University Shambles: How to Ruin the Best University System in the World.

Write-up of a Lecture to the Ethical Society, given at Conway Hall, Sunday 3rd of March (2013), 11.00. Given by Professor Chris Rhodes:
author of the novel "University Shambles" http://universityshambles.com (a black comedy).

(First published in the Ethical Record - The Proceedings of the Conway Hall Ethical Society. April 2013, p12-15). 

Tony Blair, shortly after his inauguration in 1997 as Prime Minister of Great Britain famously said that we needed, “Education, Education, Education”, and that 50% of our young people should attend university. It is not clear exactly what analysis produced this proportion exactly, but currently, the figure is 47%, so the wish has almost been fulfilled. The expansion of the university and higher education sector began long before Mr Blair, and by the time Harold Wilson came to power as Prime Minister in 1964, a wave of new universities had already been initiated, including Sussex, York, UEA, Kent, Warwick and Essex, the so called “plate glass” universities. In 1992, shortly after Margaret Thatcher had stepped down as leader of the Conservative party and Prime Minister, with John Major assuming that role, the binary divide between the universities and the polytechnics was abolished, and the expansion of the entire university sector was urged-on in earnest, and at an unparalleled scale. It is of historical interest, and germane to this discussion, to consider the origins of the various universities, which initially were Oxford, and then Cambridge, followed by the other “ancients”, e.g. St. Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dublin, acknowledging others, such as Durham and Manchester Victoria in the nineteenth century, with the creation of the red brick universities (Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield) in the first decade of the 20^th century.

The University of London was created in 1836, by the merger of University College and Kings College, and though with older roots, Imperial College was formally established in 1907. In the city’s East End, the educational component of the People's Palace was admitted on an initial three-year trial basis as a School of the University of London on 15 May 1907 as East London College. In 1910 the College's status in the University of London was extended for a further five years, with unlimited membership being conferred in May 1915. The polytechnics were institutions of a different kind, but some can trace their roots back to the mechanics institutes of the 1820s, and the London Polytechnic to 1838. Around 30 new polytechnics were formed in the 1960s expansion of higher education, and it was Tony Crosland - Secretary of State for Education and Science (1965‒67) – who created the “binary system”. Polytechnics focussed more on “high quality vocational work” and initially on engineering and applied science. Their awards, from B.Sc. through to Ph.D., were validated by the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA). Among the innovations of the polytechnics were “sandwich degrees” and part-time courses, which were especially appropriate for “professions”, such as engineering, town planning, law, architecture, and for training science technicians. There was far less emphasis on research than in the universities, which tended to be “applied” and often connected to local industry.

By about 1973, practically all the university posts had been filled, in many cases by protégés of the great and the good, often with no formal interview, with little demographic chance for new blood for many years to come. The 1970s saw a rise of militancy and industrial strife in Britain, which culminated in the Winter of Discontent in 1979, with rubbish piling up in the streets, bodies going unburied, and power being seized from Labour by the Conservatives, led by Margaret Thatcher, “The Iron Lady”. As part of an effort to control the trade unions, which had run amok in the previous decade, causing Britain’s competitiveness to decline, especially against the ascending Far East, the Thatcher government began to cut subsidies from industries that were deemed unprofitable, e.g. coal and steel production. The result of this was that the number of unemployed rose to 3 million, and as a countermanding measure, during the 1980s, some 2.5 million were taken from this register and placed on invalidity benefit (“on the sick”), thus setting the seeds of the current “benefits culture”, in an act of political manoeuvring but with dire social consequences. The university cuts began in 1981, with four technological universities, Salford, Bradford, Aston and Brunel, each losing >30% of their funding. This rationalisation process would continue under Sir Keith Joseph, Secretary of State for Education and Science. In 1985, Mrs Thatcher was ignominiously denied an honorary degree from her alma mater, the University of Oxford, but in the subsequent rationalisation of the universities, a substantial number of small chemistry and physics departments were closed, and now many universities have neither. Indeed, as Mrs Thatcher put it herself, in 1988: “Can an institution that has neither a physics nor a chemistry department be called a university?”

