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Senior oil geologists the world over are pointing at the fact that global production is very likely to peak soon, maybe even as early as this year. Just as we have come to rely so heavily on this precious resource suddenly it’s in short supply, gas too. There’s still a lot of it left but it’s going to be increasingly hard and expensive to extract oil fast enough to keep up with global demand.
A restricted oil supply is actually a kind of good news in disguise - well, certainly for the environment if not for us as consumers.
Oil will get more expensive
US and Climate Change
As climate scientists have been pointing out, and increasingly loudly, the billions of tonnes of C02 we are emitting each year in burning oil and gas is having a disastrous effect on the planet’s atmosphere. So, the less we use the better. Now I know that there are plenty of people out there, including the US government, ready to believe that this is not really the case. In fact, it’s hard for me to convince anybody here but I have just read a report that has made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end.
The US Pentagon has been very recently briefing the White House that climate change poses a huge threat to national security, much more than Iraq or global terrorism. I am no politician, but the fact is that we all need to prepare for change. The oil is running out but it isn’t running out fast enough to save us from climate change, so the real change has to come from us.
Collective will
The Power of the Individual
I for one believe in the power of the individual and that individuals can and do make a huge difference. Here’s an interesting story...
In a recent article American environmentalist and writer Paul Hawken, commented that on his numerous study tours and lectures he gets to meet a lot of members of the public, many of whom press upon him cards and leaflets of the many organisations and campaigns they belong too. By the end of a tour he has ‘literally hundreds, if not thousands’ of these things. This got him thinking. A quick back of the envelope calculation led him to propose that there must be getting on for 1,000,000 new grass roots environmental and social justice organisations that have sprouted up in the last decade. And that figure was just for the US and Europe where he had been working, so he doubled the figure for good measure to reflect the rest of the world that he had not been travelling in. So two million campaigning organisations – that’s a lot of collective will. The environmental message is being rapidly embraced around the world and a tide of normal people is what will make the defining difference when it comes to bringing about the scale of change that is going to be required over the coming years.
Saving energy, efficient transport and more local food will help the planet and will help reduce our impact, but it will also help us find ways to flourish as individuals faced with much higher food and energy prices. Personal sustainability is the answer, if we can sort ourselves out then maybe the planet will sort itself out. Not to oversimplify, government and big business will also be required to make big changes but it might be foolish for us to wait for them to make the first move.
