Humanities 161 - Spring 2005

New Global Crisis: Earth's Energy and Water Resources in the 21st Century

Lark Lake, near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Minnesota

DESCRIPTION

Achieving enlightened policies for the use and stewardship of energy and water resources — navigating through the many geopolitical, technological, scientific and philosophical issues that go hand-in-hand with this — looms large in our Nation’s future and, indeed, Earth’s future. The need for informed dialogue and critical thinking about this subject has never been more pressing.

Humanities 161 is an interdisciplinary course aimed at engaging students in selected current events via a series of lectures by individuals representing a wide breadth of experience and expertise, combined with student-faculty discussion and debate inspired by these lectures. This spring semester the class will involve three principal, interrelated parts: a primer on the science and technology of energy and water resources, an examination of the historical use of these resources and associated consequences, and a consideration of possible, future scenarios during this century.

Wind-turbine and grain farms near Urbana-Champaign, Illinois

COURSE OBJECTIVES

The purpose of Humanities 161 this semester will be to explore, at an introductory level, key scientific, technological, philosophical and social issues surrounding humanity's growing demand for Earth's energy and water resources. We expect students to gain an understanding of:

the essential circumstances under which Earth resources, focusing on energy and water, are finite versus renewable, including the timescales over which resources are naturally produced/renewed;
the history of energy use, leading to the current global dependence on fossil fuels, particularly oil and gas;
the full scope of this dependence on oil, reaching far beyond heating and transportation needs into areas such as production of consumer goods, agriculture and medicine;
the significance of "Peak Oil" and the social and economic consequences associated with moving into a period of declining oil production;
the history of water use, leading to current states of centralized versus decentralized infrastructures for collecting and distributing water;
the pros and cons of current, conventional sources of energy (i.e. fossil fuels, hydroelectric, nuclear) and alternative sources of energy (e.g. solar, wind, hydrogen);
the growing challenges of protecting the quality of water resources for the sake of both humans and ecological systems; and
proposed strategies for meeting future demands for energy and water in the face of Earth's rapidly growing human population.

Invited speakers will include scientists and engineers, humanists and policymakers from within and outside Vanderbilt who will provide their views and perspectives regarding the status of Earth's energy and water resources, and the critical problems and issues in their fields pertaining to these resources.

PERSPECTIVES

"But the event [the peaking of world oil production] will occur, and my analysis is leaning me more by the month, the worry that peaking is at hand; not years away. If it turns out I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. But if I'm right, the unforeseen consequences are devastating. But unfortunately the world has no Plan B if I'm right. The facts are too serious to ignore. Sadly the pessimist-optimist debate started too late. The Club of Rome humanists were right to raise the 'Limits to Growth' issues in the late 1960's. When they raised these issues they were actually talking about a time frame of 2050 to 2070. Then time was on the side of preparing Plan B. They like Dr. Hubbert got to be seen as Chicken Little or the Boy Who Cried Wolf..." (Investment banker Matthew Simmons, energy advisor to the Bush Administration, quoted in From the Wilderness Publications, 12 June 2003)

"Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely-respected geologists, physicists, and investment bankers in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global "Peak Oil."" (Promotion for the book "The Oil Age is Over" by Matt Savinar)

"The present model departs from earlier ones in recognition that the Middle East no longer has sufficient spare capacity to discharge a swing role. A volatile epoch of recurring price shocks and consequential recessions dampening demand and price is now regarded as more likely, with terminal decline [in world oil production] setting in and becoming self-evident by about 2010." (Colin Campbell, Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group update for oil and gas liquids, 2004)

"Plenty of oil and gas remains around the world, but it will take the best technology and the most capable and efficient organizations to produce it..." (Exxon Mobil Corporation Senior Vice President Stuart McGill, in Business Wire release, 2005)

"The medical profession must eventually be forced to consider whether in an age of fuel scarcity it will be possible to maintain at their present level hospital procedures consuming large quantities of energy." (J. A. Loraine, Medicine and the energy crisis. The Lancet, 08 September 1973)

"Our energy future is choice, not fate. Oil dependence is a problem we no longer need to have. U.S. oil dependence can be eliminated with proven technologies that create wealth, enhance choice, and strengthen common security." (Promotion for the e-book "Winning the Oil Endgame" by Amory Lovins and others)

"By this time next year, some 1.75 million people will have died before their time for the simple reason that they must scratch out their existence without access to safe drinking water. This is the toll from cholera, dysentery and other diarrhoeal diseases that the World Health Organization attributes to unsafe drinking supplies." (From editorial in Nature, Vol. 422, 20 March 2003)

"Twentieth-century water policies relied on the construction of massive infrastructure... to meet human demands. These facilities brought tremendous benefits to billions of people, but they also had serious and often unanticipated social, economical, and ecological costs... Ultimately, meeting basic human and ecological needs for water, improving water quality, eliminating overdraft of groundwater, and reducing the risks of political conflict over shared water require fundamental changes in water management and use... And long-term water planning must include all stakeholders, not just those traditionally trained in engineering and hydrologic sciences." (Peter Gleick, Global freshwater resources: Soft-path solutions for the 21st century. Science, Vol. 302, 28 November 2003)

"New analyses of proxy data for the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years. It is also likely that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 was the warmest year." (Summary for Policymakers: A Report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)

"We're playing with the whole planet, dammit, just to get energy for a hundred years." (Columbia University oceanographer Wallace Broecker in National Public Radio interview)

"If dealing with [climate change] causes wealthy countries to lose wealth because of higher costs for energy, then the Third World would find itself in worse shape." (University of Alabama, Huntsville, climatologist John Christy in National Public Radio interview)

"Human history can be divided into three distinct successive phases. The first, comprising all history prior to about 1800, was characterized by a small human population, a low level of energy consumption per capita, and very slow rates of change. The second, based upon the exploitation of the fossil fuels and the industrial metals, has been a period of continuous and spectacular exponential growth. However, because of the finite resources of the Earth's fossil fuels and metallic ores, the second phase can only be transitory. Most of the ores of the industrial metals will have been mined within the next century. The third phase, therefore, must again become one of the slow rates of growth, but initially at least with a large population and a high rate of energy consumption. Perhaps the foremost problem facing mankind at present is that of how to make the transition from the present exponential-growth phase to the near steady state of the future by as noncatastrophic a progression as possible." (M. King Hubbert, The World's Evolving Energy System, American Journal of Physics, Vol. 49, 1981)