last updated 22rd December 05
By 4ecotips

Using more is "irresponsible and reckless"

Although no one knows for sure when oil production will "peak," nearly everyone in the January/February issue of World Watch magazine's Peak Oil Forum agrees that the age of oil will end-and the time to start transitioning to alternatives is now.

While industry representatives such as Red Cavaney of the American Petroleum Institute argue that failure to develop "the potentially vast oil and natural gas resources that remain in the world" will have a high economic cost, others, such as Worldwatch Institute's Christopher Flavin, argue that "the current path-continually expanding our use of oil on the assumption that the Earth will yield whatever quantity we need-is irresponsible and reckless."

A lack of transparency in the world oil market makes assessing oil reserves a guessing game, with figures in official oil reports often based as much on politics as geology: nearly three-quarters of the world's oil is controlled by state-owned companies, whose reserve figures are never audited.

"We know that oil production will peak within our lifetime, we are pretty sure that market prices will not anticipate this peak, and we know that not having alternatives in place at the time of the peak will have tremendous economic and social consequences," says Robert K. Kaufmann, an energy economist at Boston University. "Doing too little now in the name of economic efficiency will appear in hindsight as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic."

While some proponents of "peak oil" like to proffer doomsday scenarios, the Peak Oil Forum participants highlight the opportunity to engage human ingenuity as one resource that won't peak. "Unless we believe, preposterously, that human inventiveness and adaptability will cease the year the world reaches the peak annual output of conventional crude oil, we should see that milestone...as a challenging opportunity rather than as a reason for cult-like worries," says Vaclav Smil, a professor at the University of Manitoba.

Although we will never wake up to the headline, "World Runs Out of Oil," says Kaufmann, before production declines to very low levels, the peak will mark a point of no return that will affect every aspect of modern life. "As oil becomes dearer," writes Smil, "we will use it more selectively and more efficiently, and we will intensify a shift that has already begun."

According to Flavin: "Roughly $30bn was invested in advanced biofuels, giant wind farms, solar manufacturing plants, and other technologies in 2004, attracting companies such as General Electric and Shell to the fasting growing segment of the global energy business."

Kjell Aleklett, president of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, recognises the development quandary posed by peak oil, noting that it may be necessary to double global GDP to "achieve any kind of decent life" in poor countries. But the examples of Sweden and China in the 20th century suggest that doubling GDP will require doubling global oil production-which is unlikely given growing consumer demands and shrinking supplies.

"Can this be done?" asks Aleklett. "And can the planet tolerate the increase in CO2 emissions?"