1992 was a momentous year for two reasons: (1) the binary divide between the polytechnics and the universities was abolished and, (2) the format of the later Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) was introduced. This would ultimately multiply the number of students attending “university” by nearly 400% (2010/11, 47%). However, it also created a bottom layer in a league of (now) 116 universities, while the effect of the RAE concentrated most of the research funding in the top 10. Formerly, the polytechnics received their own funding from local authorities, but along with the other universities, were funded by the HEFCE once all had been awarded university status. So, what was the real reason for re-branding the polytechnics as universities? Was it all aimed in the service of inclusiveness and greater opportunities for the nation’s youth? Not entirely. The collapse of the “old” manufacturing industry in 80s, then recession, meant that record numbers of unemployed 18–24 year olds were projected, and a huge embarrassment for a government that wants to be re-elected. In parallel, due to the decline in British industry, the polytechnics effectively lost their original role. Through the expediency of renaming the polytechnics as universities, and expanding the student population by a factor of four, vast numbers of young people were kept from the unemployment figures, being in education instead. The expansion was however not funded accordingly, and spending per student fell by 40%.

The quality of professors, in the enlarged corpus of universities, is hardly uniform, since in some (mostly new) universities, there are many “professors” with practically no published work. In some subjects, e.g. “pharmacy practice”, awarding a “professorship” is the only way candidates can be paid sufficiently to attract them from the private sector, but irrespective of their academic quality. The latter situation now applies in both the old and newer universities. With such large numbers of students to teach, the character of the job of an academic has changed immeasurably, and there are many staff now employed on teaching-only contracts. All universities have also become much more bureaucratic than they were, in part stemming from the local-authority roots of the polytechnics. It is of concern, that 36% of those graduating since 2005 were employed in sales and customer service roles in 2011, including sales assistants, cleaners, waiters, shelf-stackers, bar-staff, hotel porters and call centre staff, while 14% graduating since 2005 were unemployed in 2011. So, of those graduates who are employed, 42% are in low-skilled jobs. One in three applications for this year’s graduate vacancies are from students who had  graduated last year, or before, and while there are 10 million graduates in the U.K., there are only 9 million “graduate level” jobs. The question arises then, is it really worthwhile to incur a debt of £30,000 to end up working in a job that a school-leaver could have done? It is likely that the increase in fees from £3,000 to £9,000 in 2012, raising that debt to perhaps £50,000, will prove to be a critical element in providing an answer. Certainly, 18 year olds that I have spoken to, are not taking going to “uni” as a right of passage, but considering other options, including apprenticeships. The recent indicators are consistent with a progressive drop in the number of applications, and a declining number of applicants actually taking up university places when offered to them.

A major fault is that the system was expanded overly and too rapidly, and with scant regard to the subjects being studied. The introduction of a “bums on seats” funding policy forced universities to accept the vast additional numbers of students, but the system is now producing more graduates than there are graduate-level jobs. The polytechnics adopted the trappings of universities, but with neither the traditions nor the standards, and tragically, in so doing, good polys lost their strong vocational role in education and society and became bad universities. As noted, the bottom half of the league table of universities are all ex-polys. The quality of the system has been eroded further by a lack of proper standards being implemented over academic promotions: professorships and readerships. The universities have also been over-bureaucratised, with support staff becoming managers over the academic staff, and hence a significant shift in the power base has occurred. By way of remedial action, Professors and Readers should re-apply for their titles against proper national standards for which an independent body is necessary to validate the quality of such candidates, who should be demoted or removed, if found wanting - e.g. to be a science professor, you should be of the quality to be awarded a D.Sc. The system overall needs restructuring, with the former polytechnics in part looking to their roots, as good local colleges, providing more work-related and practical training. Professor Michael Brown, a former Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University, stated that the current system was “not fit for purpose”, in regard to preparing graduates for the work-place, and introduced a “World of Work” “WOW” certificate. WOW runs in parallel with the student’s degree programme, and provides training in teamwork, negotiating skills, and a whole host of potentially very useful abilities. It is well regarded by the CBI and by potential employers. Professor Edith Sim, the Dean of Science at Kingston University, has stressed the importance for all universities in improving their relationships with business, but particularly those such as Kingston. Indeed, it is universities like Kingston, ex-polytechnics and mainly teaching-led, who are likely to suffer most under the government austerity cuts, removing 80% of their teaching funding, in comparison with 40% being cut from university research budgets overall.

