The exact date of "peak oil" - when the amount of oil being pumped out of the ground every day reaches its highest point before beginning an inexorable decline - has been hotly debated for decades. Environmentalists have tended to warn oil could run out at any moment, while oil companies insist there are plently more oil fields yet to be discovered.
The most recent estimation from the International Energy Agency, that advises Governments around the world, said conventional oil would not peak until after 2030.
The debate rages over whether we have already reached the point of peak
world oil output or will not do so until at least the next decade.
There can, however, be little doubt of one thing: we are moving from an
era in which oil was the world's principal energy source to one in
which petroleum alternatives -- especially renewable supplies derived
from the sun, wind, and waves -- will provide an ever larger share of
our total supply. But buckle your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy
ride under Xtreme conditions.
The world is heading for a catastrophic energy
crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of
the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a
leading energy economist has warned.
Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation,
or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih
Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency
(IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy
supplies by OECD countries.
A WHILE AGO, I heard an American scientist address an audience in
Oxford, England, about his work on the climate crisis. He was precise,
unemotional, rigorous, and impersonal: all strengths of a scientist.
Here's how the British government describes the risk of a smallpox
outbreak. "We are currently at alert level O. Smallpox remains
eradicated. No credible threat of a smallpox release."
Thomas Friedman has done it again. He has taken a global situation,
this time it's climate change, and set out to educate the public about
how we got there and what we can do about it. However, in his
explanation, the self-described "somber optimist" inadvertently ends up
salving readers with the expectation that technology will save us and
we can go on with our lives as usual.
Hot, Flat and Crowded focuses on the threats and opportunities of
climate change in this new age that he calls the Energy-Climate Era
(ECE), which begins now.
