peak oil wake up call
10 February, 2010 – 23:02Peak oil hit the mainstream today with a hard hitting report from the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security.
These are mainstream companies – Virgin, Stagecoach, Scottish and Southern Energy – rather than peak oil outsiders, though the senior oil industry people in there are only recently retired ones. The report warns that oil shortages, insecurity of supply and price volatility are likely to start destabilising economic, political and social activity in this country within five years. The comparison is to the credit crunch, which pretty much nearly brought down the economy were it not for the massive bail-outs and huge debts that were taken on by the public sector. The oil crunch will catch us out in the same way unless policies to address Peak Oil are a priority for any government formed after the elections in May.
Even then the scale of the challenge will be immense. As the report points out…
The speed with which the UK would need to mobilise for a ‘descent’ peak oil scenario, much less a ‘collapse’ scenario, exceeds anything that has yet been considered in the climate-change policy-response arena. Formulating a plan for either the ‘collapse’ or the ‘descent’ scenarios will require an entirely new framework for energy thinking in the UK.
It’s an important report, though reading it feels a bit like being lectured to by a schizophrenic psychopath. When you think of ExxonMobil’s well documented funding of hundreds of climate change denial organisations, or BP and Shell’s massive lobbying and investment in locking us into a tailspin over the hydrocarbon precipice, what gall for corporations to now be telling us that we need to be heading in a very different direction!
But of course, none of the big oil companies have put their names to this report. These are a different set of companies and they say plainly what they hope to achieve:
We hope our work to date will act as a wake-up call for fellow companies, for government, and for consumers. For one is surely needed.




