Peak Oil? Bring it on!
Thursday, March 27th, 2008I have a new article in Salon on perhaps the most misunderstood subject in energy — peak oil.
Here is the short version:
- We are at or near the peak of cheap conventional oil production.
- There is no realistic prospect that the conventional oil supply can keep up with current projected demand for much longer — if the industrialized countries don’t take strong action to sharply reduce consumption, and if China and India don’t take strong action to sharply reduce consumption growth.
- Many people are expecting unconventional oil — such as the tar sands and liquid coal — to make up the supply shortage. That would be a climate catastrophe, and I (optimistically) believe humanity is wise enough not to let that happen. More supply is not the answer to either our oil or climate problem.
- Nonetheless, contrary to popular belief, the peak oil problem will not “destroy suburbia” or the American way of life. Only unrestrained emissions of greenhouse gases can do that.
- We have the two primary solutions to peak oil at hand: fuel efficiency and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles run on zero-carbon electricity. The only question is whether conservatives will let progressives accelerate those solutions into the marketplace before it is too late to prevent a devastating oil shock or, for that matter, devastating climate change.
That last sentence has been a major focus of this blog. I discuss it briefly in the article, but let me elaborate on it here. For more than two decades, conservatives have put up almost every conceivable roadblock to a sane energy policy. They have essentially said to peak oil — and catastrophic global warming, for that matter — “Bring it on!”
No one should be surprised we are now mired in a tar pit of growing dependence on oil imported from unstable or undemocratic regions, oil prices over $100 a barrel, a trade deficit in oil alone approaching $500 billion a year, and, of course, the very serious threat of catastrophic climate change from burning an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuels.
Many of us have predicted for a very long time that a quarter century of ignoring or underfunding the key solutions to our addiction to oil would have consequences. For instance, an April 1996 article I coauthored warned about what the Gingrich Congress was trying to do:







