The British Ambassador to the United States discusses the energy crisis here.

Quote:
“…the supplies of oil on which we depend are finite. Global oil production is apparently nearing its peak. Although there is intense debate about exactly when this will happen – something Daniel Yergin discusses in the Foreign Affairs article I referred to earlier – current estimates seem to be converging on some point between 2010 and 2020. Oil itself will never run out – as the saying goes, “the stone age did not end because of a lack of stones.” But the unavoidable fact is that the economics of pumping it in future are uncertain. One of the most intriguing things about this debate is that it is happening at all. It is extraordinary that a century into the age of oil, with the global economy dependent on $3 trillion worth of this black liquid each year, we don’t even know how much is left.

The International Energy Agency predicts that, if we do nothing, global oil demand will reach 121 million barrels per day by 2030, up from 85 million barrels today. That will require increasing production by 37 million barrels per day over the next 25 years, of which 25 million barrels per day has yet to be discovered. That is, we’ll have to find four petroleum systems that are each the size of the North Sea.

Is this realistic? Production from existing fields is dropping at about 5% per year. Only one barrel of oil is now being discovered for every four consumed. Globally, the discovery rate of untapped oil peaked in the late 1960s. Over the past decade, oil production has been falling in 33 of the world’s 48 largest oil producing countries, including six of the 11 members of OPEC. How then will we meet the soaring demand that the growing global economy will require?“

If someone that well embedded in the political establishment is aware of the problem, you can be certain that the governing class as a whole knows what is coming.

Why aren’t they doing their damnedest to make people wake up? Please tell me the conspiracy theories aren’t true…

Strangely enough, I am feeling more and more optimistic about coping with the Peak. All the doomer analysis I read makes the mistake of ignoring what MoQers call ‘Dynamic Quality’, ie that which cannot be foreseen, including human responses to a crisis. I believe that we will pull through. It will be painful – at least a major recession in Europe, probably a major depression in the US, worse in the rest of the world – but we will get through it. The sooner we start to prepare, though, the better off we will be.