Someone spent all the money
HISTORIAN IVAN Illich once commented that, when future historians look back on our contemporary period, they will likely look on it fondly as a time when an eccentric uncle blew the family fortune, and everyone was forced to go back to work.
Much of our “family fortune” has been blown, both symbolic (money) and real (resources).
Governments are frantically socializing the market’s losses by providing corporate welfare on a scale thousands of times the size of any employment insurance schemes or human resources funding, with only peeps of criticism from the hitherto “self-reliant” private sector.Our “family fortune” of cheap energy is also largely blown. Declining oil reserves in hitherto dependable mammoth fields make peak oil a shocking threat to our energy-hungry global economy.
The head of the International Energy Agency, whose assessments are the basis for governments’ energy decision-making around the world, recently reported that major oil fields (Saudi Arabia, the North Sea, Mexico) are projected to decline by 6.9 per cent next year.
Most of the easy oil has been pumped. What remains is expensive to get out of the ground, expensive to transport and refine, and often of lesser quality.
Any new discoveries are likely to be environmentally dangerous, as well, threatening ocean waters or blighting watersheds.
Without significant new amounts of green energy coming on stream, oil supply needed to meet world demand could be down by nearly a quarter in only four years.
A recent analysts depict us as heading toward an “energy cliff,” one beyond whose edge the cost of getting energy of various kinds exceeds the value of the energy to be recovered.
Given the threat of climate change, peak oil may be a blessing in disguise, but the transition to efficient and abundant green alternatives is likely to be an ugly and painful one.
Our federal Conservative government is beholden to big oil. Our provincial government is busy ploughing cash into our Olympic extravaganza. Our local government was preoccupied by Hockeyville.
The circuses are plenty, but the bread is getting thinner. Does it vindicate Illich’s perceptive analysis to observe, like him, that the eccentric uncle still seems to be in charge?
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