Kyoto, Canadians, Energy and the Environment

[GliderGuider]

Here's a remarkably blunt guest post from The Oil Drum:

In summary, world peak oil production (conventional oil) is here. North American peak natural gas production is here. Mining the Canadian tar sands is a losing proposition, costing more in environmental impacts, natural gas and fresh water than it is worth. The concept of parking a couple of nuclear reactors in the oil patch to replace the natural gas being used is laughable on multiple levels, not least because we have no plan in place for dealing with the radioactive spent fuel.

Canadians, on the whole, don’t give a fig for our environment. We continue to despoil it unabated, assuming that when we make one area uninhabitable, we can simply move on to another. We pave over our productive farmland in order to build our future ghettos, currently known as suburbia. As a species (homo hydrocarbonus), there can be no doubt that we will consume every drop of recoverable fossil oil we can before we are done, and all the natural gas. We can debate how long that will take, and whether we mitigate the effects to any perceptible extent, but that is petty stuff. More interesting are the questions of how we will accommodate the climate change refugees, and how much of our current economic and cultural practices we can sustain as oil and natural gas rise in price. The case of post-Katrina New Orleans is instructive on how we will deal with climate change refugees, as a best case outcome.

How do we move forward from this point? First, we need to acknowledge and accept some realities.

1. Fossil fuels are finite, and we are consuming them at an accelerating rate. The peak production precipice is upon us. There is little time to start making major adjustments that could avoid or mitigate major economic and societal collapses.

2. Governments are unlikely to provide constructive leadership on these matters. The scale is beyond their conception, their track record is not encouraging, and politicians never want to be the bearers of bad news.

3. The major multi-nationals in the energy sector have no reason to deliver viable alternatives until they have wrung every penny of profit they can from hydrocarbons, without regard to the consequences which they shed onto the residents of planet earth.

4. The only force that can alter the course is the combined power of the consumers in the industrialized and industrializing world. The third world does not consumer enough hydrocarbons to be a factor. The oil companies extract, transport, refine, store and distribute their products because consumers buy them, both directly and indirectly. If the market stops buying, the producers will stop producing.

5. There are no silver bullet solutions. The hydrogen economy is hype. Finding more hydrocarbon reserves (e.g., sub-sea methane clathrates) will simply result in more greenhouse gas emissions. Sustainable energy sources (solar, hydro, wind, tidal, geothermal, biomass, etc) are real and they work, but they generally cost more than fossil fuels at current prices, and take time to implement, especially on a scale to replace our current use of fossil hydrocarbons. Intelligent conservation and improved efficiency are the two biggest wins available to us, and the potential is huge, but not enough on their own.

6. A personal energy plan will permit us to take the initiative to reduce our overall energy use, and related costs. It will permit us to substitute sustainable energy sources for finite sources. It will allow us to make the necessary adjustments in a controlled manner that is tailored to our personal circumstances. Collectively, these personal energy plans in aggregate will permit our communities to adjust to higher fossil energy costs while minimizing disruptions.

The real question is, do we have the foresight, fortitude and personal energy to develop a personal energy plan and follow through on it?