Oil

Here's the latest in the Deep Green column from Rex Weyler - author, journalist, ecologist and long-time Greenpeace trouble-maker. The opinions here are his own.

As the era of cheap liquid fuels draws to an end, everything about modern consumer society will change. Likewise, developing societies pursuing the benefits of globalization will struggle to grow economies in an era of scarce liquid fuels. The most localized, self-reliant communities will experience the least disruption.

Oil is a fixed asset of the planet, representing stored sunlight accumulated over a billion years as early marine algae, and other marine organisms (not dinosaurs) captured solar energy, formed carbon bonds, gathered nutrients, died, sank to the ocean floors, and lay buried under eons of sediment. Like any fixed non-renewable resource, oil is limited, and its consumption will rise, peak, and decline.

Canada's Tar Sands project has been suffering from a bit of a PR problem, what with it being one of the most ludicrous and environmentally catastrophic schemes ever to have occurred to humankind and all.

(If you haven't heard of it yet, the plan is to extract crude oil from bituminous sand and clay in Northern Alberta. To produce one barrel of oil, up to four tonnes of rock and soil - plus the pristine boreal forest on top of it - need to be removed and four barrels of surface and ground water need to be used. The process is so energy intensive that tar sands produce up to five times more greenhouse gases than conventional oil.)

It's long been known that energy giant ExxonMobil has been pumping money into organisations and think tanks which have spread confusion and doubt about climate change. Our own ExxonSecrets project has been exposing the links between the company and these outspoken bodies for several years.