Global Scarcity: Are We Running Out?

March 01, 2008

Oil is a finite resource. There is only so much of it in the ground. That it exists at all is the result of a complex series of processes taking hundreds of millions of years. Of course, while finite, the total volume is staggeringly huge: somewhere in the order of two trillion barrels. Yet globally we consume about 85 million barrels of oil each day and our collective appetite for energy continues to rise.[1] Ever-increasing demand for a limited resource is a party that must one day come to an end. Many experts believe the global petrol tank may be running dangerously low.

According to some of these experts, however, the coming oil crisis is not simply that we will eventually run out, not even that we will run out sooner rather than later, but that we will soon run out of cheap oil. They claim that within the next few years we will reach a point at which we cannot expand our rate of oil extraction to match rising international demand. Oil production will ‘peak’, and then begin an inexorable decline.

To understand why, consider the process of oil extraction. When an oil field is first discovered and exploited, the oil is under pressure and it is easy to obtain high quality crude oil. As the field ‘matures’, increasing effort is required to get a decreasing quantity and quality of oil. When the results of multiple fields in a region are aggregated, a rough bell-curve of output is obtained. Once a well or region has passed the ‘peak’ of the curve, production declines. There is still oil in the ground, but extracting it is slower and more difficult. The first country to experience this peak-and-decline pattern was the USA; since 1970 its annual oil extraction has steadily dropped. Since then, most oil-producing countries have also peaked. The theory of ‘peak oil’ is that global oil production will also fit this pattern—with serious implications for life as we know it on the downhill slope of the curve.[2]

So when might we reach the peak? It is difficult to tell, because there is no independent watchdog of oil reserves, and we’ll only know for sure once it has happened. However, a growing body of geologists, physicists and oil industry insiders think it is likely to be within a decade, probably sooner.[3] The head of General Motors recently announced that he believes we have already passed it.[4]

What will happen once we pass global ‘peak oil’? Growing demand and shrinking supply are likely to have widespread economic and social effects. Rising oil prices will extend beyond the petrol station. Oil keeps the wheels of our global economy turning. The viability of international trade depends on cheap transportation. And oil doesn’t just run our cars, planes and trucks, it is also the basis of drugs, plastics, microchips, various fabrics and hundreds of other petrochemicals. Perhaps most ominously, our predominant agricultural practices are heavily dependent upon oil-based products at almost every stage: cultivating, fertilising, harvesting, transporting, processing, packaging, refrigerating and cooking. A study in the USA indicates that in that country the food system consumes 10 times more oil energy than it provides to society in food energy.[5] That is, for every calorie of food on the plate of an average American, 10 calories of oil were needed to get it there. Cheap oil has enabled cheap food, or as Professor Albert Bartlett neatly puts it: “Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food.”[6]

Can’t we simply find more oil? Despite huge investment in exploration in recent decades, oil discovery peaked back in the 1960s. Our steadily growing demand has overtaken the rate of new finds. The last decade in which the world discovered more oil than we used was the 1980s. Today, we consume it four times faster than we find it.[7]

What about alternative sources of energy? The short answer is that there are currently no alternatives ready to be mass produced that are as transportable and efficient as oil, and many of the other options still rely heavily on oil in their production. And switching sources is a process that takes decades, which may be longer than we have.[8]

What might life be like when we have declining oil production, growing world population and growing demand for oil? I don’t pretend to be an expert on peak oil, and realise that there is a diversity of opinion regarding its timing, effects and extent. Nonetheless, I suspect it is a phrase we will hear more about in the not-too-distant future. Peak oil could well herald the end of globalisation, a process intimately connected to our society’s addiction to cheap energy. Perhaps the historically unprecedented material prosperity of industrialised society is an experiment rapidly reaching its conclusion.

But whatever the specifics of future energy resources, how ought we respond to such global scarcity? Does Christianity have anything to say in such a situation? I’ll focus on two common responses to reports of scarcity, and then look at a misplaced desire often found behind both. I believe that each of these three attitudes is based on a myth, and that the good news of Jesus Christ explodes all three myths, liberating us to live differently.

Apathy and the myth of infinite growth

For many people, predictions of doom and social breakdown have become passé. There is something unreal about all the talk of the end of the world as we know it. Things have never seemed better. Technology and the free market have harnessed human creativity beyond what was imaginable in previous centuries. Surely, we reason, market forces will create the willpower and resources to solve this problem. If this is to be an economic crisis, then there will inevitably be an economic solution. Some claim that rising oil prices simply make further exploration and development of hard-to-get oil more affordable, or that rising prices will simply accelerate research into alternatives.

