Global Warming and Peak Oil

When you read the conflicting reports of these in the media, written by journalists, politicians or environmental scientists, who do you trust?

Forget the hyperbole, and let us face simple and irrefutable facts. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have seen our air polluted by smog, acid rain and other pollutants, our water also polluted by the chemicals of industry and farming with little or no concern to the life of humanity or the plant water born life that relies on clean water for survival. A ministerial colleague talks of these signs as the ‘canary in the coalmine’, how right he is.

The earth’s resources are finite. Coal, oil and natural gas are running low. The easy and cheap sources of Middle East oil are long gone, the Canadian Tar Sands are the best example of this. The difference between the two is like walking into a pub one week and having a pint of the best bitter drawn off through a pump on the bar, and being told the next week that there is no more available, but what they are doing is to take up the carpets and steam out all the beer that has been spilt there over the years instead.

25 years ago, in the UK petrol cost 98p per gallon or 21p per litre. It now costs 119p per litre, £5:40p per gallon, the days of cheap energy are long gone. That is the main reason why car manufacturers are starting to plan and build electric cars.

The BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster was not the first of its kind, just tap ‘Piper Alpha’ into any search engines to see that the miracle is, that in drilling down through 4 miles of rock under 1 mile of ocean, the disaster has not been repeated many times over.

The media in the UK reports that Nuclear Power is the only clean energy that will supply our future needs. This conveniently ignores the fact that it takes around 12 energy consuming years to build a Nuclear Power station, then up to 30 years to decommission it after its life span, and then nuclear waste produced will need to be securely stored for thousands of years.

The only answer is to the twin problems of Global Warming and the end of cheap oil, is to research, manufacture and produce clean renewable energy that will allow mankind to have a brighter future, and this needs to happen now... not next year... now. Mankind will not survive unless we do, the created world will survive of course, because it does not need us, but we need it.

There are organisations that have had the courage to face the facts that ase above, in the uk TRANSITION TOWN TOTNESS was the first. If you log on to the link, you will find a lot of information sbout the movement with many useful links. Another Transition Initiative is TRANITION TOWN LEWES, again well wort a visit.