Articles by Joseph Romm

Why I don’t agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the ‘end of suburbia’

The remarkably low fueling cost of the best current hybrids (like the Toyota Prius) and future plug-in hybrids are major reasons I don't worry as much about peak oil as some do.

James Kunstler, for instance, argues in his 2005 book The Long Emergency (see Rolling Stone excerpt here) that after oil production peaks, suburbia "will become untenable" and "we will have to say farewell to easy motoring." In Rolling Stone, Kunstler writes, "Suburbia will come to be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world." (No -- that distinction probably belongs to China's torrid love-affair with coal power.)

But suppose Kunstler is right about peak oil. Suppose oil hits $160 a barrel and gasoline goes to $5 dollars a gallon in, say, 2015. That price would still be lower than many Europeans pay today. You could just go out and buy the best hybrid and cut your fuel bill in half, back to current levels. Hardly the end of suburbia.

No supply-side energy solution will come to our rescue

No one is going to come to the rescue on the supply side -- and, of course, we remain stuck with an administration that doesn't believe in demand-reduction strategies.

As the Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd) reported in "OPEC's Lever Loses Its Pull on Oil":

Oil prices are hovering near historic highs, but consuming nations shouldn't expect quick relief from OPEC, the world's only source for big, quick supplies.

For several reasons, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has neither the clear leverage nor the inclination to open the spigots and drive down the price of crude, which jumped past $90 a barrel in intraday trading in New York last week for the first time.

This figure shows how little spare capacity OPEC has -- essentially none outside of Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis have no inclination to initiate a major price drop, especially since these prices do not appear to be destroying demand.

Moreover, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned back in July that it saw "OPEC spare capacity declining to minimal levels by 2012."

And the WSJ notes no one outside of OPEC will be coming to the rescue either:

Saudi Arabia has little to fear from the world's other major producers, such as Russia, which in decades past have ramped up supplies in an effort to capture a greater market share. But at the moment, the world's major producers for the most part are already pumping flat-out.

"They have little competition from non-OPEC suppliers and few worries about losing market share," says Jeffrey Currie, senior energy economist at Goldman Sachs in London.

We cannot be far from $100+ oil.

Two new environmental blogs

In general, I have been critical of media coverage of global warming. So I am pleased to announce that two of the best environmental journalists working have launched blogs:

• A new environmental blog from Mark Hertsgaard, the terrific environment correspondent for The Nation (and author of a lot of great books).

• A new sustainability blog from The New York Times, dotearth, led by their first-rate climate reporter, Andrew Revkin. Revkin notes the limits of the traditional media on these issues:

Stop dwelling on the climate change nightmare and dream about change

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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When I was a child in the 1950s, I went about my business with a little cloud hanging over my head. It didn't matter whether I was playing in the backyard, studying in my bedroom or suffering from my first romantic crush (Annette on the Mickey Mouse Club). The cloud was always there.

It was the fear of nuclear war. We lived in suburbs west of Chicago. All day long, jets flew overhead on their way to O'Hare International Airport, sometimes so high that they were just a silver spot gleaming in the sun as they moved across the sky. When I saw one, I stopped what I was doing and waited several minutes to see if a mushroom cloud appeared to the east over Chicago. Once I saw the mushroom, I knew from school, our neighborhood would be flattened a few seconds later.

It never happened, of course. I can't say that the cloud ruined my childhood or followed me into adulthood, but its shadow came back to mind Friday night (Oct. 19) as I watched John Stossel's latest "Give Me a Break" segment on ABC.