The Historical Record
One barrier to getting our society to take peak oil seriously is that we’ve been here before. Peak oil was a big topic (albeit using different terminology) in the 1970’s. Many people at the time predicted a near-term peak that still has not come to pass thirty years later.
On a related note, a lot of people don’t believe in global warming, saying it is being promulgated by the same doom-and-gloom environmentalists who predicted peak oil back then and are predicting it now.
It would be quite interesting to go back and look at the positions being taken in the 1970’s, and compare them to today. Are people saying the same thing, or have things changed? I don’t have the time or energy for such a project, but I’m guessing that things are at least somewhat different. The whole topic pretty much went away for the late 1980’s and most of the 90’s; why is it recurring now?
The anti-peak oil/global warming argument comes in two steps: (i) the evidence doesn’t suggest it, and (ii) it would wreck the economy to deal with either, so we shouldn’t even take up the question.
Leaving aside the illogicalness of point (ii), I can think of several cases where environmental degradation was predicted confidently by scientists in the know, and then averted by good policy decisions, without disastrous economic effect.
· Acid rain. Not in the news now, but this was a big concern in the mid-1980’s. Clean air laws have significantly reduced the scope of the problem.
· More broadly, air pollution in general has been reduced in this country.
· Ditto for water pollution.
· The ozone layer is healing now, thanks to timely reductions of CFCs in the atmosphere.
For each of these, the facts were greatly contested at the time, but destiny has shown that the environmentalists were correct at least in their assessment that there was a problem that needed to be dealt with.
I would also go so far to say that, except in the last case, the cost of mitigation would have been more than offset by the damage caused by allowing the problems to continue. To me, the whole “wreck the economy” argument is bizarre, because (a) it denies the possibility of a flexible response, and (b) inaction has significant costs that will have to be paid.
My point is: the historical record is important and needs to be understood, but it goes both ways.
On a related note, a lot of people don’t believe in global warming, saying it is being promulgated by the same doom-and-gloom environmentalists who predicted peak oil back then and are predicting it now.
It would be quite interesting to go back and look at the positions being taken in the 1970’s, and compare them to today. Are people saying the same thing, or have things changed? I don’t have the time or energy for such a project, but I’m guessing that things are at least somewhat different. The whole topic pretty much went away for the late 1980’s and most of the 90’s; why is it recurring now?
The anti-peak oil/global warming argument comes in two steps: (i) the evidence doesn’t suggest it, and (ii) it would wreck the economy to deal with either, so we shouldn’t even take up the question.
Leaving aside the illogicalness of point (ii), I can think of several cases where environmental degradation was predicted confidently by scientists in the know, and then averted by good policy decisions, without disastrous economic effect.
· Acid rain. Not in the news now, but this was a big concern in the mid-1980’s. Clean air laws have significantly reduced the scope of the problem.
· More broadly, air pollution in general has been reduced in this country.
· Ditto for water pollution.
· The ozone layer is healing now, thanks to timely reductions of CFCs in the atmosphere.
For each of these, the facts were greatly contested at the time, but destiny has shown that the environmentalists were correct at least in their assessment that there was a problem that needed to be dealt with.
I would also go so far to say that, except in the last case, the cost of mitigation would have been more than offset by the damage caused by allowing the problems to continue. To me, the whole “wreck the economy” argument is bizarre, because (a) it denies the possibility of a flexible response, and (b) inaction has significant costs that will have to be paid.
My point is: the historical record is important and needs to be understood, but it goes both ways.
posted by Jim at
8:26 PM
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