A missive from Jeremy Leggett received via e-mail :-
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Subject: New oil-crisis warning from British companies
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2010
From: Jeremy Leggett
Folks
This week the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security published a short update of its second report of February this year.
In the February report, we offered evidence for our concern that global oil production will begin to fall, against rising demand – and general expectation – by 2015 at the latest.
In the update, we argue that inevitable restrictions in deepwater oil production round the world, in the shakeout from the BP spill, has made our warning all the more pressing.
The triple crunch log on the website is updated completely through 3rd November, and only partially beyond that. I am behind for day-job reasons, but will catch up in the month ahead. The financial-, climate- and energy crises all involve denialist group-think, or so I and my particular tribe of group-thinkers believe.
Yet the log of unfolding events shows the respective dramas ticking along like the three unexploded bombs they all are, for those with a mind to see.
For example, in finance we wait to see if fraud in the packaging of mortgage-backed securities will bring another wave of horror down on the banks, and hence on the rest of us.
In climate, America has elected a Congress where a blocking majority cannot or will not understand the dire warnings of climate scientists.
In energy, the IEA’s chief economist has added his name to the list professing that the age of cheap oil is over, and – as I have said – a cross section of UK industry believes a global oil crisis is coming, within five years.
We have to find a way, somehow, to defuse all three bombs.
Any one of them going off can ruin what remains of the vocational watches of the good folk on this e-mail list, and make our children and grandchildren really very irritated with us.
…I had a huge e-mail in-box after the last missive, concerning investment in coal. It seems that there are a lot of capitalists out there who have grave misgivings about the direction unreconstructed modern capitalism is taking.
I shall endeavour to write an article on that theme, without of course betraying any confidences, in the run up to the Cancun climate summit in a few weeks.
Best to all
J
Jeremy Leggett, Executive Chairman, Solarcentury
https://www.jeremyleggett.net for a log of the energy crunch as it unfolds
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Interestingly, the BBC did not ignore the update of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security :-