by Alex Evans | Apr 21, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system, Middle East and North Africa
Interesting times for the peak oil debate. Last week came the news that Russian oil had peaked: its Q1 oil production in 2008 fell, for the first time in a decade. Later in the week, oil touched a new all-time high of $117 after Nigerian insurgents attacked a Shell pipeline there.
And today, the news emerges from Saudi Arabia that all future investment plans for increasing capacity have been put on hold: “in a series of statements, including one by the king himself, the kingdom has warned consumers it does not believe there is a need for further expansion”. According to Carola Hoyos,
Abdullah Jum’ah, chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the kingdom’s oil company, said in a closed-door meeting with oil ministers and executives in Rome yesterday that market signals were “imperfect” and that there were uncertainties created by the move away from oil, the world’s worsening economic outlook and the recent turbulence in the financial markets, according to one person who took notes at the discussions.
But I’m still wondering whether the problem here isn’t simply that Saudi Arabia hasn’t got any spare capacity to give, whatever it says about downturns and the terrible unfairness of climate policy.
Although we’re not quite at the point yet when you can talk about peak oil at conferences without feeling like a crank, you’d be amazed how many people think privately that the peak is pretty soon – including from governments and multilateral agencies.
Into the midst of this murky context sails a fascinating new survey from the always-good-value Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland:
A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll finds that majorities in 15 of 16 nations surveyed around the world think that oil is running out and governments should make a major effort to find new sources of energy. Most think that future oil prices will be much higher. Only 22 percent on average believe that “enough new oil will be found so that it can remain a primary source of energy for the foreseeable future.” Only in Nigeria does a majority (53%) endorse the view that governments can rely on oil in the long term.
Instead, an average of 70 percent takes the position that governments should assume that “oil is running out and it is necessary to make a major effort to replace oil as a primary source of energy.” The largest majorities endorsing this view are found in South Korea (97%), France (91%), Mexico (83%) and China (80%). The smallest are in Russia (53%) and India (54%), while in Nigeria only a minority (45%) holds this view.
‘Course, you can rebut this in part by pointing out that (a) the two statements on which respondents were polled are slightly meaningless without dates, and (b) you can believe that enough oil will be found to satisfy demand by a given date while still believing that it’s “running out”; indeed, if you disagree with the second statement then you know something about geology that the rest of us don’t. Still; you get the point. Did someone say something about the wisdom of crowds?
by Alex Evans | Mar 12, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity
Our friends at Avaaz have a new campaign on biofuels (full text below the fold). Biofuels are already absorbing 20 per cent of the US corn crop, and that figure’s expected to rise to 32 per cent by 2016. As Avaaz’s email puts it,
Each day, 820 million people in the developing world do not have enough food to eat. Food prices around the world are shooting up, sparking food riots from Mexico to Morocco. And the World Food Program warned last week that rapidly rising costs are endangering emergency food supplies for the world’s worst-off. How are the wealthiest countries responding? They’re burning food.
Go sign the petition to G20 leaders in advance of this weekend’s summit…
(more…)
by Alex Evans | Feb 7, 2008 | Global system
The BBC and Globescan have just published another of their epic, 34 country opinion polls, this time looking at perceptions of economic globalisation. They found that majorities (of an average of 64%) in 27 out of 34 countries agreed that the benefits and burdens of “the economic developments of the last few years” have not been shared fairly.
Intriguingly, though, if you agree with that statement, your analysis of whether that unfairness results from globalisation proceeding too quickly or too slowly is likely to depend on whether you live in a developed or a developing country:
In developed countries, those who have this view of unfairness are more likely to say that globalization is growing too quickly – especially in France, Italy, Spain, South Korea, Japan, and Germany (and to a lesser extent Britain and the US). In contrast, in some developing countries, those who perceive such unfairness are more likely to say globalization is proceeding too slowly. These include Turkey, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil, Kenya, Mexico and the countries of Central America.
The survey adds that “the view that globalization is growing too quickly is especially widespread in Egypt (77%), UAE (77%), Australia (73%), China (72%), Spain (68%), and France (64%)”. Here’s the full report.
by Alex Evans | Dec 5, 2007 | Conflict and security
Here’s one I missed first time around: security expert Bruce Schneier held a contest on his blog back in April last year. It went like this:
For a while now, I have been writing about our penchant for “movie-plot threats“: terrorist fears based on very specific attack scenarios. Terrorists with crop dusters, terrorists exploding baby carriages in subways, terrorists filling school buses with explosives — these are all movie-plot threats. They’re good for scaring people, but it’s just silly to build national security policy around them.
But if we’re going to worry about unlikely attacks, why can’t they be exciting and innovative ones? If Americans are going to be scared, shouldn’t they be scared of things that are really scary? “Blowing up the Super Bowl” is a movie plot to be sure, but it’s not a very good movie. Let’s kick this up a notch.
It is in this spirit I announce the (possibly First) Movie-Plot Threat Contest. Entrants are invited to submit the most unlikely, yet still plausible, terrorist attack scenarios they can come up with. Your goal: cause terror. Make the American people notice. Inflict lasting damage on the U.S. economy. Change the political landscape, or the culture. The more grandiose the goal, the better. Assume an attacker profile on the order of 9/11: 20 to 30 unskilled people, and about $500,000 with which to buy skills, equipment, etc.
Here’s the winning entry by Tom Grant, selected from hundreds of entries received on Schneier’s blog. Be afraid…
(more…)
by Alex Evans | Dec 4, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
So says International Food Policy Research Institute head Joachim von Braun in an exclusive interview with the Guardian today:
“Demand is running away. The world has been consuming more than it produces for five years now. Stocks of grain – of rice, wheat and maize – are down at levels not seen since the early 80s,” said von Braun, whose organisation is the world’s largest alliance of agricultural researchers, economists, and policy experts.
So far, crises have been averted because states have eaten into national stocks, but this could be set to change because China, in particular, has run down its supplies.
“Over the next 12 to 24 months we are in a fairly risky situation. Large consuming nations, particularly China, will feel pressed to enter international markets to bid up prices to unusual levels,” von Braun warned ahead of a speech today to the institute’s AGM in Beijing …
The social tensions caused by rising food prices are already evident, says von Braun. “The first sign was the tortilla riot in Mexico city, where 70,000 took to the streets. I think that was only the beginning – there will be more,” said von Braun. “For a year or two countries can stabilise with stocks. But the risk comes in the next 12 to 24 months. The countries that cannot afford to buy will be the losers, while those with huge foreign exchange reserves will bid up the world market.”
