A Peak in Peak Oil Titles

The meteoric rise in oil prices over the past year has led to renewed discussion of "peak oil", or as it is known among geologists, "Hubbert's Peak".

What many of the books written this year on the subject certainly share is a common desire for the least mysterious titles possible, including The End of Oil and Hubbert's Peak, with the literal yet ominous subtitles, "On the Edge of a Perilous New World" and "The Impending World Oil Shortage", respectively. The title of another book, Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil mixes a dim metaphor with a historical yet redundant assertion. At least James Howard Kunstler went through the trouble to give his new book an actual title, though he tries a bit too hard to coin a catchphrase for the impending peak oil era: he names the era, and his book, The Long Emergency, a title which evokes something between the highly contrived television series "24", Clan of the Cave Bear, and an after-school special. You can also read excerpts in the recent issue of Rolling Stone.

Of course, the blogosphere has its own notable contributions to the peak oil discussion. One of the few titles I actually like is Rob McMillan's Peak Oil Optimist. An article purportedly by an "anonymous oil industry insider" in Energy Bulletin in February spread like wildfire across the web across various environmental expert blogs, in part because of its mix of unverifiable facts and the ranting tone of one seriously unhappy oil dude at the bar.

I generally prefer the less alarming titles put out by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), including the plain but clear document titled "Long Term World Oil Supply Scenarios". The subtitle -- "The Future is Neither as Bleak or Rosy as Some Assert" -- manages to take issue with everybody else, while promising real factual analysis. That's my kind of title!

Why are titles important? Isn't this, I am sure the various authors would respond, a truly frivolous point to be making when this could be the end of civilization as we know it?.

Well, without rehashing the whole debate about the "Death of Environmentalism" (ably summarized by Grist), there is something to be said about the attitude of these doom-reinforcing, gloom-peddling titles. Oil is a finite resource, to be certain, and therefore there will come a day when we reach a point of peak production capability, followed by an inexorable decline. However, what titles like this don't do is to add anything to the actual debate about how to control our consumption of oil, or even what it means for us, as a society, to be unable to control our use of resources.

Though I suspect I agree with the overall intention of the authors, at the same time, the various alarm- (and hackle-) raising titles of their books are as much as function of the market as our appetite for oil. I question whether the year's past rise in oil prices is actually connected to any growing widespread appreciation of peak oil, or whether the opposite is true: the rise in oil prices has spawned numerous books on peak oil. The OPEC embargo and recession of the Seventies kicked off a decade of high energy consciousness, which were immediately followed by the Eighties and Nineties, and when oil prices went low, so did our consciousness about energy issues.

There is a larger debate to be had about what kind of society, or market, allows the unfettered consumption of resources without any consideration of the future. The true essence of sustainability, I think, concerns a presently absent comprehension of the earth and the resources that sustain our existence on this planet. The authors have all chosen oil as their subject because it is connected to our daily lives, but does this make global warming, losses in biodiversity, or substantial modification of the earth any less important?

These are also precisely the issues that we may feel able to ignore because they occur beyond lifetimes, or because we implicitly envision an earth that is framed entirely by the needs of humans. It is either almost quaint -- or else downright alarming, where we started -- to think that Bill McKibben wrote about this a full ten (!) years ago in The End of Nature. I think his point then, as now, is still valid: we certainly will have lost something when we have eliminated nature, or what it means to be wild, or that which is outside of humanity for its own sake. The question is, how do we start this discussion?