The Decade of Climate Change and Peak Oil

30th January 2010

The Decade of Climate Change and Peak Oil by Tam Hunt, Renewable Energy Consultant

Wow. Another decade has passed. In the years ruled by the iPod, the death and rebirth of hope (you know who I’m talking about), Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong and Roger Federer, reality TV, Coldplay and Britney, flat-screen TVs and ShamWow!, climate change and energy may seem a relatively small blip on the cultural big screen.

It is true that on a list of twenty issues presented to the American people in a 2009 Pew survey, climate change came in dead last. But this is a mistake of perception and judgment. These issues really should be at the top of the list; even above the ailing economy (#1 on the list) because the economy is a subset of the environment, not the other way around.

The year 2009 was the year of the United Nations Copenhagen summit, in which the most heads of state in history convened at the same place, and the year of “climategate,” in which hundreds of emails between various climate scientists were hacked. A quick review of the alleged smoking gun emails reveals, however, nothing of the sort. Yes, the scientists were guilty, in private conversations, of seeming a bit overzealous in their desire to keep the views of climate naysayers out of the journals. But even if the worst claims about the emails were true they would do practically nothing to contradict the broad consensus regarding the human influence on past climate (what is less certain, as any good scientist will tell you, is the amount of future warming we can expect from existing and future greenhouse gas emissions).

You must be logged in to post a comment.