[Keith_McClary]

CBC Program Info

I just caught the last half, it's on again at 11 tonight (Monday) and Sunday at 8 PM.

[eXpat]

Something to assuage your nerves after a bad day in the markets?

[Spanktron9]

Any link for your energy buying neighbors to the South? I don't get CBC. Is CBC the Canadian Beaver Corporation?

[hope_full]

The preview surely is intriguing. I'd also love to know if it'll be shown in the US of A.

[some_math_guy]

Damn, I missed it on Monday night but is it playing again this Sunday, Sept 21st? What time?

It appears to be a UK-made documentary so will it have little about Canada's role in the peaking of oil production?

Thanks,
Kevin

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hope_full', 'T')he preview surely is intriguing. I'd also love to know if it'll be shown in the US of A.

[toujoursdan]

I watched it and taped it for a few US friends.

It talked about the basics of peak oil theory and then said that while OPEC and some major oil companies say that we have enough oil for 140 years, there are many reasons to believe that they are cooking the books and have far fewer resources than they say. Most chillingly, they talked about how the methods Saudi Arabia are using to extract oil which make it likely that their fields will collapse abruptly.

They talked about some of the economic consequences of peak oil - the end of air travel, car travel, etc., falling standard of living, serious pain in poor developing countries, stock market disaster, global depression, food supply problems. Hirsch (Hirsch Report) and Heinberg (The Party's Over) were presented.

Then they talk about how some redrilling and better extraction of oil fields happening in Texas and in Russia and deep water drilling may give us oil that we didn't have before, but that this will have little impact on the peak. The U.S. will not have energy independence.

Even with technological innovation we have not found new sources of oil on the scale of what we have found so far. That should tell us that it is unlikely there is something out there that will allow us to live as we do now for the next generation. It said that oil companies have budgeted for less and less exploration over the last 10 years because they aren't finding enough to make it worthwhile.

The "market" may not solve all our energy problems. That is an almost "religious" belief, not a fact. Economists aren't physicists and the concept of a finite supply of oil doesn't fit into modern economic orthodoxy. Politicians are afraid of "crying wolf" on peak oil because they will be ridiculed and there are vested interests in keeping the status quo. But they show clips of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and even GWB agree that peak oil is looming.

What about alternatives - electric and natural gas? Well, it takes a long time to transition oil based economy to alternatives - to develop and then, more importantly, to deploy it.

What about other sources of oil - tar sands, shale, coal-to-oil, etc. ? It takes a lot of energy to turn these products into oil. These sources may expand, but can't take the place of what will be lost once the "easy" forms of production disappear.

It briefly said that we need to stop being so wasteful and transition to a sustainable economy now.

That is how it ran. It was a good overview of the peak oil theory. I think it touched on, but underplayed the seriousness of the threat ahead, but they only had an hour.

The CBC had a series on peak oil that you can find on You Tube that went into more depth about what could happen once oil runs out, so I wasn't surprised that they would air this too. It's too bad that being public television, most won't watch it.