Oil And Environment: A Contradiction

Among the factors in systemic collapse that should be placed far down on the list are many that might be described as environmental: pollution, global warming, and so on. The fact is that the issue of peak oil and that of the environment are mutually exclusive problems. As oil and other fossil fuels disappear, the environmental problems will also go away, even if very slowly.

By trying to raise the alarm about both issues at once, we are placing ourselves in a self-contradictory position, and our credibility is rapidly undermined. We cannot, on the one hand, wish that oil would go away so that the air will have a crystalline purity, and on the other hand complain because we have spent hours poring over the charts of global oil production and found that the cost of driving to the cottage is becoming prohibitive.

As oil is depleted, there will be fewer automobiles and factories, so the air and water will be less polluted. As the air becomes cleaner, the man-made aspects of global warming will be reduced. As fossil fuels disappear, in fact, all that goes with it will disappear or be reduced. Above all, there will be no chance for 7 billion people to be living on the Earth. As the human population goes down, so a great many other problems of this planet will recede, from the disappearance of fresh water to the extinction of species.

That is not to say that the reversal of the destruction will be a sudden process. On the contrary, even if our use of fossil fuels ended tomorrow, it would take decades for the planet to cleanse itself.

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