For a while, Reading College was part of Thames Valley University, following a merger between the two institutions, but TVU has since been disbanded, and RC has gone back to its former name. RC runs apprenticeships with local businesses; catering and hospitality; travel and tourism; motor vehicles; hair and beauty; plumbing, gas and heating; bricklaying; electrical installation and design; barbering; horticulture. It is surely not necessary that every subject be taught in a university, or that it should necessarily be a degree, e.g. catering, tourism, golf-course management, and hotel management. Some degrees fare worse than others, especially in such a tough market, e.g. media and communications, for which employment is down 40% on last year. Not all courses described as apprenticeships are the same, and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has emphasised the necessity of raising the bar on all such schemes to ensure a common and high standard, perhaps on a par with Germany and Switzerland, nations where technical training is taken very seriously.

In respect of how our future education system and universities will be, the unseen game changer is Peak Oil, which the Canadian economist, Jeff Rubin, has described as “running out of the oil we can afford to burn” The cost of fuel will continue to rise, meaning the “kiss of death” to the global economy. The U.S. now makes little of its own steel, and instead, ore is mined in South America and brought to China, where it is turned into steel, and the steel is then transported to the U.S. Cheap labour and cheap fuel make this strategy possible, but as fuel costs rise, it will become cheaper to do the mining and processing in the U.S., thus rebuilding the U.S. steel industry, and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process. Many industries could be home-grown and we will need many practically trained people, meaning a requirement for fewer universities in their present form, but more colleges. Hence universities must adapt, and are probably entering another transitional phase, no less dramatic than that which began in 1992.

Picturing a Tonne of Carbon, and Energy from Dog-Excrement.

The question of, "what does a tonne of carbon really mean?", was put to me last night at a meeting of Transition Reading, a member of the rapidly growing Transition Towns movement, which I belong to, and which aims to achieve resilience at the level of local communities, to mitigate vulnerability to such external threats as peak oil, climate change and economic insecurity. Very often, measures of grams, kilograms or tonnes of carbon, or carbon dioxide are referred to, but practically these references are meaningless, since they do not readily convey an image of quantity, according to common experience. As a "visual" aid, let us consider what one tonne of carbon dioxide represents. The molar volume of an ideal gas at 25 degrees C (298 K) and standard pressure (1 atmosphere = 760 mm Hg = 101,300 Pascals) is 24.46 litres.

One mole of carbon dioxide (CO2) weighs (has a mass of) 44 g. Thus one tonne of CO2 contains 1,000,000g/44 g = 22,727.3 moles. Hence its volume under ambient conditions is 555,909 litres, or about 556 cubic metres. Again, this is not desperately helpful, and so to aid the "eye", we can imagine a cube, of side length 8.22 metres (27.0 feet), which is about the size of a fairly roomy two-storey house.

Now, if a tonne of "carbon" is referred to, we must multiply the above volume by a factor of 44/12, which is the ratio of the molecular mass of CO2 to the atomic mass of carbon, making around 2,039 cubic metres. Hence our house, still assumed to be cubic, now has a side length of 12.68 metres, or 41.6 feet and is accordingly a quite spacious dwelling.

