by James Howard
Energy Bulletin (December 01 2008)
Peak Oil and Climate Change are two historic events for humans and life
on earth. The first threatens modern industrial ways of living and the
latter threatens the climatic systems that are an integral part of our
world and the way we live and survive.
A quick recap on both. Peak Oil is the point of historic maximum global
oil flow, Climate Change is the alteration of established climate
systems due to (in this case, anthropogenic) global warming. The onset
of both will affect food & water supplies, mortality rates, conflict,
migration and much more. The evidence that climate change is underway
and almost past the point of no return is very strong and Peak Oil day
by day gathers more credence as many studies point to an imminent peak.
How do these two events affect each other though?
The decline of global oil supply and the increasing cost of everything
as a consequence means we will see our ability to deal with the
consequences of Climate Change reduced.
Let us take a look at Britain. The decline of oil and gas will of its
own accord make it harder to keep Britain warm but if the Gulf Stream
does switch off as a result of Global Warming, the gap between what is
needed and what will be available will get wider. The change to a colder
climate would have a negative affect on crop growing, at a time when
declining oil and gas supplies make the agriculture business more
expensive. Warming sea temperatures are pushing fish stocks further
afield, out of traditional (and already over-fished) fishing waters.
Fishermen, so dependent on oil for their boats, will have to pay more
for their fuel to go after these already dwindling and increasingly
distant fish stocks. The insurance industry is already facing increasing
pressures from Climate Change, but when the economy nose-dives past the
oil peak, this double whammy could knock out the insurance industry.
Will those in increasingly flood prone areas be able to pay the
insurance costs during the recessions brought on by the decline of oil
supplies?
The European Environment Agency recently pointed to how Germany is now
at risk from more extreme weather, such as heavy rain - which raises the
risk of flooding, especially the densely populated plains of central
Europe. Cleaning up and repairing that damage costs money and requires
energy. The economic climate, post peak, is going to be less able to
deal with it. At the other extreme, Italy's coming crisis is drought,
and there is a need there to improve irrigation to improve agriculture.
Once again, money and energy are needed, and both will be harder to come by.
Further afield we are seeing glaciers melting and other regions becoming
more arid and water flows changing. The ability to process and transport
water to these regions will become more expensive, if it is at all
possible, since drinking water is already tight in many areas. For
example, desalination plants are an energy-intensive way of getting
drinking water from sea water. Another option is to build pipelines to
transport the water, but this is an expensive and complicated option.
What we are likely to see, according to Tearfund, a relief and
development agency, is an increase in water refugees.
As river and rain patterns change abruptly, the agriculture that has
been grown for those climates will have to change, but the patterns may
alter so much that the ability to grow food is severely impaired, and
the need for oil and gas for fertiliser and food transportation will go
up. This will lead to increases in, for example, famine and drought.
With the world economy going into a long-term downturn as a result of
Peak Oil, and the cost of everything going up, the willingness and
ability from the wealthier (but increasingly less wealthy) world to deal
with the problems brought on by Climate Change will decline.
The list goes on. Forest fires will increase, but the ability to fight
them will decrease. Disease will spread but the cost and transportation
of medicines will increase as a result of the great oil decline, while
the ability to pay for them by those in need will decrease. As the world
economy goes into recession as a result of oil decline, the ability and
willingness of the rich to give to the poor in regions directly affected
by Climate Change will wane. Cheap oil has enabled us to tackle many of
the world's problems - to varying degrees - when we have been willing,
but Peak Oil marks the beginning of a very big change as far as that goes.
Worryingly, the decline of oil may simply exacerbate Climate Change if
we don't recognise what will happen and we don't see the whole picture.
In our attempt to keep business as usual while trying to reduce Climate
Change, we are seeing more of the rainforests being destroyed to grow
soya beans to satisfy an enlarged appetite for oil. Nobody needs to be
told how important the rainforests are to the world. As for renewables,
these are built from materials that need oil. Once again we see that the
decline of oil means an increase in costs at a time when the ability to
pay for it will be much lower than now. Developing alternatives will
become more costly the cost of everything will increase - this is
because oil is behind everything we do. And of course there is the
likelihood of turning to dirtier hydrocarbons such as coal, when we
could investing in things like microgeneration.
A recent article on the website Gristmill.org entitled 'Peak Oil : Not
an environmental silver bullet' argued that environmentalists hoping
that awareness of peak oil will increase support of renewable,
decentralised energy is naive when the likely situation is that there
will be a stronger turn to environmentally damaging, dirtier fossil
fuels. Does that mean that Climate Change activists should shun Peak
Oil? Absolutely not. Peak Oil and Climate Change have to be understood
as an overall package, not separately, and we should all be looking at
this, shouting clearly that "If we're not careful, we might just end up
where we're heading!"
The main thing about Peak Oil - and this could be what everyone needs to
grasp hold of - is that it is symbolic of much more than just oil
supplies. Because oil is so important to everything that modern
industrial society is based upon, including the assumptions of
continuous growth, we can see that the decline of oil will pose serious
questions about how we live and the systems, structures and culture we
have developed. Peak Oil is therefore a symbol of the high-watermark of
the hydrocarbon human and everything associated with it. Care for our
environment and our climate should be a big part of the answer because
that is what we will have left when the hydrocarbons are gone, and we
must place proper value on that. The confluence of Peak Oil and Climate
Change means that it is now time to ask ourselves, as a species, the
biggest questions we can.
So let's ask those questions now. What do we want to achieve with our
remaining oil (and gas) resources? What do we want our legacy to be?
What are we aiming towards as a species and does that meet what we want
to achieve as individuals? How do we want to achieve this? Do we want to
make the transition as easy as possible? Do we eschew personal
responsibility and have blind faith that 'the markets' or 'technology'
will solve everything, thus putting off doing anything?
We can clearly see that things are going to change, but are we going to
be led by events or do we lead them? Do we create a way of living that
brings us more in balance with the environment and dramatically reduces
greenhouse gases through a combination of efficiency and absolute
reduction in greenhouse gas emissions? Or is the current way of doing
things so important to try to cling on to (even though it is so
ultimately futile that we'll destroy so much in the process) way beyond
the point of no return?
It simply does not make sense to expand the use of energy resources that
will increase Climate Change if our ability to deal with those magnified
consequences will be even more depleted further down the road. This is
what has to be made absolutely clear. The great decline of global oil
production is bad enough without Climate Change and vice versa - but do
we want to make things worse for ourselves and those who follow? Is that
to be our legacy? What kind of fool would cover an infected wound with a
poisoned bandage?
Peak Oil and Climate Change are a bigger threat together than either are
alone. Our biggest hope is to similarly converge our understanding of
them, and how to deal with the problems they present. Peak Oil and
Climate Change must be fused as issues - an approach is needed to deal
with them as a package. If we are looking for answers, the environmental
movement has pushed suitable ones for a long time. Peak Oil presents a
tremendous chance to push those solutions ahead, failure to incorporate
a full understanding of Peak Oil into the solutions argument for Climate
Change would be an abject failure.
The bottom line is that business can live with Climate Change to an
extent but it is the threat of declining oil supplies that really
strikes fear into politicians, economists, and many other people who
prefer to ignore Climate Change as a problem, because it will hit them
financially, and soon. The Climate Change movement can sell the green
solutions to the challenge of oil decline. The Climate Change movement
has been saying for a long time that we should change, Peak Oil means
categorically we have to change. Fuse them together and hopefully we'll
get more momentum moving us in the right direction.
