How much oil do we have?

Considering only proven reserves, a billion barrels. The thing is, we've already smoked so much more.

Can we say that we are in the middle of the oil age, then?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Any geologist knows that when an oil field reaches the middle of its possible production, it has hit the peak of the exploitation curve. This is the moment when there is the greatest flow of all time, but from there the flow descends. This is where the problem arises for a society that has been industrial for the last 150 years and has become accustomed to growing infinitely. ASPO has calculated that the world’s oil curve peaked in 2010. We're already in decline. However, the exact date is not of particular concern to us.

Why does the flow decrease?

For geological reasons. Many believe that oil is like in a glass; you just have to put the straw in and suck it. In fact, the oil is glued to the rocks. Some rocks are more porous, and oil can be more easily extracted from them, and others are less porous. The comparison should not be made with a straw, but with a sponge. When a sponge containing water is squeezed, initially a few droplets will be extracted, then in a moment the maximum flow will arrive, from which the flow will decrease, although there is still water. Even if you squeeze a lot of fists, from a moment on, only drops will come out. Well, the oil cycle is like that.

Just because we’re in the middle of the oil age doesn’t mean we have reserves for the same number of years we’ve had oil so far, does it? In fact, we consume more and more.

That's the way it is. We have been consuming oil for 150 years, but we have spent most of it in the last 30 years. Today we consume 20 times more than we did 30 years ago. Although we have half left, we cannot expect to continue using oil in the same way as we have now for another 40 years. The flow will go down.

This, as you say in an article, is one of the causes of the current financial crisis.

Looking at the last 150 years, it can be seen that economic growth has been accompanied, in parallel, by an increase in energy consumption. That is, you can grow economically because you have more and more energy at your disposal. Energy is the ability to work, or in other words, to transform nature through the creation of goods and services. And the economy is measured by these goods and services. One way to quantify economic activity and the transformation of nature is GDP, and looking at GDP growth we realize that it aligns perfectly with the growth of energy consumption. Realizing that there will be no more growth in energy consumption is of great importance to the financial world. This means that there will be no economic growth, but a decline, for physical and geological reasons. And if there is an economic downturn, any financial system that lends money to others – hoping to be repaid with interest in the future – can’t work. In order to repay the interest on a loan, economic growth is necessary, otherwise it is impossible.

You have rightly denounced the imbalance between the financial world and the physical world. That is, there is much more money in the world than can be measured in goods and services. Interest is to blame for this?

Of course, of course. The three great monotheistic religions have known this historically and have banned interest lending for centuries. In the end, they have devised ways to overcome these prohibitions but... They forbade interest not for religious reasons, but because interest is unnatural. If I force someone to give back more than I have given them, I am forcing them to transform nature in an accelerated way. This has led us to this exponential exploitation of resources.

So, this financial crisis has no way out.

No, it's bound to get worse. There may be ups and downs, but within a dominant downward trend. We will not go back to the situation before the crisis. The imaginary money has multiplied so much that even those who have accumulated enormous amounts of it do not dare to multiply it more, at this point. They are caught up in their paradox.

Where does that lead us? I have read to you that the inhabitants of the rich West will have to reduce our standard of living by 50%, or in some cases by up to 90%.

It may seem very dramatic, but I think it is.

Can this happen in a very short period of time?

If those of us who study the oil production curve are not mistaken – it has already begun to decline in more than 50 countries – we believe that we have two decades left, or three, or four... It is not so important if there are two or four of them, the important thing is that we have a very short time to transform ourselves, that is, to change the paradigm of the way of life that we have given ourselves. Because it's not sustainable at all. We have a very short time and a lot of work to deconstruct this absurd model of society. It gives us great economic comfort and has created some fascinating things such as electricity, the Internet, or being able to travel from one continent to another in eight hours on a plane that travels at a speed of 900 kilometers per hour, but our way of life is not sustainable.

You have proposed several measures to adapt to what awaits us. Among other things, the disappearance of interest.

What I'm saying may seem simple, but it's a radical change. Not only to banks, but to tell everyone that banks should start lending without interest... This can create a huge drama. But it will have to be, because at this point we know that it will not be possible to repay interests.

The banking business model we know today would lose its meaning if it were so. What would happen to them? Should they all be nationalized, most of them disappear?

I do not know whether this will be the case, but I do know that a system of control of the money transfer will have to be put in place. In fact, there must be a process by which the money is re-merged with the physical goods for which it was created. The money was invented because the exchange was only in the beginning. And the extent to which the exchange was carried out was a human effort. If I needed two hours to make a chair, and you needed another two hours to produce a kilo of oranges, we could exchange the chair and oranges. Then, mediation systems were invented: gold first, paper money later, but the system remained fundamentally reasonable because it continued to measure people’s effort. That was until Nixon broke the gold standard agreed at Bretton Woods. Nixon said: “From now on, the reference system will be the dollar – a piece of green paper, after all – and at this point it will not replace the gold that is stored in Fort Knox, it will replace what I decide.” That's where the system went crazy. By this time there was a great unjust accumulation: the result of the work of many was in the hands of a few, but it could still be said that the money coincided with the gold accumulated in the stores of the rich. From then on, however, he began to print a lot that had nothing to do with the physical world, that is, with human effort. Now we're in a state of no legs and no heads. No one knows how many times the amount of money that exists (8 times, 10, 15?) than the physical world it represents. Why hasn't the world exploded yet? Those who have huge amounts of this paper money (large investment funds, financial powers, some very rich individuals...) because they have not tried, are not so stupid, to exchange their money for the physical good. If everyone wanted to do it at the same time, there wouldn't be enough physical worlds.

