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Home::Environment
The Fusion of Peak Oil & Climate Change
Author : James Howard
Peak Oil and Climate Change deal 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 naďve
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.
Sources:
www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825265.400
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Spread_of_disease
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_security
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination
gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/11/28/125110/28
www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1654803,00.html
www.globalpublicmedia.com/news/539
www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0124-11.htm
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1234244.stm
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