A Canadian TV news story on Peak Oil

[GliderGuider]

It's a 6 minute feature starring yours truly that aired on Wednesday March 21. It's hosted on YouTube, but the easy way is to get it is to link through my web site.

I posted this earlier on the Peak Oil board, but I thought some of the denizens here might be interested as well.

[IDemo]

1. Great job, Paul

I think most news agencies locally and nationally are avoiding the story, or just haven't been made fully aware of its impact yet. The more people who make the effort to get the word out, the better.

Kind of depressing, yet predictable, that the clip includes an oil industry analyst who claims smaller cars and increased discoveries will keep pushing the problem "further and further into the future". Along with the two motorists who state "I don't believe it will ever happen" and "I'm sure they have a contingency plan", this piece shows the three biggest problems we have in facing the issue: industry denial, citizenry in ignorance, denial, and indifference, and governmental failure to acknowledge the threat and institute necessary action.

[MikeDuffy]

2. What can you say about US's recent request that

Canada increase its exports of tar sands extracted oil to US from 1 MB/D to 5 MB/D in the relatively near term? Also any info about the Canadian ZENN car company?

[GliderGuider]

3. The Americans are dreaming in technicolour

We're busting a gut trying to get past 1 mbpd. IMO environmental, economic and gas supply issues will keep us from ever breaking 2 mbpd. The Athabaska river is showing the strain, construction costs have doubled over the last year and the Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline is increasing doubt due to both instability of the tundra from global warming and problems with aboriginal land claims. Given the recent industry prediction I posted this morning that Canadian gas production is going to decline by 8% this year, I think Canada will be lucky to break 1.5 mbpd.

I don't know the ZENN company very well. The car is cute and may play a role alongside other electric cars over the next decade or two. In general, though, I think we will shortly have bigger problems than electric cars will be able to address.

[MikeDuffy]

4. Thanks for confirming my doubts about tar sands.

The ZENN car question really is more a question about whether the promised EESTOR ultra-capacitor technology to be used by those cars this year is real or extravagant hype, and I should not have expected that you would have any insider info about that. If it is real, I think it could have very important uses for a wide variety of applications besides transportation, such as PV solar energy storage.

Are you in substantial agreement with James Kunstler's assessment in, say, this article http://www.energybulletin.net/25643.html ?

[GliderGuider]

5. I agree with that article by Kunstler word for word.

I think he's got the best handle on the implications and consequences of Peak Oil of any popular commentator out there. I know he has detractors on a couple of fronts: his articles during the last Lebanese unpleasantness didn't win him many friends, and on the implications of Peak Oil he's seen as being "too gloomy" by many. I have no opinion on the first issue, but as far as his gloominess goes I think he's actually just realistic. In fact, I think he deliberately soft-sells his real opinions because the depth of pessimism that is supported by the facts and an understanding of human behaviour can lead to paralyzing despair.

I know my pessimism runs much deeper than anything Kunstler has said in public. I was born, raised and spent most of my my adult life as a techno-utopian who believed that human ingenuity and the scientific method could overcome pretty much any obstacle. I now understand that there are some problems that don't have solutions, and I am convinced that we are facing one of them.

Where I'm actually a bit more optimistic than Kunstler is in my ability to look beyond the coming decline in industrial civilization to the inevitable cyclic re-forming of of some new kind of human society. This outlook is informed by my reading in the areas of complex adaptive systems, adaptive cycles and resilience theory. I talk about that a bit here on my web site. It's the one thing that allows me to avoid those "long dark nights of the soul" that washed over me when I first grokked the box we're in.

[GliderGuider]

6. It made it to the front page of The Oil Drum

http://canada.theoildrum.com/node/2402

Some good discussion in the thread, as usual.