Crude Awakening (Page 4)

In articulating these alarming and critical points, the authors of these books bring to bear a great deal of research and expertise. Drawing on his many years of experiences as a teaching scientist, Goodstein, a senior professor and vice provost of the California Institute of Technology, shows in plain, easy-to-understand language why our current reliance on petroleum and other fossil fuels cannot persist for more than another generation or two. Explaining that petroleum was formed over many millions of years under unique geological conditions that cannot be duplicated by human means, he avers that the most promising sources of oil have already been substantially depleted and that what remains will prove increasingly difficult to extract. "The followers of King Hubbert may or may not be correct in their quantitative predictions of when the peak will occur," he observes. But they have taught us a critical lesson: "The crisis will come not when we pump the last drop of oil but rather when the rate at which oil can be pumped out of the ground starts to diminish." And that critical point, he warns, "is much closer than we previously imagined."

Goodstein also evaluates the relative potential of other sources of energy, including coal, natural gas, hydrogen, solar, wind and nuclear. Each, he explains, has certain advantages and disadvantages; but none, at current levels of development, are capable of sustaining the energy-intensive life we have become accustomed to. Coal and natural gas are the most abundant and affordable, but both are nonrenewable fossil fuels and so, like oil, will eventually disappear; both, moreover, contain substantial carbon and so their use will contribute to the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases (unless some safe, inexpensive way is found to bury or "sequester" the unwanted carbon). Hydrogen offers great promise as an alternative source (or conveyor) of energy, but most of the existing supply is derived from natural gas, with all the problems that entails, and other plausible means of obtaining it (e.g., through electrolysis, using solar, wind or nuclear power) are too costly, undeveloped and problematic. We can make the transition to a post-petroleum economy, Goodstein suggests, but only if we move swiftly to "kick the fossil fuel habit" and develop environmentally friendly alternatives. This, in turn, "will require global political leadership that is both visionary and courageous"; unfortunately, "it seems unlikely that we will be so lucky."

Matthew Yeomans, a former columnist for The Industry Standard, comes to a similar conclusion but approaches it from a somewhat different perspective--by examining the evolution, present character and deep-seated pathologies of the global oil industry. Rather than exercise enlightened stewardship over a precious and finite resource, the oil companies have sought to maximize its exploitation for short-term profit--often trampling upon indigenous communities, fragile ecological areas and democratic systems in the process. "Environmental pollution, human rights abuses, political murder, and civil war--these are legacies of too many nations that possess oil," he asserts. Although less well versed in the science of energy than Goodstein, Yeomans shows how oil-company megalomania and greed have contributed to the exhaustion of existing reserves and hastened the onset of peak oil.

For Yeomans, it is the political rather than the economic and environmental consequences of depletion that are most worrisome. As petroleum becomes more scarce and valuable, powerful states will fight over its possession rather than cooperate in its conservation. "Oil addiction is America's Achilles' heel," he argues. "To remain dominant in the world, the U.S. must be sure that oil flows freely and consistently onto the global market." Accordingly, the Bush Administration "has made the protection of global oil supplies an equal partner with the war on terrorism in guiding U.S. foreign and defense policy." The invasion and occupation of Iraq, he claims, is but one expression of this overarching principle.

Sonia Shah, in Crude, extends this analysis, deftly showing how the oil companies' relentless pursuit of new fields to exploit has led them to drill for oil in some of the most impoverished and unstable areas of the world. Shah, an occasional contributor to The Nation, is particularly eloquent on the despoliation of the Delta region of southern Nigeria, where efforts by the minority Ogoni people to gain even a small fraction of the revenues derived from crude production in their environmentally ravaged homeland have been systematically and brutally repressed by military elites in the capital, who routinely seize the nation's vast oil wealth for their own private enrichment. "And so," she laments, "despite the billions of dollars worth of oil under their feet, the people of the Niger Delta lived in poverty and darkness."

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