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A stitch in time ...
There's a new peak-oil organisation on the block. Is it saying anything new? Does it matter? Tom Nicholls writes
THE ENERGY locked into one barrel of oil is equivalent to that expended by five labourers working 12-hour days non-stop for a year. When you put it like that – as a new report warning the UK government of the perils of peak oil does – petroleum's not something you want to run out of, unless you have something that does the same job. And nothing does. As Jeremy Leggett, co-author of The oil crunch: securing the UK's energy future, puts it: "Nothing will impair our competitiveness as much as premature peak oil." It's a bigger worry – in the immediate future – than global warming, he argues. "In the longer term, climate change is formidable; it could be curtains for civilization." But a mismatch between oil supply and demand is likely to occur sooner – possibly as early as 2011-13. That is the view of the report's publisher, UK Industry ...Click here to continue reading A stitch in time ...
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