Bridging peak oil and climate change activism.

• Author: Heinberg, Richard

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.

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.

To me, head-butting arguments between the two groups as to which problem is more serious constitute a peculiar kind of hell, in that such arguments can only hamper the efforts of both groups in doing what we all agree is essential--averting environmental and human catastrophe. Nevertheless, disagreements and misunderstandings are already emerging for the simple reason that advocates on both issues are competing to persuade the public of the central importance of their cause.

My thesis is that both groups are essentially working toward a reduction in society's consumption of fossil fuels, and that cooperative efforts between the two groups could substantially strengthen their arguments and their effectiveness at persuading policymakers.

Differing perspectives

Some Peak Oil activists are what have come to be known in the blog world as "doomers"--that is, they believe that there is no hope at this point for the preservation of modem civilization in any recognizable form; others are "techno-fixers," who think that the world will adjust--painfully perhaps, but in the end successfully--to oil depletion through conservation and the development of alternative energy sources. Similarly there are "moderate" climate-change scientists and activists who see the problem as serious but solvable, while there are some who believe that the world has already passed a "tipping point" beyond which catastrophic impacts are inevitable. It is probably fair to say that the substantial majority of both groups find themselves somewhere midway between extreme positions staked out by some of their spokespeople.

Let us begin with the group I know better--the depletionists. It is fair to note that some Peak Oil analysts seem to be of the opinion that oil depletion constitutes a solution to the dilemma of global green-house gas emissions, or that Climate Change is actually not a problem at all.

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 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.

For many Climate Change activists, theirs is primarily a moral issue having to do...