Will it ever happen that we all want to change our tickets at the same time for the sake of the physical world?

It is very difficult to make predictions of this kind, but it is clear that the current evolution leads us to this. It's not that important if it's going to happen tomorrow or 15 years from now. But we don't have a century

Is the current system going to collapse?

Yeah, because without energy you can't keep growing. The degrowth is coming, and with it the collapses, because, among other things, there will be wars of access to resources. It is very difficult for anyone to voluntarily reduce their level of consumption by half. Even worse: Data from the International Energy Agency indicate that 80% of the world’s energy is consumed by 20% of the population. The average global consumption is five times lower than that of the Americans and two and a half times lower than that of the Europeans. And this average is not sustainable either. So we’re going to have to go down there to achieve sustainability. As we said before, this represents a 90% decrease in our case. It is very difficult to “sell” this idea in the West.

In renewable energies they are looking for an alternative route that will save some...

I’m critical of them, and I know what I’m talking about, I’ve spent years researching the possibilities they provide with renewable energies, to see if they could fill the huge energy gap that will be left by the depletion of fossil fuels: 10,000 tons of oil equivalent per year, out of the 12,000 tons we consume in total. And I have come to the conclusion that there is no containment of this system. First of all, those we call renewables are not renewables. In fact, they are non-renewable technological systems that are exhausted, aged, broken down. They need to be replaced every time. However, these systems are capable of capturing part of the flow of renewable energy in the biosphere. But they are not renewable systems in the strictest sense of the word, we are misusing the terminology. On the other hand, how much intensity do these types of energies give us? Today we live not only by quantity, but also by intensity. The plane from London to New York has a high energy consumption that can not be obtained from any other source other than the fuel it uses.With renewable energies, neither the ejércitos, nor mechanized agriculture, nor much of the industry, nor transportation, can be moved. Today, 94.5% of the world’s transport is made with oil. Without oil, this society cannot function, especially the cities. Supermarkets would be empty in 48 hours. And this great flow of energy that oil gives us cannot be given to us by renewable energies.

Then another way of life will have to be created. In what way?

In my opinion, the energy that will become increasingly scarce will have to be used for things that are truly obligatory, always maintaining a dignified lifestyle. By studying modern society, we realize that a very high percentage of what we do is absolutely negligible. Our model of tourism, advertising, elite sport, pharaonic infrastructures, the presence of more than 100 universities in Spain... Are they all mandatory?

What is mandatory?

To eat them. A place of residence. Something to wear, not much. In very cold climates, some kind of heating system. And not much more.

Health, education, culture...?

Health and education are of course essential. But, at least, health care, at a lower level than today. This huge healthcare system we have now is very rewarding, but it requires an enormous amount of energy. At the same time, thousands of children die from diseases that can be cured.

Degrowth will not be forever either. Do you foresee a stationary economy without fluctuations?

Yeah, like before the industrial society. It will be based on the primary sector, the biosphere, which is what we feed and is renewable. There will be vestiges of the secondary sector, but marginal ones, as they have been before the industrial era. It will be a very basic, uncultivated industry, very close to the place where what is produced in it will be consumed. I don’t dare to tell you what the process will be like to get there. Geology says that the downward trend will be gentle, but if we don’t change our attitude we can cause everything to collapse. If those of us in a privileged situation continue to use military force to contain it, some energy flows may suddenly cease. This can be very harsh.

Someone will say, however, that it will be necessary to make an effort to advance science, to develop technological advances that really serve something...

We citizens need to start taking ownership of the limits we have. So far we have thought that these limits did not exist, and I believe that the majority of the population still thinks so. The later we face the new situation, the worse for everyone.

You say that some are using the warming of the Earth caused by CO2 as an excuse not to face the real problem.

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing. In fact, it has increased by ten thousand from 280 parts per million (0.028% of the atmosphere) to 380 parts per million (0.038%). It is very likely that this change in one of the components of the air, due to its small variation, will affect the climate of the entire planet. In fact, the climate works according to very complex non-linear equations, which means that a small change can have a big impact. And this effect can be irreparable and lead to serious damage to the habitat. This is all true. But it is surprising that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is only concerned with slowing the growth in the amount of CO2. They worry about the consequence, not the reason, and the reason is that we burn 10 billion tons of fossil fuels every year. If we know what CO2 is, why don't we stop emitting it?

You have also criticised some environmental groups for going down the same institutional path on this issue.

Some environmentalists are so concerned about CO2 that they are proposing as an alternative the installation of wind farms all over the planet. They say that all fossil energy can be replaced by wind generators and photovoltaic plates. In an article published in the journal Research and Science, some say that with enough wind generators installed to generate three million megawatts, part of the problem of electricity generation could be solved. They don’t talk about replacing all fuels, nor about generating energy for all human activities, among other things because much of the energy we use is not electric, and only electricity can be obtained from this source. It should be noted that there are currently 200,000 megawatts of wind power in the world. The formation of three million – and with that, I repeat, we would not solve the whole problem – would change 25 ten-thousand of all the winds on the planet. This is remarkable. We are concerned about the change in the amount of CO2 by some ten thousand, and at the same time we propose to change 25 ten thousand of the winds on Earth. Don't tell me that it won't affect the consequences. We don't know! On the other hand, the installation of thousands of wind generators of two or five megawatts is insane, the industry is heavy, hundreds of millions of tons of steel, the enormous amount of coal needed to melt that steel, the big trucks taking these generators to distant mountains. Pay attention to that ecology! What model are we looking for? For what purpose? To keep keeping the lights on at night on the highways? To light up the Christmas window? Is that what we want energy for? It's just insane.