Time to stop all this growth

Campbell and Laherrère appear to be right. The current consensus is that peak oil production will occur in 2008, signalling the end of the age of cheap oil.

The implications for all of us are enormous. Not only will the price of petrol rise at the pump, so will all those products made from or transported by oil, be it plastic, medicines, synthetic fabrics, road surfaces, cosmetics, detergents or food.

Food? Made from oil? As visiting emeritus Professor Al Bartlett said in Canberra in December:

I think we have to note the definition of modern agriculture: “Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food”. And this reflects the fact that on the farm you use tractors; you use fertilisers that require either petroleum or natural gas for their production; you have to process the food; you have to transport it long distances; then you have to package it, distribute it and finally consume it.

So that’s the end of the 3000-mile lettuce, as they say. But there are far bigger ramifications globally. The world can only feed 6.5 billion people because modern agriculture is run on cheap oil.

Even without climate change that threatens to wipe out much of tropical agriculture, as oil prices rise, farmers will find it harder to pump water for irrigation, run their machinery and buy fertiliser and pesticides.

Bio-fuels such as ethanol may replace conventional oil to run machinery, but a great deal of land will have to be taken out of food production to grow the crops from which ethanol is made.

Some analysts such as David Pimentel of Cornell University argue it takes more energy to make ethanol than the energy derived from it - that is, the Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) is negative. Others argue that it is positive, but even so, it is still considerably less than the EROEI for conventional oil.

So, food production will be increasingly localised, and it will be almost impossible to keep up current production levels. Famine is likely, even in parts of the developed world that can’t import food if they can’t grow enough.

How will this affect Australia? As transport costs rise, exporting food may not be cost effective. Even planting crops may not be worth the effort if the price of fuel becomes prohibitive.

So much of Australian agriculture is oil-dependent that it’s hard to see current production levels being maintained. Our diets may have to revert to range-fed animals such as sheep, cattle and kangaroo, supplemented by home-grown fruit and vegetables.

We’re in for some tough times. We can adopt measures to ameliorate the situation, but this is not a scenario that calls for a bigger population. It calls for a smaller population, both globally and nationally. High migration and third children “for the country” are luxuries we can’t afford in the future.

Thirty million? Forget it.