The Fusion of Peak Oil & Climate Change

Peak Oil and Climate Change deal are two historic events for humans and life on earth. The first threatens modern industrial ways of living and the latter threatens the climatic systems that are an integral part of our world and the way we live and survive. A quick recap on both. Peak Oil is the point of historic maximum global oil flow, Climate Change is the alteration of established climate systems due to (in this case, anthropogenic) global warming. The onset of both will affect food & water supplies, mortality rates, conflict, migration and much more. The evidence that climate change is underway and almost past the point of no return is very strong and Peak Oil day by day gathers more credence 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 of everything as a consequence means we will see our ability to deal with the consequences of Climate Change reduced. Let us take a look at Britain. The decline of oil and gas will of its own accord make it harder to keep Britain warm but if the Gulf Stream does switch off as a result of Global Warming, the gap between what is needed and what will be available will get wider. The change to a colder climate would have a negative affect on crop growing, at a time when declining oil and gas supplies make the agriculture business more expensive. Warming sea temperatures are pushing fish stocks further afield, out of traditional (and already over-fished) fishing waters. Fishermen, so dependent on oil for their boats, will have to pay more for their fuel to go after these already dwindling and increasingly distant fish stocks. The insurance industry is already facing increasing pressures from Climate Change, but when the economy nose-dives past the oil peak, this double whammy could knock out the insurance industry. Will those in increasingly flood prone areas be able to pay the insurance costs during the recessions brought on by the decline of oil supplies? The European Environment Agency recently pointed to how Germany is now at risk from more extreme weather, such as heavy rain - which raises the risk of flooding, especially the densely populated plains of central Europe. Cleaning up and repairing that damage costs money and requires energy. The economic climate, post peak, is going to be less able to deal with it. At the other extreme, Italy's coming crisis is drought, and there is a need there to improve irrigation to improve agriculture. Once again, money and energy are needed, and both will be harder to come by. Further afield we are seeing glaciers melting and other regions becoming more arid and water flows changing. The ability to process and transport water to these regions will become more expensive, if it is at all possible, since drinking water is already tight in many areas. For example, desalination plants are an energy-intensive way of getting drinking water from sea water. Another option is to build pipelines to transport the water, but this is an expensive and complicated option. What we are likely to see, according to Tearfund, a relief and development agency, is an increase in water refugees. As river and rain patterns change abruptly, the agriculture that has been grown for those climates will have to change, but the patterns may alter so much that the ability to grow food is severely impaired, and the need for oil and gas for fertiliser and food transportation will go up. This will lead to increases in, for example, famine and drought. With the world economy going into a long-term downturn as a result of Peak Oil, and the cost of everything going up, the willingness and ability from the wealthier (but increasingly less wealthy) world to deal with the problems brought on by Climate Change will decline. The list goes on. Forest fires will increase, but the ability to fight them will decrease. Disease will spread but the cost and transportation of medicines will increase as a result of the great oil decline, while the ability to pay for them by those in need will decrease. As the world economy goes into recession as a result of oil decline, the ability and willingness of the rich to give to the poor in regions directly affected by Climate Change will wane. Cheap oil has enabled us to tackle many of the world's problems - to varying degrees - when we have been willing, but Peak Oil marks the beginning of a very big change as far as that goes. Worryingly, the decline of oil may simply exacerbate Climate Change if we don't recognise what will happen and we don't see the whole picture. In our attempt to keep business as usual while trying to reduce Climate Change, we are seeing more of the rainforests being destroyed to grow soya beans to satisfy an enlarged appetite for oil. Nobody needs to be told how important the rainforests are to the world. As for renewables, these are built from materials that need oil. Once again we see that the decline of oil means an increase in costs at a time when the ability to pay for it will be much lower than now. Developing alternatives will become more costly the cost of everything will increase - this is because oil is behind everything we do. And of course there is the likelihood of turning to dirtier hydrocarbons such as coal, when we could investing in things like microgeneration. A recent article on the website Gristmill.org entitled 'Peak Oil : Not an environmental silver bullet' argued that environmentalists hoping that awareness of peak oil will increase support of renewable, decentralised energy is na