The Politics of Climate Change Read Online Free

use and promote energy conservation. Today it is among the most energy-efficient of the industrial countries and is in the vanguard of clean energy technology, for instance in the car industry. Its emissions are relatively high, however, because of its dependence upon coal for electricity production. Sweden instituted a range of energy-saving policies and started to reduce its oil dependency, a process that is still continuing. Far more waste is currently recycled in Japan and Sweden than in most other industrial countries. Having no indigenous resources of its own in the 1970s, Denmark took fright and initiated measures to transfer parts of its electricity production to renewable energy sources, particularly wind power. At the same time, Brazil made the decision to invest in biofuels and now has a higher proportion of motor transport running off them than any other country, although the environmental benefits are dubious because of the deforestation involved.
    The US was also obliged to react. Its responses included considering plans to invade Saudi Arabia, but also, more realistically, introducing measures to conserve energy, in the shape of the Energy Policy Conservation Act. 2 It was asignificant intervention, because it showed that the wasteful energy habits of US consumers could be curbed if the impetus was strong enough. The aim of one section of the Act was to double the energy efficiency of new cars within 10 years. The target wasn’t reached, but major improvements were nevertheless achieved. However, as the sense of crisis receded, fuel consumption rose again, soon to become higher per mile travelled than it had been before.
Peak oil
    The debate about the limits of the world’s fossil fuel resources is of great consequence for climate change policy. In 1956 the American geologist Marion King Hubbert made the now famous prediction that indigenous oil production in the US would peak in 1970 – a prediction that was widely rejected early on, but which turned out to be valid, even though the actual level of oil production was still going up in 1970. Peak oil calculations depend upon assessments of what in the oil industry is known as the ‘ultimate reserves’ a given country or oilfield has. It does not refer to how much oil exists, but to how much can ever be extracted – usually a much smaller amount. 3
    The controversies surrounding peak oil are as intense as those concerned with global warming, and the two debates in fact closely resemble one another. There are those who believe that there is plenty of oil and gas to go round. They do not accept that we should be worried about future sources of supply. In their view there are sufficient resources to last for a long while, even given the rising levels of economic growth of the large developing countries and even given the growing world population. David Howell and Carol Nakhle, for example, argue that there is enough of the ‘known, relatively easy-to-extract stuff’ to last for at least another 40 years. More reserves, they continue, are certain to be found. Under the melting ice of the Arctic, ‘billions of tonnes of oil and billions of cubic metres of gas lie waiting’. New oilfields are available for exploration in Alaska, off the coast of Africa andoffshore in Brazil. Even in the much-explored Middle East, a possible further cornucopia awaits. 4
    Such authors are the functional equivalents of the climate change sceptics – they are saying, ‘Crisis, what crisis?’ Mainstream opinion is less sanguine, or at least has become so over the past few years, and is represented by the bulk of industry analysts and the official publications of the major oil countries. It holds that there may be enough oil (and even more gas) to continue to expand levels of production for some while. However, no one knows, almost by definition, how much there is in as yet unexplored fields or what the difficulties of recovering it may be.