Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, September 02, 2006

How wonderful it would be if we could just keep living our lives as we do now, driving our cars, buying whatever imported food we desire -- all without fretting about the future of global petroleum reserves.

Who really wants to ponder how much of the black stuff is left on the planet or, the mayhem that might ensue when fields start experiencing that worst of fates -- depletion?

Can you imagine China and the U.S., jockeying for the remaining drops of the precious stuff that makes their respective economies go round? Already, we've been witnessing China's reluctance to impose sanctions on Iran in response to the mullah's nuclear program because the sino-giant is hooked on Iranian crude.

Dare we think more broadly of the antics that could ensue care of governing regimes in the Middle East -- some of which are sane, others insane, and which control so much of the world's oil reserves?

Well, here's the reality check. The longer we wait to start fretting and plotting some serious strategy, the more chaotic and horrendous the situation in which we are all likely to find ourselves.

Oh sure, there are those who say such anxiety is for naught. We'll discover new deposits or turn to nuclear or someone will make a breakthrough on the biofuels front or the free market will make our transition orderly and polite.

If that were the truth, we'd have started seeing significant evidence of some of that. Instead, what we have been witnessing are ever more atrocious prices at the pumps. Has anyone noticed a diminution of people driving to work solo in their gas guzzlers?

So, it might be worth everyone's while to have a read of The Oil Depletion Protocol, a just-published book by Californian Richard Heinberg, who has immersed himself in the frightening phenomenon of "peak oil."

Heinberg concludes we must start curtailing activities "enabled by this remarkable substance" that is oil. Now. In a coordinated fashion.

A massive, overarching plan must be developed by industry and government; a protocol for diminishing the amounts of oil we have so capriciously been pumping and deploying.

Under Heinberg's suggested protocol, oil-exporting nations would begin reducing exports gradually while consuming nations would agree to reduce consumption. This would be in accordance with a formula Heinberg explains in his book working out to roughly three per cent annually.

How might such a plan affect us? The most obvious areas where we depend heavily on oil are in transportation and agriculture.

Did you know, for example, that 90 per cent of world transportation relies on oil or oil byproducts?

Are you aware how heavily dependent industrial agriculture has become on fossil fuels? Think fertilizers and pesticides, mechanized planting and harvesting machinery, never mind transporting all that food to oft-distant markets.

We have designed our cities in a way that prompts people to be heavily reliant on fossil fuels. In the new era, we are going to have to adapt or perish.

For those newly confronting this issue, peak oil refers to the time when the world's supplies peak and the amount produced no longer keeps pace with the volume consumed.

Estimates vary about precisely when this day of doom is to transpire, but the latest estimate from a think tank that works on nothing but this issue -- the British-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (www.odac-info.org) -- reported last November that supply will fall short of demand as early as 2007 or 2008.

Heinberg reveals that as many as 70 per cent of the globe's producing oil fields are in decline.

This is not something most of us know. Why not?

Because it's in man's nature to avoid problems he knows not how to handle.

And it is certainly not in the best interests of politicians wishing to get re-elected, who work on four- to five-year election cycles, to alarm their constituents or foist upon them challenges that they'd rather not hear about.

Another difficulty is good-old garden variety inertia. Just look at the way Canada handled its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions. We've dragged our feet, debated endlessly and missed every target we set for ourselves.

If a responsible nation like Canada did so poorly on a worthy protocol like Kyoto, what are the chances the world will get its act together to ensure an orderly adoption and implementation of a badly needed oil depletion protocol?

byaffe@png.canwest.com