An Interview with Richard Heinberg -- Nov. 23, 2006 -- Part 1 (Transition Culture)

{mosimage}

  Transition Culture

  Nov. 27, 2006 -- While Richard Heinberg was at Schumacher College teaching part of the Life After Oil course I was lucky to be able to take 40 minutes of his time to do an interview with him. We explored various aspects of the peak oil challenge before moving on to explore solutions, in particular community-initiated responses, such as the work Richard is contributing to in Oakland, as well as the emerging process here in Totnes. Part One, posted today, focuses on peak oil, and was recorded the day after his talk in Totnes Civic Hall, which was attended by over 350 people.

  Well, there was the recent International Energy Agency report which didn’t give me any new information, but I thought it was interesting to see the IEA more or less admitting to the problem of future oil supply. Claude Mandil is clearly worried now, which is in stark opposition to the CERA Report which came out two days later that basically we have nothing to worry about for the next 3 decades (laughs), which of course is an entirely political document, not based on science at all, and is extremely irresponsible in terms of its message to the world.

  Even though the IEA isn’t actually talking about a near term global oil production peak they are at least saying that supply is likely to be tight and may be inadequate in the years to come. People at least need to hear that message. As to new news, I mean of course a lot of things are slow to develop.

  We know that Mexico’s oil production is going into decline with the decline of Cantarell, but that was forecast several years ahead, that’s not really a surprise to anyone who has been watching that sort of thing. I think the signs of near-term peak are not typically dramatic episodic events, it is the slowly developing accumulating evidence that we are seeing. The fact is that global oil production has been pretty well stalled out at around 84½ million barrels a day, on average, for the past year. Given the high prices, that is very suggestive that we may be in the early undulating plateau stage of the peak right now, but we won’t know for a while.

more

READ MORE: Transition Culture

{mos_sb_discuss:2}