As a rider to this, the topic of making biofuel from dog-excrement came up in conversation http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/fido-strikes-gold-with-britains-most-noxious-biofuel-dog-excrement-8591702.html which is a recent innovation. At a guess, I reckoned that the raw (dry) material probably has an energy density (that released through combustion) of around 15 GJ/tonne, which is close to that deduced from the combustion enthalpy of carbohydrate (glucose), 2801 kJ/mol  while the biodiesel from it is likely to have a much greater energy density, probably close to 38 GJ/tonne http://www.ipst.gatech.edu/faculty/ragauskas_art/technical_reviews/Energy%20Basics.pdf . Now this brings to mind an exhibition that I saw in the Deutsches Museum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsches_Museum in Munich last week, where I noticed a graph of energy density for different kinds of coal, which seemed to indicate that anthracitic coal (getting toward being pure carbon) had an energy density of 40 GJ/tonne, which is much higher than I had thought it to be, at nearer 30 GJ/tonne. So, let's see what the energy density of pure carbon is.

The enthalpy of combustion of solid carbon (in the form of  graphite), C+ O2(g) → CO2(g) = –393.5 kJ/mol. So, that is the amount of energy released by burning 12 g of carbon. Hence, burning a tonne of it would yield 393.5 x 1,000 J x 1,000,000 g/12 g = 32.8 GJ, which is close to my original notion. The quoted values for the energy content of different kinds of coal do vary somewhat, and this link http://rekauk.com/biomass-fuels cites a value for anthracite of 33.8 GJ/tonne. Now, this is very much at the high end of those various estimates that I have seen (typically in the range 27--30 GJ/tonne http://www.greenrationbook.org.uk/resources/biomass-energy/) and maybe it is too high, but the energy density given for chicken litter at 13.5 GJ/tonne is close to my original guess on the energy that might be recovered from burning a tonne of dog-mess, if indeed one felt compelled to do so!

Global Warming is Nonsense - According to the "Daily Mail."

The Daily Mail, having recently published an interview with Nigel Lawson, which attempts to convince its sentient readership that Peak Oil is nonsense http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2244822/Thought-running-fossil-fuels-New-technology-means-Britain-U-S-tap-undreamed-reserves-gas-oil.html is now embarked on a mission to alert us to the news that Global Warming is yet another myth http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294560/The-great-green-1-The-hard-proof-finally-shows-global-warming-forecasts-costing-billions-WRONG-along.html. I published a rebuttal to the DM's Peak Oil coverage, in which I emphasised that it is not a matter entirely of how large the reserve (let alone resource!) might be, that will determine the instance and timing of a production peak - of oil, gas, coal or indeed any other finite commodity - http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Peak-Oil-is-Nonsense-...-Because-Theres-Enough-Gas-to-Last-250-Years.html, but rather the rate at which the material can be extracted, according to prevailing physical, geological, economic and technical determinants.

I concluded the article with the line "He's obviously forgotten about climate change", but whatever Lord Lawson's recollections are, the Daily Mail is compelled to the view that anthropogenically-driven global warming is a phantom. Having done some basic sums on the subject, with a German colleague Alexander Koewius http://www.koewius.de/Website/Climate_Change.html, which show that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly CO2,  are expected to elevate the mean global temperature considerably, I find such assertions less than convincing. Rather as resources are all too frequently confused with reserves, to make a case that there is plenty of "oil" to be had, but which in any case say nothing about actually getting it out of the ground - i.e. reserves are static reckonings, while production is a dynamic process - any apparent "flatness" of the recent climate temperature record (if it is real http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/01/10/global-warming-is-not-at-a-standstill-despite-ignorant-claims-in-uk-press/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/27/climate-change-model-global-warming) ignores the difference between trend and variation. A lovely illustration of this is of a man walking a dog on a beach. If you watch the dog, he meanders all over the place (variation), but in fact is heading in a define direction, according to his master's wishes (trend) http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend_and_variation.html. As the elements prevail upon us over the longer term, trend is climate, while weather is variation.

