Peak Oil is You
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Page added on August 5, 2012
Paul Farrell: Big Oil is Earth’s Public Enemy No. 1
The world has “1.4 trillion barrels of oil, enough to last at least 200 years,” brags Thomas Donohue, U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO: “We have 2.7 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to last 120 years. We have 486 billion tons of coal, enough to last more than 450 years, and we need to use more of this strategic resource cleanly and wisely here at home while selling it around the world.”
Yes, 200 years of oil. Too bad it’ll kill us in 50 years. How? Easy, “we have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn,” says environmentalist Bill McKibben in Rolling Stone.
The author of the 1989 classic “End of Nature” warns: “We’d have to keep 80% of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate. Before we knew those numbers, our fate had been likely. Now, barring some massive intervention, it seems certain.”
Who’s right? Is McKibben an overreacting alarmist? Is Donohue too biased to trust? After all, the petroleum industry is the U.S. Chamber’s biggest source of money. Both are right. Yes, we have too much energy. Five times too much.
As a result, using more than one-fifth of it will dump so much excess carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that by 2050 fossil fuel companies will kill the planet. And that’s exactly what they plan to do.
The world’s behavior is now like a drug addict’s: The more we have, the more we demand, the more we love using it. Till we crash. McKibben has called this collective behavior a “suicide pact.”
Bad news: oil is the solution … to the wrong problemFirst, let’s examine some independent sources, check the facts supporting the oil industry’s claims. New discoveries do tell us the Earth does have all we need for the foreseeable future … but to be fair, the same media sources also make clear that supply is not the problem … rather, demand and human behavior is the problem … and that has huge unintended consequences:
1. “Everything You Know About Peak Oil is Wrong” BusinessWeek
Charles Kenny: “We’re not running out of resources. Quite the contrary. … If we keep on using more we’ll surely run out of supplies one day. But … a long way off.”
2. “The Return of Fossil Fuels,” SmartMoney
Reshma Kapadia: “Enormous new oil and gas discoveries under American soil are having a game-changing impact on the entire economy.”
3. “King Coal’s Comeback.” Time
Bryan Walsh: “Asia needs coal, and the U.S. has plenty. Will expanding exports make climate change that much worse?”
4. “Shell Betting Billions to Drill Oil Off the Icy Coast of Alaska.” Fortune
Jon Birger: “The payoff could be the largest U.S. offshore oil discovery in a generation.”
5. “Can We Survive The New Golden Age of Oil?” Foreign Policy
8 Comments on "Paul Farrell: Big Oil is Earth’s Public Enemy No. 1"
BillT on Sun, 5th Aug 2012 2:35 am
Oil is not bad…it is the way we chose to waste it. And, yes, we will continue to waste it until it is gone or we are. But, my bet is on the latter. We will cease to use the last billions of barrels because we have destroyed the system that allows it to be recovered and used: The capitalist economy.
Now the race is on. Do we run out of recoverable oil or does the global economy collapse, taking down the banking system that makes it all possible? I see that happening and the result will be a slow if even possible rebuilding of the banking system. Either way, the flow of oil will end, maybe abruptly.
Newfie on Sun, 5th Aug 2012 4:29 am
The economy does not seem to grow after oil passes $100 – $120 a barrel. It seems that the new sources of (unconventional) oil require a higher price to produce than the economy can support. So while there may be lots of oil left, can it actually be produced economically ? We now seem to be in the ‘Peak Oil Boom Bust Cycle’:
Growth causes demand to push the price of oil so high it triggers a recession. Demand then falls and the price of oil plummets making unconventional oil unprofitable. A period of low oil prices stimulates the economy and the cycle repeats. Ad infinitum.
Ken Nohe on Sun, 5th Aug 2012 7:46 am
It is easy to accuse “big oil” for our thirst for oil but behind the ubiquitous and insatiable consumer lurks, which only drive is immediate gratification and only responsibility is to feed its own boundless greed and envies. “Big oil” makes a buck doing just that and seasoned politicians know better than to go against the flow. We decided 200 years ago to put our fate in the hands of the “majority”. We will soon know if it was a wise decision. If not, well, we will start again!
DMyers on Sun, 5th Aug 2012 4:49 pm
The issue here needs to be re-framed. As usual, the mainstream media accent climate change as the bad guy. Peak oil is not the concern.
Quote all the headlines you want, and treat those as adequate refutation of peak oil, but they aren’t. The issues are still peak oil and grid decay.
The article skirts the unsavory topic of collapse, even though that is the solution it offers in place of burning fossil fuels. It offers McKibben’s 20 percent solution as the brake on climate disaster.
There’s no quibbling over this. The 20 percent solution predicates rapid collapse. Let’s make that clear. Whereas, climate change seems like a slower, less severe choice of the decline options.
There’s no way the 20 percent solution will prevail over collapse aversion in a straight up market or political vote. That solution is completely off the table.
Which leaves us with peak oil and grid decay/vulnerability as the potential causes of rapid collapse. So, the matter to be emphasized here is the approach of rapid collapse and how we’re going to deal with it, other than locking up the population in concentration camps.
GregT on Sun, 5th Aug 2012 8:39 pm
The world uses around 32 billion barrels of oil a year. 1.4 trillion divided by 32 billion equals 43 years supply at present rate of consumption.
DMyers on Mon, 6th Aug 2012 3:29 am
Good point, GregT. How does Donohue get away with turning 43 years into 200 years of oil cushion? I think I figured it out. Donohue is using a best case scenario factor of five.
Here’s how that works. Say Donohue is drinking coffee with an associate on the morning of his 200 year oil supply pronouncement.
“It looks like about 43 years,” says Donohue. “I need a better number than that. My people want impact.”
“Then, go with the best case scenario.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s always possible that things will go better than expected. There could be five times as much as you think.”
That’s where it comes from, the best case scenario factor of five. I’m going with the forty three year number, myself. At least, the math was done before my eyes.
James A. Hellams on Mon, 6th Aug 2012 9:39 am
The claim that 1.4 trillion barrels of oil will last 200 years is TOTALLY and COMPLETELY wrong and deceiving!
At the present worldwide consumption of oil at 31 billion barrels annually, 1.4 trillion barrels of oil would be gone in 45.2 YEARS!
GregT on Mon, 6th Aug 2012 7:56 pm
Right, and 20 percent of 200 is 50? Who writes this stuff? If McKibben is correct, we have until the fall of 2020.