Breaking the fall

The Expanding Knowledge Initiative at Grinnell College recently sent out a request to faculty members to come up with ideas for interdisciplinary study and to organize lunches to discuss those ideas with one another. I sent in the following proposal, inspired by my reading of Richard Heinberg's book The party's over: Oil, war, and the fate of industrial societies:

Breaking the fall: The end of the era of cheap energy

This course addresses the following core issues:

1. The supplies of our current sources of cheap energy -- oil and natural gas -- are finite, and we are consuming them rapidly. Is supply about to be overtaken by demand? If so, how will the prices and markets for these resources be affected?

2. Can we effectively substitute other sources of energy for oil and natural gas? If so, will the energy derived from these other sources be as cheap, or nearly as cheap?

3a. If the transition to alternative sources is possible, it is likely to be difficult, particularly since we have done so little planning and preparation for it. How can it be effected with as little suffering as possible?

3b. If there are no alternative sources of cheap energy, how can the transition to a world in which energy is expensive be made with as little suffering as possible?

4. What are the long-term consequences of this transition?

Other topics can be attached to this core in several ways, depending on the interests and expertise of the instructors:

History and anthropology. How is the present depletion of oil and natural gas similar to or different from previous instances of resource depletion? What has happened to past cultures that experienced crises of resource depletion (Jared Diamond, Collapse)?

Environmental studies. What are the probable environmental effects of transitions to different sources of energy? What is the relationship between the depletion of oil and natural gas supplies and climate change? Is the end of the era of cheap energy likely to mitigate or exacerbate climate change?

Physics, biology, chemistry. How much net energy can be derived from various alternative sources, such as solar power, biodiesel oil from algae, or wind power? How will oil and natural-gas shortages affect food production?

Economics and political science. In similar cases in the past, how have prices affected technological development and resource use? What are the probable economic, political, and geopolitical consequences of long-term shortages of oil and natural gas? Who will benefit from the depletion of these resources, and who will be harmed? How probable is a global recession or depression?

Sociology and anthropology. What are the probable social and cultural effects of the end of cheap energy? How plausible are various speculative depictions of a post-petroleum culture (James Howard Kunstler, The long emergency)?

Five of my colleagues attended a lunch on October 27 to discuss this topic. We discussed alternative ways of positioning this course in the curriculum. One possibility would be to teach it as a 200-level course, requiring sophomore standing, for as many as twenty-five students, with a divisional code (SCI, or SST, or both) rather than a departmental one. Another suggestion was to teach it as a first-year tutorial. Still another was to propose the course to one of the concentrations---either Technology Studies or Environmental Studies.

We agreed it would be advantageous to have two instructors for the course, with differing views on the central issues, to provide the students with examples of the legitimacy and usefulness of contentious discussion.