These may be true, if there is time. But unless the most optimistic estimates of the oil companies are true, we simply won’t have enough energy to make the changes without a lot of pain.

Such blind faith in the free market is based on what we might call ‘the myth of infinite growth’. Free market capitalism assumes that economic growth is normal and sustainable infinitely. However, for this to be true, there must always be new resources to exploit, new markets to open up, new horizons to discover, explore and commodify.

However, we live on a finite planet. While human imagination and ingenuity can ‘create’ new resources by opening up new ways of thinking and behaving, nevertheless there are certain physical limits on the system as a whole which make infinite growth a dangerous, indeed potentially disastrous, basic assumption to work with.

It is possible to generate a ‘Christian’ version of this blind faith, based on unqualified claims of God’s sovereignty. For example, if God is in charge, he won’t let our civilisation collapse. And, if God loves us, he will protect our society from anything too bad, so we can ignore dire predictions of impending catastrophe. Perhaps this feeling is stronger in America, where many people still assume their nation has special prerogatives as a divinely chosen instrument,[9] but I suspect that a weak version is held by many of us in the West who assume, perhaps subconsciously or implicitly, that the wealth and growth of our society is a mark of God’s basic approval of our democracy and freedoms.

After the flood story in Genesis 6-8, God made a promise to Noah guaranteeing against another global disaster that would end all life:

“I will never again curse the ground because of humankind ... Nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Genesis 8.21-22)[10]

But God made no such promises about specific civilisations. The next major incident in Genesis is the tower of Babel and the sudden, permanent breakdown of a society.[11] Moving further into the biblical narrative, Israel’s status as God’s chosen people did not protect her from slavery, exile and scattering. The Roman Empire, when it fell, was a largely Christian society. However we are to understand it, belief in divine sovereignty does not justify closing our eyes to the possibility of disaster. God’s rule is no guarantee against calamity.

It will simply not do to deny the possibility of catastrophe based on blind faith, whether faith in the market or in God. Following Jesus means being freed from false hopes. If, as Christians believe, God raised Jesus from the dead, then God has promised to also raise those who follow Jesus[12] and to restore and transform the entire created order[13]. In light of these great promises, there is no need to generate a mistaken belief in human, or western or capitalist invincibility. If God can raise the dead, then death (whether individual or social) need not terrify us. And this means that Christians are freed from having to believe the myth of infinite growth or relying on the market’s ability to solve the world’s problems. The market may have a place, but it no longer needs to be seen as humanity’s saviour and hope.

By trusting in the God who is committed to humanity it is possible to ask hard questions about what might be on the horizon. It may be that predictions of peak oil turn out to be incorrect or based on false assumptions, but these are discussions Christians ought to be entering, indeed initiating and leading, given the potentially huge social suffering that may well be around the corner.

Some Christians might consider these debates a distraction from the real issue of preaching the gospel. In one sense, yes, it is quite possible for secondary concerns to make the church forget its raison d’etre: witnessing to Christ crucified, celebrating his resurrection and awaiting his return. However, willfully ignoring secondary concerns can be a symptom of an unfaithfulness that reveals a failure to grasp and embody these very truths. Christ’s bodily resurrection is an affirmation of the goodness of creation and generates a hope for the redemption of the world, not merely redemption from the world. The good news includes not just our “souls”, but our whole lives and the entire created order[14]. God is the one who makes all things new[15]. And since God’s love for us is not limited to our minds, Christian love for our neighbour is also more holistic than simply imparting important information.

Fear and the myth of scarcity

There is a second common response when faced with predictions of calamity, and that is to run the nightmare scenarios through to their various conclusions in our imaginations and end up in despair, paralysed by fear. What might the world be like after a global economic collapse? What will happen to our lifestyle, our security, our health and safety? What kind of a world will our children inherit?

The future can seem bleak and hopeless. Globalised civilisation, addicted to cheap oil, might not survive in anything like its present form, and what is left may be so unrecognisable that those who remain (which, on some estimates, may only be a small percentage of the world’s present population) will find themselves desperately scrabbling for bare necessities in a post-industrial neotribalism. Even if we avoid this worst-case scenario, there are enough variations to make any imaginative observer pause and consider other civilisations whose shortsighted greed ended in self-destruction.

