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No matter what, oil is running out

It is a sign of the times that the craziest thing I have seen this week was not Daryl Hannah licking surplus fuel off the petrol cap (or whatever she would call it) of her 1960s-era Chevrolet El Camino.

“It has a toxicity level somewhere between table salt and maple syrup,” declared Madame Splash, as she slurped biodiesel sourced from recycled restaurant cooking oil.

Drinking the stuff that fuels your car is triumphantly sane compared with the thinking that is now driving the race to exploit oil and gas reserves in the Arctic.

The warming planet is causing ice to melt at the poles. This is resulting in more of the Arctic becoming ice-free. This is great news! Less ice means easier access to Arctic oil.

Let’s be quite clear about the thinking here. Global warming, caused in part by the burning of fossil fuels, is irreparably changing our planet.

But don’t worry. It also opens up opportunities — to extract and burn more fossil fuels.

If this is what passes for solutions, we’re sunk.

What it shows is that the two faces of our great global energy crises have become messily conflated — blended in the public mind — when their solutions are so different as to be almost opposite.

The bigger issue is global warming. Lives, wars, ecosystems, disease patterns, economic growth, migration patterns, the future of species — nothing is immune.

But it’s the price of oil, not climate change, that’s the No. 1 issue in the US and pretty much everywhere else. People are looking to their politicians to “do something.” The rallying cry is “More drilling!”

But the professionals know cheap oil is gone and won’t be coming back. And no amount of drilling will alter that fact.

Consider this. Oil companies have a strong interest in telling people that oil prices will come down. That way, people are not inclined to change their fundamental habits; they’ll just ride out the bumps until fuel is cheap again.

So when Big Oil is not making that claim, we should sober up and listen.

BP chief executive officer Tony Hayward says trillions of dollars of new investment will be needed to access the 1.24 trillion barrels of oil he believes still exist on the planet.

Even assuming that investment comes — and doubtless it will — that oil will run out in a little more than 40 years at current consumption. And it’s worth noting that in this current debate, Hayward counts among the optimists.

The “easy oil” from Alaska and the North Sea that eased the 1970s oil shock can’t help this time.

“There is hardly any additional access to easy oil,” Shell chief Jeroen van der Veer says. “Most of the new supplies will be difficult oil.”

Iraq, ironically, shows promise. There’s drilling that can be done off the beaches of California and Florida. And yes, lest we forget, Russia, the US, Canada, Norway and Denmark — the five states that have rights to claim in the Arctic — have all formally lodged papers with the UN body that will ultimately decide who gets to explore where.

None of these options is cheap, safe or politically easy. All simply delay the inevitable. And all contribute to climate change. Make no mistake, expensive oil is hard to take, for commuting workers, for middle class families, for businesses — but especially for the poor on the planet who feel the costs most keenly in the rising price of their food.

But as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man in charge of some of the most car-dependent people on Earth, puts it: “To look for new ways to feed our addiction is not the answer.”

Is he right?

My question is this: Would it be a good thing for oil prices to stay just where they are?

Let me know. Post a comment to “Sound Off” below my blog at www.cnn.com/goinggreen.



Hugh Riminton’s “Going Green” appears in the Taipei Times every day this week until Saturday. CNN’s special coverage of “Going Green: Search for Solutions” continues until Sunday.

Also See: UN environmental agency hails green energy ‘gold rush’

Also See: High gas prices change US attitudes on drilling
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