The Fusion of Peak Oil & Climate Change

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 naïve 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.

Written by: James Howard of PowerSwitch.Org.Uk – Raising awareness of Peak Oil in the UK.