Student debates tend to be noisy, raucous affairs, but I was at one in Trinity last week that was a model of decorum, writes Breda O'Brien.
Odder still, although there were speakers on both sides of the debate, they were all basically in agreement with each other. Certainly, there were minor quibbles about timing and detail, but all the speakers in this good-humoured interchange were in no doubt that the end of the world as we know it is nigh.
The world we live in is frighteningly dependent on fossil fuels, and in particular, on oil. Take any sliced pan. The wheat from which it is made is sown using diesel-fuelled machinery. Many fertilisers and pesticides are derived from petrochemicals or gas. More oil is expended in the harvesting, in the transport to the mill, and from there to the bakery. Every piece of machinery used is lubricated by oil. If there are food additives such as preservatives in the bread, many of these have a petrochemical base too. The ovens either run on electricity, possibly generated from natural gas, or on gas itself.
If the bread is wrapped in plastic, that is a byproduct of oil. If it is in waxed paper, wax is a raw petroleum product. Fleets of trucks take the bread all over the country, to shops to which most of us drive in order to buy it. The cash registers, many of the fittings in the shops, even the badges the checkout people wear, are all made of plastic, and the polyester fibres in their uniforms are refined from oil. The card you pay with, and the pen you sign the receipt with, are all plastic. The ink too is also partly made from petrochemicals. And that is just our daily bread.
Running out of oil is not the real issue, as that may not happen for 100 years. The issue is when will oil supplies peak; in other words, when will we have removed 50 per cent of what is in the ground? Demand is going up and up, not least because China is industrialising at a phenomenal rate. Not long after oil supplies peak, and therefore begin to drop, demand will begin to outstrip supply. It will be the end of cheap oil. If economic growth is to be maintained, it would need a rapid shift to other energy sources. If not, there could be worldwide recession of unimaginable proportions, with resultant chaos.
The first speaker in the debate, retired Irish geologist Colin Campbell, has been writing about this for 20 years. In that time he has moved from being viewed as a crackpot to addressing joint committees in the British House of Commons. Colin Campbell believes that the oil supply peak could happen in the next year or two.
I was waiting for the next speaker, David Horgan, managing director of Petrel Resources, to gently, or not so gently, attempt to blow holes in Colin's arguments. Rather unnervingly, David agreed with the broad thrust of Colin's thesis, except that he thinks the peak will occur in 2010.
However, he believes that the exact date of peak oil is irrelevant. The important point is when surplus capacity vanishes. He believes we have reached that point. David is an investor and industry insider, involved in oil exploration in Iraq. He and his small Irish company have pressed ahead boldly trying to gain access to oilfields in Iraq, where even the giant oil companies are nervous of treading, not least because of the physical risk to their employees. As might be guessed from the line of work that he is in, David is an optimist.
He believes the world has faced energy crises before, from the depletion of wood in the 13th century, to surface coal in the 19th, to the artificially induced OPEC oil shocks of the 1970s. He believes that nuclear energy will be the least bad option, at least for a generation, and that the transition to other energy sources need not signal catastrophe if we begin to prepare now.
Others, such as Richard Douthwaite, have a somewhat different perspective. Basically, he believes that all our lives will change irrevocably. We will all be walking or cycling. We will return to a village lifestyle, where those who can work with their hands will be in great demand. At one fell swoop, we will solve the problem of global warming, and incineration will be a black joke, because we will lovingly preserve every scrap of paper, and recycle everything we can lay our hands on. All for the best, in the best of all possible worlds, from Richard's point of view.
Trying to research peak oil on the internet takes you into some seriously scary websites, where people seem to be awaiting the apocalypse with near joy, as a vindication of their contempt for our industrialised, capital-driven, extravagantly wasteful lifestyles. Even scarier, though, is the realisation that conservative organisations such as the International Energy Agency are saying things like this in their 2004 report: "Production of conventional oil will not peak before 2030 if the necessary investments are made." I think that is meant to be reassuring.
Politically, it matters a great deal whether the peak is in 2010, or 2030, because 2030 is the next generation's problem, and there are no votes today from the next generation. In practical and ethical terms, the difference is tiny. Are we ready to stomach nuclear energy, where some radioactive waste has a half-life of 100,000 years? Is hydrogen the answer? Will wind turbines become as common as clouds? Or in blacker mode, will we and our children face starvation and chaos?
Of course, there are sceptics, who point to the doomsday predictions regarding Y2K, none of which transpired. Other critics believe that we will find and recover far more oil than peak oil theorists are willing to admit. Given that few of us have expertise in this area, we are at the mercy of those who govern us. It would be nice to know how seriously this question is being taken, seeing that we consume oil on a daily basis, taking it for granted almost as much as the air we breathe.