Through the latter link http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend_and_variation.html is a video clip which shows that straight lines can be "fitted" which imply an absence of warming over different periods, and yet the overall trend is to a higher mean global temperature. If indeed it were to prove the case that the Earth has stopped warming, then the question arises of "where is the excess thermal energy going?" It has been suggested that some of this is being stored in the deep oceans https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/5364/deep-oceans-can-mask-global-warming-decade-long-periods, and if this is so, when it resurfaces, we are likely to be in deep trouble indeed, through the forcing of complex and interwoven mechanisms of the Earth System. i.e. We are likely be hotter, (wetter or dryer, depending on location and sea-level proximity), and hungrier than we thought. Will the variations oscillate with greater amplitude, or run out of control?... we simply will not know the outcome of this, the greatest geo-engineering experiment in human history, until it is concluded, but the consequences of burning all the carbon we can get our hands on are unlikely to be favourable http://math.350.org/.

Wind for Hydrogen - An Update.

This is an update of some numbers from an older posting http://ergobalance.blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/ulf-bossel-platinum-and-hydrogen.html in light of the larger commercial wind turbines that are now available http://ergobalance.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/shaky-foundations-for-offshore-wind.html. There is some improvement in the overall figures, but the task of switching from oil to hydrogen remains stupendous.

At the outset, we should note that hydrogen does not occur free in nature but must be freed from other elements, such as oxygen in water, with which it is naturally combined, and the separation of elements requires other forms of energy. Almost all the hydrogen used currently in the world - principally as a chemical feedstock e.g. for oil refining and making artificial fertilizers - is made by steam-reforming natural gas, and there is a CO2 budget that must be costed-in, hence hydrogen from this source is not clean but contributes to CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it consumes natural gas, and so there is a further demand placed on another resource, in accord with the indisputable fact that it takes resources to extract resources. Ideally therefore, that hydrogen should be produced by e.g. water electrolysis using electricity made from renewable sources.

Some while ago, Ulf Bossel pointed out http://www.fuelcellforum.com/reports/E21.pdf there are losses at each stage in the chain of production, storage and distribution for hydrogen. There is obviously a loss of 50 - 60% incurred when the material is oxidised in a fuel cell, but in its favour is the fact that an efficiency of even 40 - 50% is substantially above the Carnot-cycle limit (Thermodynamics again) of around 35% for a typical internal combustion engine. The losses may be summarised as follows: 90% efficiency for rectifying alternating current to DC to run the electrolyzer; 75% overall efficiency (ideal) for the electrolyzer itself; and then the storage of the bulky hydrogen gas either as a highly compressed gas, which takes about 20% of the energy content of the hydrogen to compress it (or as a cryogenic liquid, which takes 30 - 40% to produce); 10% for distribution and say 50% efficiency for the fuel cell itself, which amounts to about a 25% efficiency overall.

There are electrolyzer units http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/36705.pdfthat can produce high pressure hydrogen and if each gas-station were to make its own hydrogen by electrolysis, much of the distribution losses (probably 30%) might be avoided. A report has been published by a firm of independent analysts in Germany which is critical of some of Bossel's figures http://mpfc.de/pdf/LBSTonBossel.pdfespecially in regard to storage and transmission, particularly across large distances say from sunny north Africa (if the hydrogen were produced using PV technology which would be much more efficient there) by pipeline to Europe. However, an in-situ arrangement as I allude to would surely get around that, presuming we could make enough renewable electricity, or if there were a grid of electrons (rather than of hydrogen) including north African PV, European wind-power, North Sea wave energy and so on, such power might be supplied to run local electrolysis equipment, which would avoid actual hydrogen transmission. But if Bossel is right, why not use these electrons in a more direct manner?

On a tit-for tat basis, we can make the following calculation:

The heat of combustion of hydrogen is -285 kJ/mol, and so 1 kg of hydrogen = 1000 g/2 g/mol x -285 kJ= -142,500 kJ = 1.425 x 10^8 J.

We get through 82 million tonnes of oil altogether annually in the UK and we use 60 million tonnes of that for fuel. The energy content of oil is rated at 42 GJ/tonne and so that 60 million tonnes "contains" 60 x 10^6 x 42 x 10^9 Joules = 2.52 x 10^18 J of energy.

