My interview with Michael Klare: Part IV

The fourth and final part of the transcript continues Prof. Klare's discussion of Peak Oil Theory, a recent IEA World Energy Outlook report and Mr. Klare's lack of optimism for the future.

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M.K. Hubbert continued...

M. Klare – How dare you question that the oil would run out and bring ruin to…, this was the biggest industry in the United States. But he was proven correct and now people have taken his methodology and applied it to the world oil supply. It's an imprecise tool because the data for the rest of the world is not as precise as it was for the United States. So there's a degree of imprecision about exactly where on the curve we are: is it the peak moment, just a little bit before, is it going to come in 2008 or 2010? I don't want to be exact about that prediction, but I think we are in peak territory. It's not going to rise much higher than we are today, and what will be added from now on will be primarily of the unconventional nature: Canadian tar sands, Arctic oil and so forth.

It should be noted that these unconventional sources of oil come with a very high price tag in terms of their environmental consequences. Not that it isn't a very high price tag, period – they're much more expensive to produce. But they also have very high environmental consequences as well.

A.M. – I wanted to ask you about the term "Peak Oil." You mentioned that when Hubbert came out with the theory there was a bit of shock. Recently the International Energy Agency warned, in its World Energy Outlook report, that there would be a supply-side crunch in the period until 2015, involving an abrupt escalation in oil prices. But I didn't find the phrase "Peak Oil" in the report. Do you think that the phrase itself is tabooed?

M. Klare - I think that there's some reluctance in the professional energy business to use that term, but it's not universal. If you look in the professional literature you'll see many people who do use the term all the time so, I think they just don't want to admit that they scoffed at Hubbert and others who used that term in the past and now they have to acknowledge the fact that they were wrong. We are reaching a peak in output.

By the way, we should make very clear that what's true of oil is also true of natural gas. Natural gas will also reach a peak sometime in the future. Now natural gas got started later than oil. It's commercial development occurred more or less fifty years later than oil, so the curve of development hasn't proceeded as far as oil, although there's probably less natural gas [in total] available than there was oil. So the question of where we are on that curve – it's a little bit more complicated – but the professional literature I've consulted suggest that somewhere between 2020-2030 we're very likely to reach a peak of natural gas, too. My guess is, between 2010-2025… natural gas can make up a little bit for the decline of oil, can compensate, but then natural gas, too, will decline, so we can't assume that natural gas is going to save us.

And coal will also reach a peak in production. People say that coal is vastly abundant, and it's true that there's lots of coal. But as I say, we begin by using the richest ores first and a lot of the world's most concentrated, most valuable coal seams have now been exploited, and it then it, too, will decline.

Uranium is another substance that's finite. Here again we've used up some of the world's most concentrated ore…. Now there's a lot of uranium in very small concentrations that can presumably be used. But we will see, before long, probably before the middle of this century, the exhaustion of some of the richest uranium mines in the world. We have to be very much aware…that our existing energy sources are finite, that we're using them at a very rapid pace and that at current rates of exhaustion many of them will be at their peak or post-peak moment well before the middle of this century, and we had better be ready with alternative sources of energy on a very large scale by then – not laboratory scale, not small, teeny-weenie projects like you have now, but on a massive scale, and we are not moving fast enough to do that.

A.M. – Yes…I was going to ask you about what the solutions would be. Are you optimistic…because this is a very dramatic topic, it's very, I dare say, a bit apocalyptic – are you optimistic that there are solutions and that they can be applied in time?

M. Klare – The problem is not the solutions. If you go to universities, to laboratories, you could probably find solutions, in laboratory-scale project. But those are not going to solve anything because the problem is, as I've described, that the need for energy is colossal, colossal, and it's growing at an exponential rate in many parts of the world. We're relying on existing energy systems to supply most of the additional energy. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, virtually 90% of the world's energy supply in 2030 will come from fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal. We're not seeing the investment needed to convert the laboratory solutions which exist today on a scale large enough to supplant the existing paradigm. So no, I'm not optimistic at all.

I am optimistic of the ingenuity of humans to develop alternatives, but not on the willpower to convert those on a large scale to give us the energy we'll need at…in the time frame in which we'll need it. That's the problem we face.

A.M. – All right. Well, Mr. Klare, this has been a pleasure. Thank you very much for speaking with us.

M. Klare – My pleasure.

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