Unstable societies and the canary in the tar sands

Avery just posted a pretty interesting article comparing the cultural institutions of the United States with those of France. The conclusion that he draws is that the states is an "unstable" society while France is a "flow" society. While I haven't spent enough time in Europe to really comment on the latter (although I suspect he may be somewhat overstating the case), I think his analysis of North America is essentially spot on. However, I'd like to add something to it:

Unstable societies require the continual input of greater and greater amounts of high quality energy to avoid collapse.

What else will allow the rapid development of dispersed urban centers (with correspondingly expensive cost of transportation and infrastructure)? What else will compensate for a high bankruptcy and failure rate in business? What else will compensate for the routine and accepted displacement of unskilled labor due to relentless increases in "productivity"?

Much has been made in Canada recently about the development of the tar sands in the province of Alberta, but I think people are missing the real story in all the hullabaloo about that province's spectacular growth. Twenty years ago, you couldn't find anyone willing to spit on the tar sands. Today, the province is experiencing an economic boom based on an extraction method with an incredibly low EROI (5:1 versus 17:1 or better for oil produced by conventional means). This begs the question: why are the (multinational!) oil companies bothering with the tar sands if there are more lucrative opportunities for energy extraction out there? Why put so much capital and expertise into something which provides such a poor return on investment?

Perhaps I'm missing something (if so, please comment), but this indicates to me that we're experiencing real problems in finding the sorts of high quality sources of energy which sustain our current social and economic systems.

Syndicated 2007-04-21 19:02:01 from wlach