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The Fusion Of Peak Oil & Climate Change
By James Howard, Fri Dec 9th
Peak Oil and Climate Change deal are two historic events forhumans and life on earth. The first threatens modern industrialways of living and the latter threatens the climatic systemsthat are an integral part of our world and the way we live andsurvive. A quick recap on both. Peak Oil is the point of historic maximumglobal oil flow, Climate Change is the alteration of establishedclimate systems due to (in this case, anthropogenic) globalwarming. The onset of both will affect food & water supplies,mortality rates, conflict, migration and much more. The evidencethat climate change is underway and almost past the point of noreturn is very strong and Peak Oil day by day gathers morecredence as many studies point to an imminent peak. How do these two events affect each other though?
The decline of global oil supply and the increasing cost ofeverything as a consequence means we will see our ability todeal with the consequences of Climate Change reduced. Let us take a look at Britain. The decline of oil and gas willof its own accord make it harder to keep Britain warm but if theGulf Stream does switch off as a result of Global Warming, thegap between what is needed and what will be available will getwider. The change to a colder climate would have a negativeaffect on crop growing, at a time when declining oil and gassupplies make the agriculture business more expensive. Warmingsea temperatures are pushing fish stocks further afield, out oftraditional (and already over-fished) fishing waters. Fishermen,so dependent on oil for their boats, will have to pay more fortheir fuel to go after these already dwindling and increasinglydistant fish stocks. The insurance industry is already facingincreasing pressures from Climate Change, but when the economynose-dives past the oil peak, this double whammy could knock outthe insurance industry. Will those in increasingly flood proneareas be able to pay the insurance costs during the recessionsbrought on by the decline of oil supplies? The European Environment Agency recently pointed to how Germanyis now at risk from more extreme weather, such as heavy rain -which raises the risk of flooding, especially the denselypopulated plains of central Europe. Cleaning up and repairingthat damage costs money and requires energy. The economicclimate, post peak, is going to be less able to deal with it. Atthe other extreme, Italy's coming crisis is drought, and thereis a need there to improve irrigation to improve agriculture.Once again, money and energy are needed, and both will be harderto come by. Further afield we are seeing glaciers melting and other regionsbecoming more arid and water flows changing. The ability toprocess and transport water to these regions will become moreexpensive, if it is at all possible, since drinking water isalready tight in many areas. For example, desalination plantsare an energy-intensive way of getting drinking water from seawater. Another option is to build pipelines to transport thewater, but this is an expensive and complicated option. What weare likely to see, according to Tearfund, a relief anddevelopment agency, is an increase in water refugees. As river and rain patterns change abruptly, the agriculture thathas been grown for those climates will have to change, but thepatterns may alter so much that the ability to grow food isseverely impaired, and the need for oil and gas for fertiliserand food transportation will go up. This will lead to increasesin, for example, famine and drought. With the world economygoing into a long-term downturn as a result of Peak Oil, and thecost of everything going up, the willingness and ability fromthe wealthier (but increasingly less wealthy) world to deal withthe problems brought on by Climate Change will decline. The list goes on. Forest fires will increase, but the ability tofight them will decrease. Disease will spread but the cost andtransportation of medicines will increase as a result of thegreat oil decline, while the ability to pay for them by those inneed will decrease. As the world economy goes into recession asa result of oil decline, the ability and willingness of the richto give to the poor in regions directly affected by ClimateChange will wane. Cheap oil has enabled us to tackle many of theworld's problems - to varying degrees - when we have beenwilling, but Peak Oil marks the beginning of a very big changeas far as that goes. Worryingly, the decline of oil may simply exacerbate ClimateChange if we don't recognise what will happen and we don't seethe whole picture. In our attempt to keep business as usualwhile trying to reduce Climate Change, we are seeing more of therainforests being destroyed to grow soya beans to satisfy anenlarged appetite for oil. Nobody needs to be told how importantthe rainforests are to the world. As for renewables, these arebuilt from materials that need oil. Once again we see that thedecline of oil means an increase in costs at a time when theability
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