Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul
I thought fossil fuels were supposed to be running out anyway.
I remember all the doom and gloom telling us we only had about another 50-70 years worth (and that was about 20 years ago).
So no need to bother about reducing them at all, just keep going and we'll run out anyway, job done.  |
It was a fairly unsophisticated piece of messaging from the environmentalists of the time.
There really only were about 40 years of oil left in the 1980s, based on known recoverable reserves and rate of consumption. The messaging did get a bit more nuanced eventually - you might have heard the phrase “peak oil” doing the rounds about 15 years ago, with the claim that from that point on oil would get so hard to extract that it would be impossible to meet demand even if the reserves were there.
In reality all we have done during the 20th century is extract the easy oil. There’s really no shortage of it, because as it is found in ever more challenging places, our ability to get at it improves. As we shift to decarbonise the economy there should come a point where consumption drops off a cliff. I think it’s likely we aren’t going to run out of oil for the foreseeable future.