This second response is again understandable, but is also based upon a myth, the myth of scarcity. Our society looks at the world through assumptions about a ‘normal’ lifestyle of comfort and ease, a lifestyle that is an anomaly in comparison with most of humanity for most of history. We are the richest generation to have ever lived; and most of us belong to the top few percent of the richest people in the world, simply by living in Australia. From our highly unusual perspective, the prospect of life without all the creature comforts to which we have grown accustomed makes us deeply anxious. We assume our wants are needs and so feel that there are not enough resources to go around; there is scarcity. Indeed, perhaps we feel that God is stingy. It’s ironic, isn’t it, we have more material wealth than anyone has ever had, and yet we’re deeply anxious about there not being enough.

Nonetheless, for the Christian, despair is not an option because, despite appearances, scarcity is not the problem.[16] Our first parents, faced with a whole garden of goodies, nonetheless came to believe that God had shortchanged them by denying them the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.[17] However this image is to be interpreted, the sting in the serpent’s questions was the nagging fear that God was not generous, was not good, had not provided enough.

But of course, like them, we live in a world with ample resources to provide for our needs. The problem is that we have artificially inflated our needs to include cheap transport, easy energy, comfort and inordinate, ever-expanding wealth.

The Christian Scriptures offer a different take on life:

…[G]odliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.[18]

This passage is a polemic against those who think that being godly is a way to get rich, as though God paid cash for following him. Instead, godliness brings something much more satisfying: the possibility of contentment. The threshold for contentment suggested here is counter culturally low: if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. Notice some of the things missing from this list: an iPod, well-paid employment with advancement prospects, a second car (a first car!), a mortgage-free home, financial security. Our needs are different from our wants. Learning to distinguish them is liberating: a perspective we desperately need. Scarcity is not our problem. We can avoid the trap of always thinking we need more.

Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.[19] It is easy to swallow the assumption that once I pay off the house, once I get that promotion, once I retire and can get my super, then I will be content. Then I will have enough to give to others. Then I will be secure. Beware the trap: the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. It does not say “money is a root of all kinds of evil”, but “the love of money”, which is something that can afflict both rich and poor. Note that followers of Jesus pray only for daily bread.[20]

Yet I suspect that most readers of this article, even those on student budgets, are not on the edge of starvation. Our situation is one that Paul would have characterised as great wealth. And his advice in this case is also relevant:

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.[21]

God provides every good thing; we are not the primary providers of our needs. We may work and plan and earn, but it is firstly God who provides, not our cleverness or industry. Without this perspective, we may arrogantly think our hard work has made us rich, that we deserve it, that we have the means to secure our own needs. Yet every day we rely on so many factors entirely outside our control and without which our wealth would be useless. If God is the chief giver of good things, then it is possible to be content, trusting his faithful generosity, rather than our ability to accumulate wealth.

If we acknowledge that every good gift is from above[22] we will be more ready to share what we have and will have taken the first steps on the path to contentment and freedom from the deadly treadmill called “love of money”. Those who give thanks for God’s generosity will not be tyrannised by the myth of scarcity.

Greed and the myth of consumerism

Behind denial or despair is often greed. Either can be strengthened by a basic attitude of selfish ambition, a desire for more for me, a “love of money”. In some cases this is overt: a survey in 2005 of American 18-25-year-olds found that 81 per cent listed becoming rich as one of their top two life goals.[23] Or it might simply be implicit in our life choices and priorities, which speak louder than our words and reveal where we think real treasure is found.

Once more, there is an insidious and pervasive cultural myth that helps sustain this defective attitude: the myth of consumerism, or the myth that I am what I buy. Our collective obsession with money and the process of buying and selling is expressed in language and behaviour that takes these objects and actions as the primary means of describing our lives. Billions of dollars each year are spent telling us that we are defined by our level of income, the fashionableness of our clothes, the price of our car, the prestige of our postcode. The task of the advertising industry is to make us dissatisfied unless we are earning more, spending more, hoarding more and consuming more.

But this, according to 1 Timothy 6.9-10 (see page 19), is a self-destructive path to walk. However, there is another way recommended to the young Timothy:

But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called. … Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.[24]

If we take this passage seriously, there is more to life than money. Our identity is a matter of our character not our wallet: of pursuing righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness—all qualities that will make us more like Jesus. If we buy the lie that we are defined by our purchases, then we have accepted a shallow half-life in place of what life is really about: becoming who God intended us to be, becoming truly alive for God’s coming age. If money defines me, then who I am remains uncertain, dependent upon the fluctuations of my wallet or the stock-market and vulnerable to global or personal economic collapse. Putting our hopes for fulfilment, security and meaning in wealth is so uncertain. Only God can be trusted to provide those things.

