When Oil Changed Everything
Sunshine and muscle got pushed aside by Big Petroleum
Motivation
Today living in an urban setting, even of modest size, we can easily forget that we are part of a natural cycle. Ask yourself this simple question: What phase is the moon in? We easily lose touch with these sorts of simple observations, particularly if you grew up in a small town, on a farm, or whenever you were away from an urban glow dome. Maybe like me you can reflect back only one generation to be reminded of the importance of not only the solar cycle providing heat, energy, and cropping seasons, but also to the lunar cycle setting in motion all manner of things from the tides to animal reproductive cycles, including humans. Historically, livelihoods were synchronized by short and long-term circadian cycles before we became so dependent upon carbon-based energy.
My thesis here is simply this: the evolution of our energy usage is the crux of an ever-increasing transformation with the modern Industrial Revolution beginning during the 18th century in England. It greatly expanded during the mid-19th which included Europe and the United States: one historian called 1870 as the “hinge” to the a new global economy. Following the end of World War II in the mid-1940s, reallocation of the industrial economy and explosive urbanization led to exponential acceleration of uses of fossil fuels over these past 65 years. The global standard of living increased with the increased industrialization (Figure 1).
Artificial light in our recent history came not from electricity but early forms of distillates. Examples include whales, crude oil, others such as kerosene, coal oil from coal, then later in 1930s, carbide lights. Rural electrification came with the promulgation of the REA, both in Canada and the USA. Previously, the concept of “carbon footprint” did not exist and for good reason. Automobiles and light trucks were common but huge volumes of petroleum based fuels for tractors, combines, swathers and all manner of farm implements did not arrive in the western Prairies until the mid-1930s. Power from draft animals, combined with human muscle, was the main agriculture driver before WW2. Draft animals were used for all manner of heavy duty jobs (see Figures 2 and 3: (images from the Alberta Provincial Archives).
Post-World War II
Post-WW2 in the USA and Canada, accompanied by the re-construction in Britain, Europe and Japan, was the beginning of the modern acceleration of industrialization with increasing dependence upon coal, natural gas and oil and their refined derivatives. By the mid-1940s the numbers of tractors had begun surpassing horses and other draft animals in the US: see Figure 4. By ~1950 the inverse shift was well into an exponential phase (note red trend line).
In 2017 the total number of ponies and horses in the US was approximately 2,847,289, an 21% decrease from 2012 . By 2016 the Agriculture Canada census showed there to be approximately 292,000 total ponies and horses in Canada; as expected proportionately ~10% of the US (~10x population).
Conversion of Sunshine into Work
Prior to the 1950s producing feedstock for animal muscle and energy was founded upon the conversion of sunlight into carbon-based molecules such as a sugar like glucose for growth and maintenance of plants and animals. The equations shown below (Figure 5a) describe the very basis for growth and maintenance by sun’s energy producing cellular energy from the carbon-based inputs, i.e. complex molecules of glucose à cellulose, glycogen, starches and others. Herbivores, omnivores and carnivores all rely upon these same systems, one plant based (cellulose) and the other animal based (glycogen). In Equation 2, below, is the release of cellular energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) during cellular respiration: refer to Figures 5 a,b. Organic evolution has been and will continue to sustained by these basic biochemical systems and adapting to changing environments.
Simply put, native grasses, cereals and forage crops are literally the energy to produce power for work by animals. No emissions, barring a few farts! However — — now we know that methane emissions from livestock have become a large source of GHG. That knowledge has caused research to be ramped up looking for ways of mitigating the impacts of animal methane.
Today most of us are quite far removed from the actual food production steps resulting from these essential bio-processes. In the last ~65–70 years (~3 generations) we are so dependent on fossil-fuel that it is difficult to imagine our lives without petroleum products, thus overshadowing these fundamental “free” inputs like sunshine, CO2, oxygen and water.
