Last week, noted author Richard Heinberg, a world authority on oil depletion, spoke at the State House before a small group of lawmakers and members of the general public. Heinberg’s talk was entitled “Going, Going, Gone,” and addressed specifically the issue of “peak oil,” and the imminent decline in the availability of inexpensive fossil-fuel based energy. It is safe to say that the short piece on the evening news documenting Heinberg’s appearance may have been the first introduction to the concept of peak oil for many Rhode Islanders.
Heinberg, the author of books such as “The Party’s Over,” “Powerdown” and “The Oil Depletion Protocol,” described how there are all indications that the global production of crude oil has peaked or will do so in less than a decade. He is not alone in this belief. James Schlesinger, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, energy secretary, defense secretary and head of the CIA, has stated publicly that crude oil is peaking. He is joined by investment giants like Matthew Simmons, T. Boone Pickens and Warren Buffett, industry CEOs such as Jeroen van der Verr of Royal Dutch Shell, and eminent petroleum geologists such as Colin Campbell and Princeton’s Kenneth Deffeyes.
What does it mean that crude oil is peaking? Essentially it means that the world has used half the oil available to extract and will enter a permanent decline, even as world energy demand is rising, with new economic powerhouses China and India growing at an alarming rate. Peak oil does not mean we are on the verge of running out of oil; the overriding implication is that we are entering a period of relentlessly rising prices and ultimate shortfalls. This is ominous for economies and for individuals facing a seeming perfect storm of hardships financial and otherwise. Talk to a poor mother trying to fill her oil tank through a northern winter, or to a fisherman paying $6,000 in diesel fuel costs to get to and from Georges Bank, to a South American peasant thrown off his land to make room for “palm oil for biofuel” plantations, or to a native Athabascan woman watching as Alberta tar sands operations lay waste to formerly pristine ecosystems over an area the size of Florida.
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Last week, noted author Richard Heinberg, a world authority on oil depletion, spoke at the State House before a small group of lawmakers and members of the general public. Heinberg’s talk was entitled “Going, Going, Gone,” and addressed specifically the issue of “peak oil,” and the imminent decline in the availability of inexpensive fossil-fuel based energy. It is safe to say that the short piece on the evening news documenting Heinberg’s appearance may have been the first introduction to the concept of peak oil for many Rhode Islanders.