Timothy is being shown how to master money without letting money master him. This is no counsel of asceticism, demonising wealth as necessarily evil and advocating poverty. Instead, those who are rich in this present world are to realise that their wealth is a good gift from God, for enjoyment.[25] How can we enjoy wealth? Not by hoarding, not even primarily by buying (though that might be part of it), but by being rich in good deeds, being generous and willing to share. This is what it is to do good.[26] God provides richly for those of us who are wealthy, so that we can be a little bit like him in blessing others through that wealth.

This is the answer to the myth of consumerism. What we give to others says more about us than what we consume. I am not what I buy, I am what I have received from God and share with others. Imitating God and trusting in him to provide as we give to those around us and those in need, shows that we’re members of the coming age.[27] Christians are those who live for the future, who know how to really invest, because they know that the life that is truly life is to live thankfully, receiving from God and sharing with others.

How can we actually do good with our money? With whom are we to share? How can we seek economic justice between developed and developing nations while acknowledging our ecological limits? These are important and complex questions, though they do not have a universally applicable answer. The heart required as we work them out together is that we are content with food and clothing. The rest of our wealth is for enjoyment, so that we are free to delight in sharing, in laying up real treasure in God’s coming age through our generosity.

There is much more to say about peak oil than this, but here is where I suspect a Christian response ought to begin: with thanks for our creator God’s abundant provision of a good world, an admission that our needs are more readily met than we often suspect, and a commitment to creative generosity. The problem is our selfishness, greed and short-sighted self-focus, to the detriment of the larger body—whether of the church, of humanity, or of the entire created order.

Conclusion: Good news in global scarcity

Our very interdependence in the world makes the potential for disaster a global issue. But the good news is that in Jesus, God has rescued us from the apathy, fear and greed that exacerbate genuine global problems into disastrous spiritual and social catastrophes.

Those who follow Jesus are freed from the need to stick our head in the sand and believe the myth of infinite growth, freed from fear about running out or believing the myth of scarcity, freed from the tyranny of having to forge an identity with our bank balance via the myth of consumerism. If God has provided for all our needs in this life and the coming age, then we are free to seek the truth, free to live thankfully and so contentedly, free to pour ourselves out, sharing his good gifts with generosity and wisdom.

E N D N O T E S

1 Energy Information Adminstration, http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/quickfacts/quickoil. html. For a more detailed report, see World Oil Supply and Demand available at http://omrpublic.iea.org/ omrarchive/18jan07tab.pdf.
2 For a good introduction to peak oil, see the report commissioned by the US Department of Energy, Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk management, generally known as the Hirsch Report and available from http://www.netl.doe.gov/ publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf. Other summaries can be found at: http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php, or http://www.peakoil.net, or see http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/ for an Australian Christian perspective.
3 A summary of various respected predictions is found in Hirsch, R.L., Bezdek, R. and Wending, R. (2005) Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management, http://www.netl.doe.gov/ publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf.
4 Sydney Morning Herald 15th January 2008,
front-page. 5 From The Wilderness Publications, http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/ 100303_eating_oil.html.
6 Oilempire.us, http://www.oilempire.us/food.html.
7 Campbell, C.J. (1999) The Imminent Peak of World Oil Production, http://www.hubbertpeak.com/ campbell/commons.htm.
8 Op cit, Hirsch, R.L. et al., pp4-7 estimates that it may take two decades for the world economy to switch to other forms of energy without encountering significant and sustained oil shortages.
9 See: Moltmann, J. (1996) The Coming of God: Christian eschatology, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996, pp168-78.
10 See also Genesis 9.9-18.
11 Genesis 11.1-9.
12 Romans 6.5; 1 Corinthians 15.20-23; 2 Corinthians 4.14.
13 Romans 8.19-23.
14 Romans 8.19-23; Acts 3.21; Matthew 19.28.
15 Revelation 21:5.
16 Thanks to Andrew Cameron for this slogan and perspective.
17 Genesis 2-3.
18 1 Timothy 6.6-10.
19 Ecclesiastes 5.10.
20 Matthew 6.11.
21 1 Timothy 6.17-18.
22 James 1.17.
23 USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/news/ nation/2007-01-09-views_x.htm. Cited 20th September 2007.
24 1 Timothy 6.11-12, 17-19.
25 1 Timothy 6.17.
26 1 Timothy 6.18.
27 1 Timothy 6.19.