The glaring disconnnect between grasping peak oil and understanding its consequences

The peak oil crisis: a letter from Baghdad
by Tom Whipple

A couple of weeks back the peak oil community received a letter from an officer serving with our forces in Iraq.

Despite numerous distractions in Iraq these days, this officer is so concerned that peaking world oil production will soon become a serious problem that he began discussing the future of America's energy supply with soldiers in his unit. What he concluded has a message for us all.

He found that most people have no trouble accepting the premises of peak oil- that there is a finite amount of crude underground, that the easy and cheap to extract oil is nearly gone and that world production will go into an unstoppable decline. The disconnect from reality, however, comes when contemplating the consequences of this event, for nearly all believe there are many obvious alternatives to oil. We know what they are: nuclear, solar, wind, waves, tides, shale, oil sands, coal-to-liquid, biomass, etc., etc. In the mind of most, it is a rather simple matter of switching from oil to any or all of the alternatives so that life-as-we-know-it can continue without missing a beat.

The more likely consequence, that peaking of world oil production will cause severe economic hardships that will take decades to mitigate is simply not a future that most are willing to entertain. Arguments that oil consumption has grown so large in the last 100 years that once depletion starts the development of similar amounts of alternative energy will take a very long time are simply not believed. This micro-survey makes an important point because it mirrors the common sentiment across the land as reflected by the media and political leaders. Even if oil should go into depletion someday --- there is simply not a problem.

Our letter-writer believes the reason for this commonly held opinion is the saturation of TV and the print media with the message that our oil companies are hard at work getting ready for the next generation of energy sources. Should we ever need alternatives to oil, all will be in readiness. Millions are spent on a continual drumbeat of such ads each month. They are impossible to avoid and have left most with the impression that all will be well - your oil industry is on the job.

This all-will-be-well message is always bereft of detail. Nowhere is there mention, of the vast amount of oil being consumed around the world each day, anticipated rates of depletion from existing oil fields, nor of the trillions of dollars that will be required to finance the next round of exploiting increasingly more difficult to recover oil. From time to time, the message is punctuated with the word "technology". Not any particular technology, just the implication that the technology which has brought our civilization this far will be there when we need it....

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Heh, the problem is that we can't afford the alternatives, if they ever do begin to match the quantity we use every day.

Not a problem? A gallon of gas for $5 is not a problem? Head up their ass yahoos need to pull it out before they cause us any more problems.

People are starting to realize there's a distinction. Problems have solutions; predicaments you just cope with. At best, you muddle through and try to lessen the hit.

Our dependency on cheap fossil fuels puts us in a predicament, once they become too expensive or too scarce. You're right, the quantity of fuel we currently use every day will be unmatched, probably from now on. Certainly the proposed alternatives are no match.

The "energy problem" -- if you listen closely to how the term is usually used -- is that there just isn't enough of it. Since our current definition of "enough" is wildly out of line with natural limits, it's a problem with no solution. Not really a problem, then.

The way through the predicament, though, is to adjust what we mean by "enough." Yeah, I know -- big job. But there's not much else for it.