Energy Economics In A Vacuum

[Leigh Meyers <the.buffalo.in.the.midst@xxxxxxxxx>]

...or should I say Energy Economics as if hydrocarbons, like greasy
blood  diamonds, are forever.

(In the long run, innumerably more people will be killed, and land
turned to waste-land, for hydrocarbons than diamonds. So where are the
newspaper ads begging us to not buy 'blood hydrocarbons'?

Courtesy of Bill Totten @ [a-list]


What if the Oil Runs Out?

Though the government is planning a massive expansion of transport
networks, it has never considered this question.

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian (May 30 2007)



Motorised transport is a form of time travel. We mine the compressed
time of other eras - the infinitisimal rain of plankton onto the ocean
floor, the settlement of trees in anoxic swamps - and use it to
accelerate through our own. Every tank of fuel contains thousands of
years of accretions. Our future depends on the expectation that the past
will never be exhausted.

The energy white paper the government published last week talks of new
taxes, new markets, new research, new incentives. Anyone reading the
chapter on transport would be forgiven for believing that the government
has the problem under control: as a result of its measures, we are
likely to see a great reduction in our use of geological time.

But buried in another chapter, and so far missed by all journalists,
there is a remarkable admission. "The majority (66%) of UK oil demand is
derived from demand for transport fuels which is expected to increase
modestly over the medium term". {1} To increase? If the government is
implementing all the exciting measures the transport chapter contains,
how on earth could our use of fuel increase?

You won't find the answer in the white paper. It mysteriously forgets to
mention that the government intends to build another 4000 kilometers of
trunk roads and to double the capacity of our airports by 2030. Partly
to permit this growth in transport, another white paper, also published
last week, proposes a massive deregulation of planning law {2}. There is
no discussion in either paper of the implications of these programmes
for energy use or climate change. There are plainly two governments of
the United Kingdom: one determined to reduce our consumption of fossil
fuel; the other determined to raise it.

What happens beyond the medium term is anyone's guess {3}. But it should
be pretty obvious that more roads and more airports will mean that our
rising use of transport fuel becomes hard-wired: the future health of
the economy will depend on it. So the government must have examined this
question. If our economic lives depend on continued growth in the
consumption of transport fuels, it must first have determined that such
growth is possible. Mustn't it?

Last week I phoned four government departments (trade and industry,
transport, environment, communities and local government) in the hope of
finding this assessment. It does not exist. No report has ever been
commissioned by the British government on the issue of whether or not
there is enough oil to sustain its transport programme.

In full, with cites:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/05/29/what-if-the-oil-runs-out/