Hydrogen can be produced at a pressure of up to 10,000 psi by electrolysis at a rate of 60.5 kW/kg of H2. Hence the equivalent H2 to match that amount of oil is:

2.52 x 10^18 J/1.425 x 10^8 J/kg = 1.768 x 10^10 kg H2. Bossel has used the conversion factor of 1.5, i.e. that H2 can be used with 1.5 times the recoverable energy efficiency of gasoline. Since gasoline gives an approximately 14% well-to-wheel efficiency that would make about 21% overall for hydrogen, which seems a bit low and I would think that say 59% for the electrolysis system x 90% for rectification x 50% for the fuel cell = 26.6% is more like it.

However, let's consider the generating capacity the whole enterprise would need. To make 1.768 x 10^10 kg of H2 over a year, i.e. 8760 hours, would require:

1.768 x 10^10 kg x 60.5 x 10^3 (W/kg H2)/8760 = 122.1 GW. But this figure is mitigated according to the efficiency with which hydrogen may be used. If Bossel is right, this becomes 81.4 GW or let's call it a factor of two (which seems more reasonable), making it 61.0 GW.

Either way, we would need a colossal installation of renewables, e.g. 5 MW wind-turbines, with a rated capacity of 5 MW - but an actual output of say 30% if placed offshore, which amounts to 1.5 MW per unit. Hence we would need 61 GW/1.5 MW = 40,667 of them. Probably these could be accommodated in the North Sea in a 202 x 202 square of turbines, and at an average spacing of "ten rotor diameters", i.e.  1.23 km,we are talking about an area of 247 km^2, which doesn't sound too bad, albeit that the weather in the North Sea is some of the roughest in the world, and so maintenance might prove a problem. If the turbines were placed around the coast of the U.K. mainland (assumed to be 2,500 km in length), at a mutual separation of 1.23 km, 2,033 turbines could be so accommodated in a single strand, and to contain all of them, a band would be created, 40,667/2,033 = 20 turbines deep. Assuming that same 1.23 km separation, this would be 25 km (15 miles) wide. So, how quickly might this farm of 40,000+ wind turbines be created? The question really is one of "how long is a piece of string?" but assuming that one turbine could be fabricated and installed every day, the process would take at least 111 years, and probably far longer, in reality.

As an alternative, around 60 new nuclear reactors could be installed to make the electricity for hydrogen, and on top of the new generation required to replace the decommissioned current 31 reactors, actually equal in output to about 14 1 GW reactors, and so it would be necessary to quadruple this capacity by which means to install a "Hydrogen Economy" in the UK. I have been told that hydrogen could be made more efficiently using the thermal power from a nuclear reactor to run the iodine-sulphur cycle, rather than by electrolyzing water (50% compared to 35%) , but the installation capacity needed remains huge. If Bossel is right and electrons can be used with three times the efficiency than will be recovered (hydrogen actually re-generates electrons in the fuel cell, to turn wheels, in a chemically-fuelled electric car) by turning them into hydrogen, the installation capacity immediately falls to 20 new nuclear power stations, or about 13,555 turbines, which is still enormous but appears more achievable.

I am not ruling out hydrogen altogether but simply making the point that when oil supplies begin to wane, it is not a simple matter of switching from oil to hydrogen, but a new and vast infrastructure must be implemented first, to both produce and use hydrogen. The question looms: is it worth it, or might there not be better ways to deal with our impending transportation problems, such as relocalising society to use less transport? Even those who are profound advocates of the "Hydrogen Economy" need to address the problem that the PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) cell relies on an electrode consisting partly of platinum (about 50 - 100 g worth), which is a metal so rare than only 200 tonnes of new platinum are produced each year, and well below the current and growing demand for it.

Admittedly, the 40% of world platinum that is presently put into catalytic converters could be fabricated into PEM cells, were the putative conversion from oil-power to H2-power to be made, but this is only sufficient to put around: 200 tonnes x 1000 kg/tonne x 1000 g/kg x 0.4/50 g/cell = 1.6 million new "vehicles" on the road each year, out of a world total of about 1,000 million. Hence over a period of 15 years we could replace just 2.4% of the current number. Thus, unless more platinum is recovered on a huge scale (from sources as yet unknown to geology), or some alternative fuel cell technology is brought to a commercial level of development on some similarly immediate timescale, the enterprise looks set to fall at the last fence, in this, the last race that humankind will ever have to place bets on.

