Transition Island Blog

While action on Climate Change appears to be moving ahead, action on Peak Oil appears to be desperately slow.

Peak Oil is upon us - we now have 10% rises in the price of crude oil every month.

Burning fossil fuels contributes to Climate Change. 

Back in February, we reported that the UK & USA have the lowest level of people saying that they are personally making a significant effort to reduce their carbon output.

WHY?

Well, over time, some factors have popped up that may all be playing a part in causing this.

dumbing down

“When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its third assessment report in 2001 it received only brief attention from the world’s media. Yet it was the most thorough statement ever made by climate scientists about Earth and to me the scariest docu­ment ever written.” James Lovelock (of Gaia Hypothesis fame) in his Forward to The Rough Guide to Climate Change by Richard Henson.

Tabloid newspapers are reducing the impact of research by diluting it. Researchers at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute say that superficial and simplistic tabloid coverage and limited depth in reporting had contributed to a “significant divergence from the scientific consensus that humans contribute to climate change”. The report names the Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Mirror.

funding down

In 1999, “the United States [was] not funding a vigorous program in renewable technologies….” Senator Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the CIA)

At US Congressional peak oil hearings in 2005, Rep. Tom Udall argued “Because the price of oil is artificially low, significant private investment in alternative technologies that provide a long-term payback does not exist. Until oil and its alternatives compete in a fair market, new technologies will not thrive.”

thumbing down

Nearly 900 scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency have recently experienced political interference in their work in the last five years, the Union of Concerned Scientists reported.

The Labour Government’s addiction to “spin” has created the most profound disillusionment. This has resulted in the “disgust and alienation of voters who now tell opinion pollsters that they scarcely believe a word that any government spokesman utters.”

The U.S. Government and private industry apparently recognized … that an oil crisis would occur in the foreseeable future and have provided research funding for many alternative fuels. While some of the research is proving fruitful, it appears that there are no near-term alternatives to oil-based fuels that can immediately step in and alleviate the problem. Neither the Government nor the press has publicized this as a major issue. [our italics]  

commercial conflicts

In 2005 The Guardian reported that lobby groups funded by the US oil industry targeted Britain in a bid to play down the threat of climate change and derail action to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Bob May, president of the Royal Society, says a “a lobby of professional sceptics who opposed action to tackle climate change” is turning its attention to Britain because of its high profile in the debate.

A year later, Britain’s leading scientists challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain’s premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence”. The scientists also strongly criticise the company’s public statements on global warming, which they describe as “inaccurate and misleading”.

Recently, Germany’s powerful car lobby has trained its fire-power on European Union plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. German Chancellor Angela Merkel won plaudits across Europe last year when she presided over the adoption of ambitious EU targets to fight climate change by reducing carbon emissions. But car makers are waging a campaign to delay implementation, reduce penalties and ease the burden on Germany’s luxury automobile industry.

commercial concerns

Europe’s steel industry joined forces with a workers’ union on Monday to warn that European Union efforts to curb climate change could put tens of thousands of steel industry jobs at risk. Several energy intensive industries say the cost of curbing emissions will make them uncompetitive against rivals from outside the bloc.

Two weeks ago, Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, has given warning that a proposed European Union scheme to force companies to pay for carbon emissions permits previously handed out free threatens to destroy Europe’s petrochemicals and refining industry. He said proposals would undermine the competitiveness of a struggling industry and have a cascading impact on Europe’s wider economy because of the close links between the region’s oil, chemicals and plastics industries, which collectively support nearly two million jobs.

opinion:

It seems the media, the money, the politics, commercial survival and real concerns about economic consequences all combine to slow us down…

No-one said it would be easy.

Commenting recently on BERR delays in implementing the Real TIme Display scheme, we said “Research shows that most people prefer to know the bad news up front, and then prepare to cope. Panic and conflict only ensue in the absence of information, plans and controlled response.”

But without real information, how can anyone make realistic plans for research, business progress and their own families and neighbourhoods?

Providing good information is a priority: this is a relevant strategy and implementation is urgent. Give the people the power to be Energy Efficient.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Eco-News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.