Post-World War II : Accelerated Changes
We see in Figure 6 that the same transition from animal power to tractor power seen in the US (Figure 4) also occurred in Canada between 1940–50. By 1990, the numbers of machine units became more constant in response to the rate of increase of acreage in farms began leveling off (see Figure 6). *** Check numbers
Data in Figure 6 support the energy-shifts that had occurred during and soon after WW2 in Canada, and also in the US. Land area cleared and occupied had peaked by ~1940 but the acreage made arable increased through the 1980s as tractors and farm equipment increased in size to accommodate fewer farms but larger acreages per farm. Note the blue and red trend lines in Figure 7 (USA): acreage continued on an upward trend but number of farms went down from a high of ~750, 000 in ~1940 to a bit more than 200,000 by 2006, a drop of ~350%. Meanwhile the land in crops increased from ~25 million hectares (37 million acres) in 1940 to ~35 million hectares in 2006 (51.5 million acres) in 2006, an increase of ~140%. These major economic and social shifts have occurred in my lifetime with major transformation of energy inputs.
For up to date, in-depth information about Canadian agriculture go to Statistics Canada.
For more in-depth information on US farm statistics go to the USDA.
Within approximately ~ 20 years, 1930–1950, our North American economy, most especially our agricultural economies and lifestyles, went through what many would now call a transformational adaptation; see for an universal example Transformational adaptation: agriculture and climate change (the Australian case history).
Accompanying the dramatic shifts that we see in Figures 8 and 9, were ever-increasing larger and more powerful tractors. Figures 8 and 9 show the sorts of changes from the 1940–50s to our modern heavy duty diesel driven equipment today.
Major Changes in our Economies and Societies Following WW2
The changes in farming I saw changing during my lifetime have translated into a shift in demographics and the North American workforce. In Canada, and the US, there have been dramatic shifts from rural communities to the urban metroplex. These changes paralleled the modes of farming practices. Agriculture has transitioned for, not all, but most farmers from a way of life to an industrialized system of production coupled with sophisticated supply chains.
Perhaps most dramatic of all changes have been the movement of people over the past 80+ years. Figure 10 demonstrates the population shift that has occurred in Canada.
We can see in Figure 10 how there has been an inverse, acceleareted shift from the countryside into urban centers. A similar trend has played out in the US and now continues at a steady rate around the globe: see Figure 11. By 2010 there were globally more urban residents than rural and the trend continues. These shifts put new pressures upon infrastructures and induce ever increasing demand for fossil-fuel products. These trends continue.
By 1960 (Figure 12) the global shift in land use and allocation of food production were well entrenched. Larger farms, larger equipment, access to fertilizers and to genetically improved cereal crops has allowed our world population to grow to ~ 8 billion today. Sadly, access to nutritious food is poorly distributed around the world. Predictions of coming famine in 2023 are well documented by the Famine Early Warning System.
Wrapping Up: the costs born out of the transition to a “modern urban” industrialized society
In closing, there have been huge costs during our global transformations in the past 70-odd years. The transition from a “muscle driven” economy to a fossil fuel world economy has put our global community at jeopardy: can it sustain itself? Our dependence upon fossil fuels and the resulting out-of-control greenhouse gas emissions, led by carbon dioxide (CO2), have produced an exponential increase in global mean temperatures after 1960 (Figure 13): the dramatic increase after 1960 has been referred to as the “hockey stick”.
· Over a brief 20 year period, 1930–1950, the western economies transitioned from majority agrarian-based societies to vastly more urban centers dependent upon automobiles, trucks and the fossil fuel industries. Our western societies have changed rapidly from goods produced by hand labour and production using draft animals dependent upon sunshine and muscle to ones totally dependent upon refined fossil fuels. Prior to the mid-1940s, the primary source of carbon-based fuel containing energy for agriculture and also much urban work was from native grasses, cereals and forage crops as livestock feed (I remember the milk wagon drawn by a team of horses).
· In today’s vernacular, we can call the new post-WW2 economy a time of transformational adaptation.
· By the mid-1940s the numbers of tractors had begun surpassing the numbers of horses and other draft animals in North America.
· Land area cleared and occupied in Canada had peaked by ~1940 but the acreage made arable increased through the 1980s as tractors and farm equipment increased in size to accommodate fewer farms but larger acreages/hectares per farm.
· Number of farms in Canada went down from a high of ~750, 000 in ~1940 to a bit more than 200,000 by 2006, a drop of ~73% from 1940
· By 2010 the global urban population exceeded those people living in rural communities.
· 2022, the global population surpassed 8 billion people.
