A rhetorical oiling

by frog

Rodney Hide’s been having a bit of fun at Jeanette‘s expense. Yesterday, Rodney linked to an op-ed in the Herald which he claims “debunks” the concept of “peak oil” – or the idea that the demand for oil will at some stage in the next few decades start to outstrip our ability to pump it, sending oil prices rising inexorably.

He goes on to say, without any evidence, that:

Jeanette Fitzsimons has spent her entire life predicting doom and gloom and calling for the complete transformation of society. I first heard her speak in 1982. Back then she was predicting that we would have run out of oil by now and virtually all have died out. She was nutty then. She’s nutty now.

Rodney misunderstands the whole issue. No-one is talking about oil running out. They’re talking about the demand for oil outstripping our ability to extract this finite resource from the earth. Indeed, while Jeanette has been speaking out about oil depletion since the 1970s, she’s never predicted that oil would run out – not now, not in 1982. In fact, her public pronouncements now don’t speak of oil running out, but of oil demand exceeding supply, and they don’t put a precise date on that “tipping point” for the very good reason that it’s just so hard to tell. Incidentally, Jeanette has also been talking for decades about the Maui gas fields running dry more quickly than the energy industry was claiming, a prognosis which turned out to be only too true.

But whatever: Rodney has this vague recollection about Jeanette saying oil would have run out by now, so it must be true. Or maybe he’s just a little mixed up. Nutty, even?

But the more general problem with Rodney’s “it’s just another case of Green scare mongering” rhetorical tactic is that so many authorities agree that peak oil is a reality. Governments around the world including our own, energy analysts and academics, and even oil companies agree that at some point this century the demand for oil will outstrip supply. As Energy Minister Trevor Mallard is wont to say, it’s not a question of if the demand for oil will outstrip supply, it’s a question of when. But more important than the “when” question is this one: What do we do now to prepare for when that when arrives?

But as for the timing, Mallard told Parliament in late March:

The International Energy Agency foresees oil comfortably meeting demand to 2030. Analysis by the US Department of Energy has peak oil as early as 2021 or as late as 2067. So there is a median estimate of around 2037, but I must say that it is actually very hard to tell at this point.

Jeanette believes Mallard’s being overly optimistic.

In any case, there’s plenty of reading about peak oil on the Internet from reputable sources if Rodney wants to bone up on the issue before incoherently mouthing off about it. Matthew Simmons, the CEO of American energy consultancy firm Simmons & Company International, has a good piece here. Trevor Sykes, veteran Australian financial journalist, has an excellent piece in the Australian Financial Review here. David Goodstein, physics professor at the California Institute of Technology is interviewed here. A Republican congressman’s presentation to the US Congress is here.

For pieces in New Zealand’s media about peak oil, see Brian Easton’s column in a recent Listener and this piece from the Herald. And, just this morning, the Dominion Post ran an editorial from the Melbourne Age which reads in part:

The days of cheap fuel are gone. We will have to shake off our dependence on profligate oil consumption … While oil-dependent economies have little choice but to promote oil exploration and fuel conservation to extend supply … this is a stop-gap solution. Longer-term policy will have to rely on better, cleaner use of alternative fossil fuels, but must also develop renewable energy sources.

Individuals will have to think again about fuel-guzzling vehicles and the distances they drive – plans for more compact cities well served by public transport seem ever more prescient. This, then, is the broad message of high petrol prices: we need to act on many fronts to minimise the pain of the transition to an oil-deprived future.

Indeed, it is Rodney’s head-in-the-sand approach to peak oil, and more generally to the earth’s resources, that is both nutty and extremist. He seems to believe, laughably, that the earth’s supply of non-renewable resources such as oil is, well, limitless. Indeed, he told Victoria University’s student magazine Salient back in 2003:

There is a huge marketplace for scary scenarios of the world going to Hell, and not much of a marketplace for “gee whiz, it’s not as bad as we first thought.” I’m thinking here of acid rain, running out of oil and global warming …

Drilling for oil, working on an oil rig, you realise how ingenious the ability to discover new resources is, and the idea that there’s a fixed quantum couldn’t be right.

Wow. I can understand the argument, though I disagree with it, that Kyoto is an ineffective mechanism for dealing with global warming. But denying that global warming exists? And denying that oil is a finite resource? That certainly is novel. Or nutty. Take your pick.

Next week: Rodney Hide denies that pollution makes the air dirtier! Pollution? What pollution? Croak, croak, choke.