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Our way of life has become very dependent on oil: as well as transport fuel, it is vital for intensive agriculture, used in plastics, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals.  Peak Oil became one of the buzzwords of last year with the surge in oil prices.  The theory suggested by an oil geologist in the 1950s is that the output of each oil well follows a bell curve, with a peak of production roughly in the middle of the life of the well.  Put together all the wells in the country, and you will find that total oil production follows the same pattern.  Oil production peaked in the USA in 1970, in the North Sea in 1999, and it looks like the global peak may be happening right now.   Certainly, oil production has reached a plateau in the last few years, though it’s hard to determine how much of this is due to geological limits, and how much to political and economic factors.  It’s currently estimated that we have used about half of the world’s oil reserves, but this first half was the easiest and cheapest to get out of the ground.  The number of major new discoveries of oil has dramatically decreased over the past few decades.  Reserves of natural gas are also expected to dwindle over the next few decades. 

What happens when oil and gas production starts an inevitable decline, while the world’s population, and demand for a Western lifestyle, continues to grow?  Greater competition for oil and oil price instability can be expected.  The current recession has seen a drop in oil consumption and hence the oil price, so perhaps some of our oil consumption is quite discretionary and won’t be missed too much.  However, sudden oil shortages are possible, especially if remaining oil producing nations use oil supply as a political weapon. 

Considering our great dependence on oil, especially in our food production and distribution systems, some have been predicting a general collapse in living standards across the world and outbreaks of disorder otherwise known as TEOTWAWKI– the end of the world as we know it!  In the USA, there has been a revival of individualistic survivalism with food stockpiling, gun ownership and off-grid homes.  Here in the UK, the Transition Towns movement takes a community approach to the challenge of Peak Oil by promoting local production of food and power, and general downsizing.  Cuba had to find ways of living without oil in the early 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and its subsidised oil supply was abruptly halted.  Through a revolution in organic urban agriculture and fuel and food rationing, the Cubans survived. 

Others suggest that the free market will provide alternatives to oil.  Industrial processes already exist to make transport fuel and chemicals from crops or coal.  Ethanol from sugar cane is already used for cars in Brazil, and there is plenty of coal left in the world. However, we know that biofuels can only play a limited role before competing with food supply or damaging natural habitats, and the process for turning coal into liquid fuels is very dirty.  More of our transport and heating systems may run on electricity, generated from coal, nuclear and renewable energy sources. 

Many of the solutions proposed for Peak Oil overlap those suggested for dealing with climate change – finding alternatives for energy generation and transport that are less dependent on fossil fuels, and cutting back on our energy consumption.  Peak Oil won’t let us off the hook on climate change: even if oil and gas become scarce, those rich enough are likely to be able to afford it, and some of the alternatives, especially coal, create even more carbon emissions.  Those of us in the richest countries will still have to face hard choices in order to prevent a dangerous level of climate change.

Michael Baldwin