Oil Depletion Warning
On Monday, 3rd of August, The Independent ran a front page article entitled,” Warning: oil supplies are running out fast”.
As the actual warning came from no less a person than Dr Fatir Birol, the chief economist of the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries, it should have been big news in the rest of the media, but got hardly a mention.
Do most people have no idea of the implications of this for the future of food supplies and everything else the modern world depends on to function?
Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted.
The first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves , has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago.
The IEA has concluded that the consumption of oil was “patently unsustainable”, with expected demand far outstripping supply.
These are not the ramblings of some far out pressure group, but still, will governments listen and take the huge and collective steps needed to reduce our need for oil by encouraging extreme energy efficiency, and the collection of a greater proportion of the abundant solar energy reaching us each day.
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