Oil Inertia
When I wrote my climate change lament Climate Inertia last year, I felt upset that I had not been able to choose a more appropriate word than "inertia" to describe the situation. Disappointed, I wrote this word choice off as yet more evidence of middle-aged aphasia, but maybe I was wrong. After listening to an episode of The Agenda podcast called Oil Woes and Ontario, I heard a lot of distressing points made:
Low oil prices are good for Ontario because of lower transportation costs and increased growth in the US economy.
Even though oil prices have halved, oil producers cannot cut back production because then they will lose more money than if they stop production. The best we can hope for is that they will delay expansion, and even projects that are "half built" will be completed.
Once the infrastructure of oil production is built it can continue producing oil even at $40/barrel.
Even if there is increased revenue from manufacturing in Ontario because of low Canadian dollars, it won't be enough to compensate for the loss of revenue in the tarsands (but somehow Canada is not a petro-state?)
The oil will get to market one way or the other. "We are going to have oil, natural gas, and coal fuelling this world for decades to come, and that's why pipelines are important."
When oil is cheap then there is less pressure to develop alternative technologies.
The panel chuckled about Peak Oil, and pooh-poohed that it was real, and argued that fracking has changed everything.
All of this makes me more inclined to think we are in deep trouble.
There has been some news that has not fit with my pessimistic outlook: it looks as if Ontario is seriously pursuing a carbon tax. My pocketbook will not like a carbon tax, and a carbon tax is just one measure towards reducing emissions, but if this really is implemented (and lasts beyond one government's mandate) then maybe it is one force against the forces of inertia pushing us towards disaster.