Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
I waited for someone to write the peak oil topic that would tell the story of energy, portray the
politics and economics of petroleum, and lay out the world's prospects in the coming post-peak era.
Surely a petroleum geologist or energy expert would step up to the plate. But none did (with the
exception of Kenneth Deffeyes, whose 2001 topic
Hubbert's Peak
was a bit technical and did not
explain petroleum's extraordinary role in recent economic and political history). After a couple of
years, I started researching the subject in earnest and put together a topic proposal, which I sent to
Chris and Judith Plant at New Society Publishers. They replied favorably. New Society would go
on to become the foremost publisher of non-technical topics in the peak oil genre, with titles by
John Michael Greer, Dmitry Orlov, Sharon Astyk, and others.
The timing of the publication of
The Party's Over
proved to be pivotal: it came out in the same
year the United States invaded Iraq. In the spring of 2003, millions of Americans thronged streets in
dozens of cities to protest the Bush-Cheney administration's stupid, horrific, and illegal war. Since
Iraq had large, relatively untapped oil reserves, there was widespread speculation that the invasion
was an exercise in trading “blood for oil.” My topic offered some support for this line of thought,
so most of my early speaking invitations came from antiwar groups. All I had to do was remind
audiences of Dick Cheney's words in a 1999 speech to the London Institute of Petroleum:
Producing oil is obviously a self-depleting activity. Every year you've got to find and devel-
op reserves equal to your output just to stand still, just to stay even. . . . By some estimates
there will be an average of two percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years
ahead along with conservatively a three percent natural decline in production from existing
reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels
a day. So where is the oil going to come from?. . . [T]he Middle East, with two-thirds of the
world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”
2
In late 2003, I received a speaking invitation from Julian Darley and Celine Rich in Vancouver,
Canada. They were in the process of organizing a local peak oil conference, and had just started a
new nonprofit organization called Post Carbon Institute. They soon invited me to become a board
member (and later, Senior Fellow).
The next year saw the first of several “Peak Oil and Community Solutions” conferences in Yel-
low Springs, Ohio (the second one was reported on at length in
Harper's
).
3
In 2004 I also attended
Campbell and Laherrère, Matt Simmons, and other oil experts.
The year 2005 saw speaking tours in South Africa and Britain, along with dozens more appear-
ances in the United States. Especially memorable was a conference in Kinsale, Ireland, organized by
Rob Hopkins—who immediately impressed me as someone capable of doing great things (he star-
ted the Transition Towns initiatives just a year later). That summer the
New York Times Magazine
published a long profile article about Bill Clinton, mentioning that
The Party's Over
was on his
current reading list and that he had underlined many passages and scribbled comments throughout.
Also that year, James Howard Kunstler published
The Long Emergency
, which introduced an even
wider audience to the dilemma of oil depletion.
By 2006 it was possible to speak of a peak oil “movement”: Totnes in the UK had become the
world's first Transition Town; both ASPO International and ASPO USA were holding annual con-
ferences to highlight relevant technical issues; the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solu-
tions was hosting annual peak oil gatherings in Ohio for the activist crowd; several peak oil web-
