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Richard Heinberg: Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism

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GliderGuider Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-09-07 10:00 AM
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Richard Heinberg: Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism
Richard Heinberg has published an excellent analysis of the intersection of CC and PO, how the activists in both camps differ in their backgrounds and concerns, as well as why and how we should be working to bring the two issues into a common framework.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_richard__070107_the_closer_we_look_2c_.htm

The problems of Climate Change and Peak Oil both result from societal dependence on fossil fuels. But just how the impacts of these two problems relate to one another, and how policies to address them should differ or overlap, are questions that have so far not been adequately discussed.

Despite the fact that they are closely related, the two issues are in many respects dissimilar. Climate Change has to do with carbon emissions and their effects-including the impacts on human societies from rising sea levels, widespread and prolonged droughts, habitat loss, extreme weather events, and so on. Peak Oil, on the other hand, has to do with coming shortfalls in the supply of fuels on which society has become overwhelmingly dependent-leading certainly to higher prices for oil and its many products, and perhaps to massive economic disruption and more oil wars. Thus the first has more directly to do with the environment, the second with human society and its dependencies and vulnerabilities. At the most superficial level, we could say that Climate Change is an end-of-tailpipe problem, while Peak Oil is an into-fuel-tank problem.

Because of this crucial divergence, the training and priorities of people who study one problem often differ from those of people who study the other. Most advocates for the Peak Oil concept-sometimes known as "depletionists"-are energy experts, economists, journalists, urban planners, or workers retired from the oil industry (usually geologists or petroleum engineers). Among climate analysts and activists there are more environmentalists, fewer energy experts, and far fewer retired oil industry employees. It is my experience that, when placed in the same room together, the two groups often talk past one another.

snip

For their part, many Climate Change activists and experts see global warming as potentially having such devastating consequences, not just for humans but for the whole biosphere, that Peak Oil seems a trivial concern by comparison. They argue that, even if global oil production peaks soon, this will provide no solution whatever to Climate Change because society will replace oil with coal and other low-grade fossil fuels-which will simply worsen greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, since the remedies for carbon emissions that climate activists propose will inevitably lead to increased energy efficiency and a reduction in oil consumption, they often feel such efforts constitute an adequate answer to the Peak Oil problem.

Most oil depletionists (excepting the small group discussed above) appear to hold the opinion that Climate Change is indeed a legitimate concern; however, since the economic impact of Peak Oil looms in the immediate future, the economic and geopolitical chaos that may be triggered by declining global fuel supplies pose the more timely threat. Some have argued that if Peak Oil results in near-term economic collapse and wars over dwindling energy resources, these events will seriously or terminally undermine the ability of national leaders to undertake the cooperative, long-range planning necessary to reduce carbon emissions.

snip

What would cooperation between the two groups look like? It would help, first of all, for activists on one issue to spend more time studying the literature of the other, and for both groups to arrange meetings and conferences where the intersections of the two issues can be further explored.

Both groups could work together more explicitly to promote proactive, policy-driven reductions in fossil fuel consumption.

Climate activists could start using depletion arguments and data in tandem with their ongoing discussions of ice cores and melting glaciers, but to do so they would need to stop taking unrealistically robust resource estimates at face value.

For their part, depletionists-if they are to take advantage of increased collaboration with emissions activists-must better familiarize themselves with climate science, so that their Peak Oil mitigation proposals are ones that lead to a reduction rather than an increase of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Perhaps, for both groups, with a stronger potential for motivating the public will come the courage to tell a truth that few policy makers want to hear: energy efficiency and curtailment will almost certainly have to be the world's dominant responses to both issues.


There is much, much more in the article. I think it's crucially important that activists on both issues read and think about the ideas Heinberg raises. This convergence is the next step in the process, and we should all help drive it.
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Viva_La_Revolution Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-09-07 10:41 AM
Response to Original message
1. good find!
thanks!
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IDemo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-09-07 01:22 PM
Response to Original message
2. These two issues, taken together, leave me with little hope
Edited on Tue Jan-09-07 01:29 PM by IDemo
Especially when considering that many of the answers will depend on whether the ruling corporatocracy will suddenly make a hard 90 degree turn and act in the best interests of citizens who are not also stockholders. I'm afraid "The Market", filled with its false signals, will have us collectively driving the Hummer of industrialized civilization into the brick wall of nature sooner, rather than later. And I fear that resource wars, with no pretense of WMD's required, will become much more common in the coming decades.

Edit to add: That said, I will be going to listen to Al Gore speak at the Frank Church conference on global warming two weeks from now.


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conning Donating Member (60 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-09-07 03:41 PM
Response to Original message
3. Climate Change& Peak Oil = Scylla & Charybdis
I think it was someone on The Oil Drum who used that metaphor to describe the dilemna. Thank you for posting this essay by Richard Heinberg. He expresses many concerns I have had.

If you live in an area that might still be habitable even if some of the most dire predictions of climate change come to pass (eg., Sweden, Alaska, Scotland, Japan, the Great Lakes), it's easier for you to dare to envision life a few decades from now.

Like many of us, Richard Heinberg would benefit from becoming more informed on nuclear energy.
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GliderGuider Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-09-07 03:46 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. What an excellent metaphor!
Thanks for posting it - I hadn't seen it on TOD.
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YankeyMCC Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-09-07 04:15 PM
Response to Original message
5. This piece brings home the core issue
It's about lifestyle and the shaky foundation on which our society is resting.

On the one hand the energy we rely on is running out. On the other hand even if we find one of the replacements (CO2 emitting) or find more oil we're killing ourselves anyway.

That is not a basis for a sustainable society.

Seems obvious yet somehow most people don't see it or don't want to perhaps. But of course he makes that point to, that the real solutions are just 'asking to much' or 'not politically acceptable'.



:banghead:
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-09-07 08:14 PM
Response to Original message
6. As a climate change guy, I'm cheering oil depletion on.
It can't happen fast enough.

I'm sick of oil and can't wait for it to go away. It's been an unparalleled disaster.
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Nihil Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-10-07 07:16 AM
Response to Reply #6
7. Whilst I agree with your cheers, I'm a little concerned about ...
> It's been an unparalleled disaster.

I have a nasty feeling that there will be an incredibly fast headlong
rush towards creating an even bigger disaster to outweigh that of the
"Oil Society" ... "Coal Society - Episode II" ...

As intelligent creatures go, humans make great lemmings.
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NNadir Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-10-07 01:24 PM
Response to Reply #7
8. I believe, but do not support, that the oil fetish will translate into a coal fetish.
I am very frightened by that, but stupidity reigns in these times.
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Nihil Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-10-07 06:49 PM
Response to Reply #8
9. So true, so true ...
> I am very frightened by that, but stupidity reigns in these times.

That is an inescapable conclusion when you look at the recent environmental
news and compare it to the headline news as seen by the majority.
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