“No Peak Oil In Sight”
“Oil Boom Shakes Up Energy Politics”
So scream the headlines. If you read them as fact you’ll be forgiven for believing that Peak Oil is simply not a threat to us any more. So what is going on? If world oil supply is peaking then why have oil prices been on such a roller coaster in recent times?
The Peal Oil lobby is right now experiencing exactly what the Climate Change lobby has experienced for some time, a headlong rush by conservative media commentators to say that it’s all been a big hoax and that there’s no problem after all.
As with climate and wild weather, oil prices will go up and down from month to month, with many peaks and troughs, but underneath all of that ‘noise’ is a steady one-way progression that, in the long run, we can’t run away from.
Understanding the oil price see-saw
To understand what’s really going on it’s necessary to look at the dynamic relationship between oil price and the global economy. If economics is not your forté then panic not, you don’t need to be a Harvard academic. Essentially all we need to know is what we already know: oil is not just the petrol we put in our cars, it is the veritable lifeblood of industrial civilisation. Oil flows through virtually every product that we see around us, our clothing, our food supplies our freight systems, our pharmaceuticals, our building materials, even our solar panels… nearly everything we buy and depend on for modern daily living.
Not surprisingly then, if this vital commodity becomes too costly to get out of the ground, then the ramifications on the global economy are, to say the least, rather devastating. Just look to Europe.
To better understand the oil price see-saw let’s look at what some expert commentators have to say.
The prestigious science magazine Nature brokered this issue earlier on this year with an easy-to-read summary …
Chris Harries is a long term advocate for sustainability and social justice policies. He is a member of the Tasmanian Climate Action Council and an active member of the Peak Oil Tasmania working group.
