Does Peak Oil Explain the Fermi Paradox?

Author: Daniel Taylor

8 May

The Fermi Paradox is defined as the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations. In other words, in a universe as big, and as old as ours seems to be, the fact that we have yet to be contacted by a civilization advanced enough to reach us seems pretty improbable. It has been speculated previously that there must be some sort of Great Filter which prevents such life from arising, or reaching the technological level necessary to achieve interstellar communications. A recent article by Nick Bostrom in the Technology Review explores the possibility that this Great Filter is technology itself: that all civilizations eventually seal their own doom by way of technology, nuclear war, bioterrorism, or the Unabomber’s favorite, Gray Goo. To this list, Tim O’Reilly (aka the guy who coined the term Web 2.0) has added a far more tangible possibility: Peak Oil:

I’ve been thinking of Fermi’s Paradox since I saw the documentary film A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash, with its dire predictions of the wars and disruptions that could occur on the downward slope of the Hubbert curve. While I remain an optimist about the power of human ingenuity to surmount enormous challenges, I have enough sense of history to know that catastrophes do happen, that societies fail to make the right choices, and that civilizations fail. What if the answer to Fermi’s paradox is not the absence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but merely the absence of high technology? The movie makes the case that the extraordinary flowering of our society has been driven by our profligate use of oil as an incredibly cheap energy resource — and one that won’t last. With haunting images of once vibrant oil fields that are now ghost towns, the movie is a thought-provoking counterpoint to An Inconvenient Truth. If the movie’s contentions are correct, we’re truly caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Either global warming or peak oil will lead to an urgent transformation of civilization as we know it, or our failure to transform quickly enough might well lead to the end of civilization as we know it. And if indeed cheap oil is a prerequisite to the first flowering of technological civilization, might a Roman-Empire-style collapse due to some future disaster make it difficult to rebuild to spaceflight-capable levels due to lack of said resource the next time around? Many of the large scale energy technologies that we imagine replacing oil are energy intensive to build. They are, in a sense, themselves dependent on oil.

Those longing desperately to find prove of ancient civilizations on planets like Mars might want to think twice, since, as O’Reilly puts it “once we find evidence of primitive life elsewhere, we’ve narrowed the likelihood that the Great Filter is behind us, and increased the likelihood that it is still ahead of us, in some unknown disaster to come.” FUCKKKKKKKK

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9 Responses for "Does Peak Oil Explain the Fermi Paradox?"

Adolfo Doring May 11th, 2008 at 8:52 am 1
Hello
I just finished a documentary exploring some of the same questions as A Crude Awakening. It is called Blind Spot and it consists of a multi-disciplinary approach to how we got to where we are and what the impact of Peak Oil might be.

Ultimately if you consider that we live in a finite planet with in a finite time span, then all of our behavior should be according to this. It shouldn’t matter if the end will come from resource depletion of through the inevitable demise of our sun. I don’t know if it was ignorance or greed that got us to these crossroads but the world should be calling for a behavioral change not a technological fix.
Randy Park May 12th, 2008 at 5:05 am 2
Yes, we live on a “finite planet” with finite resources; and the “disaster to come” - as far as Western civilization at least - is not unknown, but in front of us: Peak Oil.
The challenge is for people, governments, and businesses to recognize that this is a serious issue, that can’t be ethanolled away; we need to revise not only the way we live, but our definitions of success such that they require less energy.
And this needs to start soon. Look at the animated world map of oil production at http://www.EnergyPredicament.com/worldoil.htm to get a good sense of what is going on with oil. Or look at current oil prices.
Allen Fuller May 12th, 2008 at 6:55 am 3
Oil possesses nowhere near the energy for interstellar travel, so if it is difficult for a civilization to surmount an oil crisis, then it is flat-out impossible to achieve interstellar travel. This would suggest that the fundamental limitation is not oil, but the lack of an alternative technology that is feasible.

On the flip side, if a hypothetical civilization manages to achieve the level of technology sufficient to make interstellar space travel common enough that we would expect visitors, then it is clear they no longer need oil, period.
Larry May 12th, 2008 at 8:08 am 4
Sillyness. In a generation the oil age will be a dream. People will be happily cruising along in 200Mph+ electric trains powered off wind and solar wondering why there parents wanted to deal with traffic jams.
Poul Andreasen May 12th, 2008 at 2:06 pm 5
It makes a lot of sense to me that many alien civilizations may have reached a dead energy end, thus preventing them from ever making contact.

Allen Fuller above: “Oil possesses nowhere near the energy for interstellar travel, so if it is difficult for a civilization to surmount an oil crisis, then it is flat-out impossible to achieve interstellar travel. This would suggest that the fundamental limitation is not oil, but the lack of an alternative technology that is feasible”.

I think you fail to understand that in order to get to the next energy level (fusion or whatever) you need to have high energy. So oil is in this respect a stepping stone for the next level(s). And if oil is dwindling and civilization torn apart by wars for energy and food, we might never reach the next level.

But then again: You may be right that the next level may not exist.

But now we shall never know…
mike3 May 13th, 2008 at 8:39 pm 6
“Ultimately if you consider that we live in a finite planet with in a finite time span, then all of our behavior should be according to this. It shouldn’t matter if the end will come from resource depletion of through the inevitable demise of our sun. I don’t know if it was ignorance or greed that got us to these crossroads but the world should be calling for a behavioral change not a technological fix.”

Actually we need _both_, since even if we moved to a growthless economy and cut our oil use to a tenth o what it is now, in 500 years the oil would still be all gone! If we want to last to the sun burns out we have to stop using oil entirely and that means BOTH have to be done: change our consumption habits AND (not OR) the sources of the remaining energy.

BOTH must be done. It’s not an either/or game. It’s a game we’ve got to give our all if we want to have a civilization that goes for hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or more, of years.

Do you understand this point?
Al May 19th, 2008 at 12:08 am 7
Hi People, I’ve been ‘into’ PO since about 2003. One of the concepts that jumps to mind is a concept known as “The Olduvai Theory”. It states that a planetary system has only one chance at becoming civilised through the harnessing of the most powerful energy source by the most intelligent species. It would seem that, barring some new energy source from way out of left field, humans have squandered their chance at leaving their planetary confinement and spreading throughout the solar system and subsequently the galaxy. We have wasted our most precious endowment on a disposable economy, burnt it travelling to feed our fat faces or waged war over it, thereby burning even more. I believe that walking on the moon may very well be our Everest- the highest achievement mankind will ever embark upon. No other species in the future, no matter how smart the manifestation they evlove into, will have the resources to escape Earth. They will look back and curse us! Unless of course oil is abiotic-which is crazy. Prepare for the end people- it is now. I feel like an idiot standing on the beach watching a tidal wave coming in, while everybody else is still sunbaking. Embrace the horror.
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Sean OBrien July 3rd, 2008 at 9:34 am 9
I’ve posted an alternative explanation for Fermi’s Paradox, one which the Darwinists will hate:

The probability that any galaxy will evolve one or more sentient species is well below 100%. Thus sentient life never evolves in most galaxies, and very few galaxies (if any) have 2 or more. The answer to Fermi’s Paradox is that we are the only sentient species in the Milky Way and that will probably be true forever.

http://www.spacetimestories.com/commentary/fermis-paradox/