Post Carbon Toronto

Our Dependency on Cheap fossil fuels

The availability of cheap and seemingly abundant fossil fuels has allowed us to restructure our civilization in ways that are now depenent on continuing, growing supplies of cheap energy. These changes have us locked-in to high levels of energy use, something that technological energy efficiency improvements alone cannot change.

The industrialization of agriculture

Our petroleum based, highly mechanized agricultural system has allowed us to minimize the number of people needed to grow food and cheap transportation has allowed for food production to move thousands of miles away from consumers. Natural gas derived fertilizers are used in place of traditional means of boosting soil fertility and petroleum based pesticides are crucial to maintaining high yields. Where once agricultural production resulted in a net gain of energy for every calorie of energy input (from animals and human labour) it now requires about a minimum of 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce 1 calorie of food.

Energy intensive food production

The U.S. food system uses over 10 quadrillion Btu (10,551 quadrillion Joules) of energy each year, as much as France’s total annual energy consumption and about 10% of all US energy consumption. Growing food accounts for only one fifth of this. The other four fifths is used to move, process, package, sell, and store food after it leaves the farm. Some 28 percent of energy used in agriculture goes to fertilizer manufacturing, 7 percent goes to irrigation, and 34 percent is consumed as diesel and gasoline by farm vehicles used to plant, till, and harvest crops. The rest goes to pesticide production, grain drying, and facility operations. [Earth Policy Institute, May 9, 2005-4, " Oil and Food: A Rising Security Challenge", Danielle Murray]

Expansion of industrial production

The enormous expansion of industrial output has been made possible by using the vast store of energy in fossil fuels, supplying the energy to transport materials around the glob and to transform materials through industrial processes. The output of machines vastly exceeds that possible solely through use of human or animal labour.

Expansion of cities and suburbs

Patterns of urban development in North America are dependent on cheap, petroleum based transportation. The massive expansion of suburban and exurban areas was made possible by the private automobile. In these areas residents are almost entirely dependent on private cars to get to and from work, shopping, schools and recreation. The density of new suburban development is often too low to make any form of public transit uneconomic. Manufacturing centres have moved away from rail and water routes and are dependent on far less energy efficient trucks for transport. Suburban expansion has come at the cost of the destruction of some of the best agricultural land, only possible because food can be imported from great distances.

Expansion of global trade

The massive growth in global trade in goods and materials has been driven in part by the availability of cheap transportation, based on cheap and abundant liquid fossil fuels. This has led to major structural changes in national economies under pressure from globalization.