Governments Must Work Together to Mitigate a Peak Oil Scenario.

Decline in output from the world's oil fields is averaging 5% per year http://aspousa.org/peak-oil-reference/peak-oil-data/oil-depletion/, with some speculation that we may have reached the global production limit for conventional crude oil http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Policy-Peak-Oil_U-Washington.html. Once the loss in output overtakes what can be provided from unconventional sources, it can be said that we have passed the point of global "peak oil". The exact timing of this will be known only to posterity, but its circumstance is widely perceived as an unquenchable and imminent disaster of planetary proportions, and the "End Times" movement, hard-line Christian fundamentalists, mostly in the US, are rubbing their hands in anticipation of such "proof" that God really did tell us 2000 years ago that the Tribulation would befall us, in preparation for the second coming of Jesus Christ, who would ultimately transform the Earth into paradise. A cynic might say that since these are mostly people who live in a nation that consumes vastly more energy, and has more cars than anywhere else on earth, such acceptance is really an act of inertia, and they would rather die than change their lifestyles to anything less energy consuming.

Being essentially an optimist by nature, I am trying to avoid falling to apathy along the wayside, although it is extremely difficult not to see things in a gloomy perspective, especially living in a country that has pledged itself to additional debts of around $1.2 trillion (£750 billion) in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis, and which will take so long to pay-off that the point when (or if ever) the balance sheet comes back into the black is really anybody's guess. If it takes 30 years, one can only speculate as to the kind of world and society that will prevail then, and since I am a man of a certain age, in all probability I won't be part of it.

There are many scary scenarios to be had, and which are gratuitously foretold, but mostly these involve wars over resources, mainly oil and also water. The two are connected inextricably in the matrix of energy and production that forms the web of globalisation, with oil-powered pumps drawing water to bring desert into fecund crop-land and pasture. Thus if oil fails, so does the land, and much of the food production especially in the mid-western United States, once it is no longer possible to extract water, much of which is of fossil origin, drawn up from underground aquifers. These are not routinely refilled by rainwater, but are an essentially finite resource, laid-down millions of years ago http://ergobalance.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/terminal-shortage-of-water-for-us.html.

It is not worth elaborating the conceivable plots of mayhem, including one I have heard of, where the governments are forced to bomb the inner cities to destroy the rapacious and desperate millions, before they become lawless and soulless roaming hoards, rather as in the 1956 novel "The Death of Grass http://ergobalance.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/death-of-grass.html. Rather, to consider that there may be a solution, but only one, and that is for the governments of the world to unite in a voluntary and cooperative programme to reduce oil consumption by 3 million barrels/day (ca 3%) per year, in line with the predicted fall in oil production from the present to 2030 http://ergobalance.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/can-solar-fuels-avert-imminent.html. Any other strategy - including business as usual - will be tough, unpleasant and disastrous, and must inevitably abrade society into conflict and all-out wars between regions and between nations. In a nutshell, oil-producing nations must agree to reduce their production by 3% per year and oil-importing nations to reduce their imports by an exactly matching amount. Production will fall and must be planned to fall, while consumers take-up the slack in supply, in the form of fuel rationing.

We need a clear strategy to gear-down our dependence on personalised transportation and on the carriage of essential goods such as food and water to the extent that should this mechanism fail, in Britain we have probably three days supply before the supermarket shelves are empty and the country begins to starve. To put it another way, a fall in oil provision by 3% per year means building more localised means that depend less on transport by that same figure, pro rata. Since the problem is a global one, the solution can only be found globally, and individual nations - under the leadership of their governments - must cooperate in creating an overall less fuel-dependent ideology and putting this into practice. Fuel rationing is key and a reconstruction of societies so that the means for shelter, work, food production, money and all else are not separated, but become part of the integrated hive of community.