When The Oil Runs Out  

Jeremy Leggett is the latest peak oil writer to ride a wave of publicity (taking over James Kunstler's mantle from last year) - Macleans celebrates the arrival of a new literary genre.

"One week -- one apocalyptic week -- a germ of panic will take root and then spread like wildfire through the markets. The price of oil, on which modern human society has allowed the stability of its economic system to rest, will begin to climb toward the ceiling," Jeremy Leggett writes in The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Financial Catastrophe (Random House, 2005). "The crisis will play out in television images around the world. Frantic oil traders will scream at each other on trading floors, eyes wild and hair akimbo."

Leggett, an Oxford-trained geologist and professor at the Royal School of Mines, underwent a road-to-Damascus-style conversion in 1989, resigning his job to become Greenpeace's chief scientist. After falling out with the environmental group in the mid-1990s, he again transformed himself, into a green entrepreneur, launching his own solar power company. Time Europe has declared him one of "the key players in putting climate change on the world agenda." What he shares with other proponents of the End of Oil theory is a conviction that we are dangerously near the "topping point," where half the world's petroleum reserves are gone.

Big Oil and its government partners are covering up the depletion, says Leggett, while holding back alternative technologies. And when the truth can no longer be obscured, the price will spike, the economy nosedive, and the underpinnings of our civilization will start tumbling like dominos. The U.S. -- Consumer No. 1 in the lingo of Leggett's book -- will be the most vulnerable, having allowed its citizens to pile up mountains of debt. "The price of houses will collapse. Stock markets will crash. Within a short period, human wealth -- little more than a pile of paper at the best of times, even with the confidence about the future high among traders -- will shrivel." There will be emergency summits, diplomatic initiatives, urgent exploration efforts, but the turmoil will not subside. Thousands of companies will go bankrupt, and millions will be unemployed. "Once affluent cities with street cafés will have queues at soup kitchens and armies of beggars. The crime rate will soar. The earth has always been a dangerous place, but now it will become a tinderbox."

By 2010, predicts Leggett, democracy will be on the run. As with the Great Depression, economic hardship will bring out the worst in people. Fascists will rise, feeding on the anger of the newly poor and whipping up support. These new rulers will find the tools of repression -- emergency laws, prison camps, a relaxed attitude toward torture -- already in place, courtesy of the war on terror. And if that scenario isn't nightmarish enough, Leggett predicts that "Big Oversight Number One" -- climate change -- will be simultaneously making its presence felt "with a vengeance." On the heels of their rapid financial ruin, people "will now watch aghast as their food and water supplies dwindle in the face of a climate seemingly going awry." Prolonged droughts will spread, decimating harvests. As oceans warm, fish catches "will fall off a cliff," and protein will become a luxury.

Such visions of a coming oil-related apocalypse are now common enough to qualify as their own literary genre.

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Big Oil, long a choice villain, has now graduated to the status of evil incarnate. Forget lesser infractions like land grabs or slick-coated sea otters -- in the public imagination, at least, the oil companies' quest for profit knows no legal or moral bounds. In George Clooney's film Syriana, the not-so-subtly-named Connex-Killen manipulates governments, bribes and murders, dispatching the CIA around the globe to secure access to a dwindling resource. "Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why we win," proclaims one executive.

As the last superpower, America's greatest anxiety, and perhaps only weakness, is its dependency on oil, the majority of it foreign. (The U.S. alone consumes a quarter of world production.) Any drastic disruption in the flow of petroleum would clearly hurt the wasteful First World the most. The drop in our standard of living would be precipitous. But in the poorer regions it might not prove quite the same catastrophe. During Bolivia's December general election, for example, the polls closed in the late afternoon because most of the country still doesn't have electric power.

In our culture, apocalyptic visions also strike a resonant chord. They have been a constant source of wonder, fear, comfort and entertainment since the Book of Daniel -- the model for the later Book of Revelation -- appeared in 164 BCE. U.S. historian Paul S. Boyer says such predictions, whether religious or secular, fill a deep human need.

Thomas Friedman's latest column takes a look at Dick Cheney's determination to keep the US dependent on foreign oil and decides that Dick is, well, a dick.

I’ve always thought Dick Cheney took national security seriously. I don’t anymore. It seems that Mr. Cheney is so convinced that we have no choice but to be dependent on crude oil, so convinced that conservation is just some silly liberal hobby, that he will never seriously summon the country to kick its oil habit, never summon it to do anything great.

Indeed, he seems determined to be a drag on any serious effort to make America energy-independent. He presents all this as a tough-guy “realist” view of the world. But it’s actually an ignorant and naïve view — one that underestimates what Americans can do, and totally misses how the energy question has overtaken Iraq as the most important issue in U.S. foreign policy. If he persists, Mr. Cheney is going to ensure that the Bush team squanders its last three years — and a lot more years for the country.

TreeHugger considers the "Empty Pinata Scenario" - what effect will declining Mexican oil production have, particularly on US imports.

According to Wall Street Journal article of February 9, 2006 (subscription only) “Mexico's huge state-owned oil company [Pemex] may be facing a steep decline in output that would further tighten global oil supply and add to global woes over high oil prices”. An internal report, which served as basis for the Journal’s story, covered several possible scenarios of declining production from one of Mexico’s larger oil “pools”. The worst scenario looked at would lead to a reduction of about 63% of Mexico’s daily crude exports to the U.S within two years, according to the Journal. Because Mexico is the US’ second most important supplier, even a ‘moderate case’ scenario could be serious for both countries.

Fortune notes "The hard truth about oil" - the easiest way to "find" more oil is to reduce your consumption.

No matter what the president says, conservation is America's only route to energy independence.

Presidents going back to Richard Nixon have been talking about energy independence. It's one of those vote-getting platforms that no one could possibly be against -- like world peace, mom and apple pie. It gives us the illusion of control over our energy destiny, which we don't have, at least in a fossil-fuel based economy.

But it's a lost cause.

The only way we're ever going to be able to boost oil supplies here at home is through conservation, and that's something the government is going to have push aggressively, at least until technological advances like cellulosic ethanol, hydrogen and other alternative energy forms become available.

Don't take my word for it. Just listen to what Big Oil has to say...