By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

LEBANON, Ind. — Brad Uebinger doesn’t get much argument when he tells people the Earth’s petroleum oil resources will run dry someday. It’s getting them to accept his opinion of how soon that is problematic.

 “The farther something is outside your frame of reference, the harder it is to accept,” he told listeners at his presentation on “peak oil” and sustainable agriculture at the Farm World Expo in Lebanon last Saturday afternoon.

Uebinger is president of the board of directors for Sustainable Indiana, Inc., a relatively recent nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable agriculture and environmental awareness. He defined peak oil as the point at which pumping oil from a field (or all known working fields, as in the case with global peak oil) has hit the height of its ease and will, from that point forward, be more difficult to accomplish – until the source is dry.

“It basically represents the halfway mark,” he said. “You’ve taken the low-hanging fruit, and everything after that is going to be expensive.”

Uebinger’s expertise is actually in psychotherapy and economics; in fact, he got involved with the issue of peak oil two years ago while researching investment opportunities. The more he read, the more he realized “it’s more than just a way to make money – it’s going to affect every facet of our lives.”

Credible reports, according to Uebinger, say the Earth will hit peak oil production sometime between 2005 and 2012. He explained one website he uses for information – which he said employs high standards for the articles it accepts and publishes – is www.theoildrum.com

Peak oil is, in his opinion, the biggest challenge of our time … and agriculture is being hit with a triple whammy, because modern farming is so petroleum-intensive. There’s the rising cost of diesel for equipment on the farm; the cost of transport of goods to market; and petroleum-based inputs such as fertilizer and feedstock.

“Oil isn’t just what we buy with wealth,” he said, explaining whereas the United States used to be the world’s major exporter of petroleum, it is now the biggest importer, using 25 percent of Earth’s production. “It’s the source of our wealth.”

As an environmentalist, Uebinger said he already tries “to know who I’m getting my food, and my chickens and my eggs from.” He believes agriculture in the U.S. will eventually be forced to return to farming practices of the 1850s – most machine labor replaced by human and animal labor.

“Energy is nothing but work that can be done,” he pointed out, adding that petroleum has made it possible to give people and animals a big break in the last 150 years.

And yields? The average farm in the 1850s produced 30 bushels/acre of corn, not 180.

“Once you’ve passed the peak, there’s nothing you can do to keep those numbers up,” he said – adding, however, that oil companies will certainly try.

In mathematics, there’s the bell curve – a figure that slopes up, hits a peak, and slopes back down in the same manner.

Uebinger said we are at the peak of that curve, but rather than dropping off gradually, the peak is being extended and pushed for as long as possible for maximum profit. He believes when oil supply does begin to drop, it will fall quickly and not “slope” down.
“The further you go (extending the peak), the faster the supplies will go down” when they do drop off, he said. “We have to understand that the petroleum-intensive lifestyle we’ve had is going to start unrolling.”

He understands most people may not believe Earth is at its peak oil point, but added, “If you hear anybody say (it’s not for another 20-30 years), they’ve got some vested (financial) interest in believing that.”

More on farming

A real test case to show that the energy crisis is more about food than transportation, Uebinger said, is Cuba. When the former Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba lost its ability to access USSR oil. He said the average Cuban lost 20 pounds and began looking for empty lots in which to plant anything.

“People in Cuba figured out how to get where they needed to go,” he said – by hitching rides, carpooling, using alternative transportation. It was eating that was the challenge.

He does not believe alternative fuels such as corn ethanol or biodiesel will much help. There is a term, EROI – energy return on investment – he uses to describe how much petroleum fuel is needed to manufacture alternative fuel, in growing and transporting the crop, running the plant and transporting the finished fuel. He believes this EROI is a negative number, in addition to impact on the environment to grow enough crop and run the processing plants.

Uebinger asserted humans have used as much oil in the last 10 years as they used in the previous 100. Offshore and Alaskan wilderness drilling, he said he has learned from experts, would not be a long-term help because the Alaskan supplies wouldn’t even sustain U.S. petroleum needs for two months. “The problem is, it’s not going to take us 150 years to get through the rest of (Earth’s accessible petroleum),” he said. “Every gallon of oil we use today won’t be there for our kids, grandkids and the future.”

Uebinger understands he sounds gloom-and-doom and that his ideas may not be popular.

But, “I can’t find a happy ending,” he said. “If you find one, let me know.”