned lots of oil according to Jones’s refined numbers.* Don’t fret. There will still be oil to drill for years to come, but we all might have to be reverse Scrooges. That is, after years of unchecked burning without a Bob Crachit to keep accurate books, we might have to become oil-pinchers and hire some Bobs.
Thinking about oil depletion isn’t something new. Throughout the previous and current centuries there have been alarmists and burnthrifts (spendthrift derivative). You might be somewhere between both. Obviously, Scrooge had some business reasoning behind his spendthrift nature: Not keeping track of one’s money is a hazardous financial tactic at best. So, economics plays its role. If you want a finite resource to last, you have to pace yourself. But is that the nature of humans?
Giddy with wealth, we burn through what we have. Look, for example, to the history of boomtowns built on gold, silver, and petroleum production. They turn to ghost towns relatively fast. We’ve seen rapid consumption throughout history, but the principle doesn’t just apply to humans. Think ocean blooms. Dinoflagellates responsible for toxic red tides bloom when they encounter a wealth of nutrients they need for growth. Just about all organisms do the same; think bears and berries.
The nature of life seems to have an underlying Principle of Excess. Life takes advantage of abundance until something stops it. Excess spending and use of nutrients point to a life principle. So, if from the tiniest organisms to “intelligent” macro-sized humans spending wildly during times of excess is normal (and historical), is it any wonder that we have burned more oil than we can reckon?
Against the background history of boom-and-bust excesses or miserly thriftiness, we find ourselves looking at who we are in the context of our resources. It is difficult for many to apply a Scrooginess to times of plenty. It’s been a Christmas of oil since 1870. Maybe that oil boom projected itself into other aspects of our lives, enhancing the fundamental Principle of Excess that underlies the lives of many, if not all, organisms. If so, each of us might profit from being a Bob Cratchit looking over what we’ve spent and what we have left to spend. Oil is irrelevant here.
The Principle of Excess might apply to emotions and behaviors as well as to physical entities. Is war one of those excesses? Is anger? Aren’t both of those boom-and-bust strategies of life? If we look back at production in the context of looking forward, do we see ourselves as Scrooge before his transformation or Scrooge after it? How do we know for sure? What if our Bob Crachits have been as erroneous as those who kept tabs on oil production? We could be off by 35% in our estimate of our behaviors. It’s difficult to know without an accurate bookkeeper, and, with regard to emotions and behaviors, we probably have only faulty estimates. Possibly, the bust with regard to oil is coming sooner than we might have predicted before Jones's study. That bust is still a long way off. But personally, what about the potential for other busts? Have our behavioral and emotional excesses built an unsustainable personal town?
*Total amounts of oil produced over the history of the industry by J.C. Jones International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology (IJOGCT), Vol. 2, No. 2, 2009
We have some estimates of crude oil production since 1859, the year that Colonel Drake drilled the first well in western Pennsylvania. But, according to John Jones of the School of Engineering at Aberdeen U. in the UK, those estimates are crude. Jones says we’ve drilled 35% more than the old figures suggest. Scrooge would have fired Bob Cratchit if his books were that far amiss.
We’ve burned lots of oil according to Jones’s refined numbers.* Don’t fret. There will still be oil to drill for years to come, but we all might have to be reverse Scrooges. That is, after years of unchecked burning without a Bob Crachit to keep accurate books, we might have to become oil-pinchers and hire some Bobs.
Thinking about oil depletion isn’t something new. Throughout the previous and current centuries there have been alarmists and burnthrifts (spendthrift derivative). You might be somewhere between both. Obviously, Scrooge had some business reasoning behind his spendthrift nature: Not keeping track of one’s money is a hazardous financial tactic at best. So, economics plays its role. If you want a finite resource to last, you have to pace yourself. But is that the nature of humans?
Giddy with wealth, we burn through what we have. Look, for example, to the history of boomtowns built on gold, silver, and petroleum production. They turn to ghost towns relatively fast. We’ve seen rapid consumption throughout history, but the principle doesn’t just apply to humans. Think ocean blooms. Dinoflagellates responsible for toxic red tides bloom when they encounter a wealth of nutrients they need for growth. Just about all organisms do the same; think bears and berries.
The nature of life seems to have an underlying Principle of Excess. Life takes advantage of abundance until something stops it. Excess spending and use of nutrients point to a life principle. So, if from the tiniest organisms to “intelligent” macro-sized humans spending wildly during times of excess is normal (and historical), is it any wonder that we have burned more oil than we can reckon?
Against the background history of boom-and-bust excesses or miserly thriftiness, we find ourselves looking at who we are in the context of our resources. It is difficult for many to apply a Scrooginess to times of plenty. It’s been a Christmas of oil since 1870. Maybe that oil boom projected itself into other aspects of our lives, enhancing the fundamental Principle of Excess that underlies the lives of many, if not all, organisms. If so, each of us might profit from being a Bob Cratchit looking over what we’ve spent and what we have left to spend. Oil is irrelevant here.
The Principle of Excess might apply to emotions and behaviors as well as to physical entities. Is war one of those excesses? Is anger? Aren’t both of those boom-and-bust strategies of life? If we look back at production in the context of looking forward, do we see ourselves as Scrooge before his transformation or Scrooge after it? How do we know for sure? What if our Bob Crachits have been as erroneous as those who kept tabs on oil production? We could be off by 35% in our estimate of our behaviors. It’s difficult to know without an accurate bookkeeper, and, with regard to emotions and behaviors, we probably have only faulty estimates. Possibly, the bust with regard to oil is coming sooner than we might have predicted before Jones's study. That bust is still a long way off. But personally, what about the potential for other busts? Have our behavioral and emotional excesses built an unsustainable personal town?
*Total amounts of oil produced over the history of the industry by J.C. Jones International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology (IJOGCT), Vol. 2, No. 2, 2009
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