Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
hardly amounted to a spark a decade ago. As a result of that campaign, even more people have heard
of peak oil than before—though most probably have a highly erroneous impression of it.
Peak oil bashing is not entirely the province of the petroleum industry: a very few leftist writers
have argued that peakism is a conspiracy covertly organized by the industry itself to talk up prices
(and profits) through invoking a false anticipation of scarcity.
15
In my years researching the topic
and my many interactions with oil geologists, engineers, and company representatives, I have seen
no evidence to support this view. Instead I've heard industry spokespeople use every possible rhet-
orical trick to draw attention away from the process and consequences of oil depletion.
Peakists within the industry are usually technical staff (usually geologists, seldom economists,
and never PR professionals) and are only free to speak out on the subject once they've retired. The
industry has two big reasons to hate peak oil. First, company stock prices are tied to the value of
booked oil reserves; if the public (and government regulators) were to become convinced that those
reserves were problematic, the companies' ability to raise money would be seriously comprom-
ised—and oil companies need to raise lots of money these days to find and produce ever-lower-
quality resources. It's thus in the interest of companies to maintain an impression of (at least po-
tential) abundance. Second, the industry doesn't want society to mount a serious effort to reduce
its dependence on petroleum. People who take peak oil seriously are understandably nervous about
petroleum dependency and are looking for a way out. The oil industry wants more highways, not
more streetcars and bicycles; more pipelines, not more solar panels.
Resistance to the idea of peak oil has also come from mainstream economists. That's because
(as
The Party's Over
explained on
pages 169-72
)
peak oil effectively means the end of economic
growth as we knew it during the 20th century. Growth is sacred to most economists: even creden-
tialed insiders (economists like Jeff Rubin or investment fund managers like Jeremy Grantham)
who question growth get pilloried by the priesthood. Politicians and business leaders love growth
and hate anything that might call into question our ability to maintain it from here to eternity. For
this reason alone, peak oil theory was destined for a public thrashing regardless of its accuracy.
Some within the peakist movement now say the term
peak oil
has outlived its usefulness, and
it is time to find new ways to name and frame the issues of resource depletion and energy scarcity.
Others say we've invested years of effort in popularizing the term and we're irrevocably identified
with it anyway, so we simply have to do what we can to rehabilitate it. Either way, many peakists
are pretty dispirited these days.
Our public relations failure pales in comparison to our inability to achieve our real goal—which
was to convince society to prepare for the end of the brief age of cheap, abundant energy. While in-
dividuals, a few organizations, and a handful of communities have indeed responded, the numbers
are relatively small. National governments have done almost nothing. The best broad-scale policy
would have been an international agreement to reduce production and consumption of oil in tandem
(this idea was mooted as a proposal known as the Uppsala Protocol, the Rimini Protocol, or The
and the city councils of Portland, Oakland, and San Francisco, there has been no real governmental
interest in such an agreement.
What have I learned? That it's hard to change the direction of society, but—given what's at
stake—that it's worth trying. Knowing what I knew in 2003, I could not have lived with myself
during the past dozen years had I not at least attempted to alert the general populace and tried to
change the thinking of policy makers.
