Peak Oil and Energy Resources

An outline of the main features of the politics of Energy Resources with a focus on the important issue of Peak Oil. This is the text of talk given to Jack White Branch of the WSM on 23rd June 2006 by a guest speaker.

What has not been realized but is beginning to dawn, is the Cheap Oil has in fact subsidised all other forms of power, whether than be coal, gas, electricity, nuclear, hydro and especially renewable and made them cheaper than they really are. Same goes for modern agriculture and our “cheap” food. Because oil is used in all facets of these in terms of driving the workers and equipment, supporting the entire transport infrastructure and its operation, these have all been hidden subsidies. Besides, if you price oil cheaply, you can’t exactly charge 30 times the rate for the equivalent amount of power from other sources. When oil gets more expensive, so will all these energy sources. They already are. Look at natural gas prices. And that in turn has already driven up electricity prices.
There is an enormous religious like faith in the idea of “progress”. The only way is up! People confuse and interchange the words technology and energy. They are not the same thing. Something will have to replace oil and gas. There isn’t anything like enough Uranium to go nuclear fission all the way even if we want to. The progress flock see their saviour in renewables. What is usually missing from the argument is scale.

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