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Peak Oil
New Zealand leaders’ debate mentions peak oil
Evltre, peakoil-dot-com
Last night we had an election debate – televised live. The leaders of the eight parties where there. They actually spent a reasonable amount of time talking about energy – specifically in terms of whether their election promises were going to be affordable, in light of the current oil situation, and it’s longer term affect on the economy.
They talked about the recent hikes in petrol prices. Brash (National Party -Right Wing business man type) said most people believe that the high oil prices will slow the economy, but not much else. Helen Clark said Labour would concentrate on technologies like bio-fuels and hybrid cars to reduce the reliance on oil. Green party talked about rail transport – looking at global trade etc – fact our economy is reliant on tourism.
Pita Sharples of the new Maori party was the most stand out – he specifically said “Peak oil is coming – as early as 2008! He asked for (at least twice) an urgent cross-party parliamentary commission to look at Peak Oil, renewable energy sources etc. “We are not taking the fuel crisis seriously enough. Needs to be looked at long-term and immediately.”
He was very strong on the point, the greens immediately shook his hand, and most nodded along.
There should be a transcript of the debate appearing on the TVNZ site later today – I’ll post a link when it turns up.
(8 September 2005)
See the original for more description by Evitre and snippets from the debate. The transcript of the debate is now online (it’s very long).
Oil Peak and Shock:
The bigger story behind Katrina
Lynn Jones, Straight Goods (Canada)
In addition to causing enormous suffering, Hurricane Katrina has touched off an oil shock that may have severe repercussions in coming months. While it may be tempting to find fault right now with oil companies for price gouging, there is a much bigger picture unfolding behind the headlines of the human tragedy in the Southern US and gas price spikes here at home.
… Many positive responses to this challenge are possible. Around the world people in small communities like ours are beginning to develop action plans for energy descent; important initiatives include re-localizing the food supply and developing rural transportation networks. There are also many innovative ways of using both fossil fuels and renewable energy; the Ottawa Valley has many pioneers in the energy field, some of whom we will be profiling in coming articles.
As we begin to face and prepare for oil depletion here in the Ottawa Valley, we can also take some comfort from the fact that there is great tradition of helping your neighbour here and there is still a lot of traditional knowledge about getting along with less energy. Both of these bode well for how we will navigate the energy descent.
Lynn Jones is a member of the Ottawa River Institute, a non-profit, charitable organization based in Pembroke ON Canada. The ORI is aimed at fostering sustainable communities and ecological integrity in the Ottawa Valley and Ottawa River Watershed. For more information please visit the ORI website.
(6 September 2005)
A medium-length summary of Peak Oil aimed at a Canadian audience. Straight Goods, in which this article appears, calls itself “Canada’s leading independent online newsmagazine.”
There’s no more ‘easy oil’ (commentary)
B. Robert Franza, M.D., Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Listening to the Seafair sound of high-performance military aircraft flying barely off the deck over a major urban area, burning very expensive fuel for what someone considers “entertainment,” I couldn’t help but reflect on at least one beneficial outcome of a “post-petroleum economy” — much less noise.
…If we intend to lead the Puget Sound region, Washington state and the Pacific Northwest to a sustainable, vibrant economic future, we need to begin to explain to our fellow residents that spending money on more roads, bridges and tunnels means we are wasting precious capital and creating burdensome debt for structures that will see rapidly declining use in the next decade and beyond.
We need to have the courage to recognize that what we have experienced during our lifetime — the era of easy oil is over. And, fortunately, this is not a partisan issue; no matter what your political affiliation, the reality of what energy resources are available on the planet is grounded in what remains and what we are capable of creating.
We need to have the courage to construct and deliver to our fellow residents an “energy use literacy program,” through which we explain to every resident of the state why we are going to need to do several things very differently from in the past and why each of us must do these tasks together.
If we are going to pursue a “big transportation project,” it should be focused on improved rail for freight transportation, not trucks, as to ensure our role as a major port and we should evaluate what technology(ies) we should use to establish a very fast passenger train system connecting Seattle to Spokane, the Tri-Cities, Pullman, Vancouver, B.C., and Portland.
B. Robert Franza, M.D., is a research professor at the University of Washington department of bioengineering and chief scientist, Pacific Northwest Bioscience.
(9 September 2005)
The Peak-Oil Crisis: The Storms of August
Tom Whipple, Fall-Church News-Press (Virginia)
It has become fashionable in peak oil circles to make the comparison between the current summer and that of 1914— just before the cataclysm of World War I. That year too, was a warm and idyllic summer in which the people went happily about their business unaware the assassination of an archduke was about to destroy the old order and plunge the world into decades of turmoil.
This time, the trouble spawned in the South Atlantic , strengthened in a global-warmed Caribbean and slammed into the heart of the US oil industry. The flooding of New Orleans and the destruction of miles of the Gulf coast will rank among the greatest natural disasters America has ever known, for a number of reasons.
(8-15 September 2005)
IEA chief sets the pace on energy conservation
Barbara Lewis and Peg Mackey, Reuters via Planet Ark
LONDON – The head of the West’s energy watchdog is taking record high oil prices in his stride by walking to his Paris office each day. Claude Mandil, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), is urging consumers the world over to be as serious when it comes to conserving energy.
“It seems that even with very high prices people are willing to consume as much petroleum products as before. That does not help to calm the market,” said Mandil. “It would be extremely useful for all governments in consuming countries to be serious about energy efficiency.”
…”In the 70s, high oil prices were a shock… People woke up, but then they relaxed,” said former oil company geologist Colin Campbell, now a leading proponent of the view global oil supply is near its peak.
“We went from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age and it was a natural, onward progression. But for the first time in history, we’re running out of the best thing and we have to go on to the next best thing. That is really awfully hard to face,” he added.
(8 September 2005)
None so blind as those that won’t see
Paul Lymath, The Back Slope
As the price of oil increases more and more attention is paid to the reasons for this rise. This has meant that the words ‘peak oil’ have started to appear ever more frequently in print and other media. With this new found recognition has come the inevitable refutations and disputations.
An article by Peter Maas has drawn fire from Stephen Levitt, author of the best selling Freakonomics. James Howard Kunstler’s book The Long Emergency has had several hostile reviews. Matt Savinar, over at life after the oil crash, has been the target of a serial denunciator writing in a peak oil forum.
As Matt points out in his rebuttal, as oil prices rose it was entirely predictable that there would be a raft of people who would appear to try to refute peak oil. What is surprising is that the people that do this are often very intelligent, some of them leaders in their fields. But no matter their credentials, a blindness to the fundamental nature of energy resources is a common feature of people from all walks of life.
This is almost uncomfortably illustrated by Steven Pinker in his 2002 book ‘The Blank Slate’. Pinker, who’s books have done more to popularise evolutionary psychology and the modern science of the human mind than anyone I can think of, is an exceptionally lucid writer with a penetrating intelligence.
(3 September 2005)
Another literate essay by New Zealand blogger Paul Lymath. See also his recent Signposts on the Back Slope and the longer Y2K versus Peak Oil. -BA
