Oil Propaganda Wars

The oil industry’s message, through science events like the one I attended, is that modern civilization is dependent on the hydrocarbon business. The industry can only survive so long as it propagates this myth. A related misperception is that environmentalists are anti-science/technology. Supporters of people-centered, environmentally sustainable development are the real progressives. New advanced technologies which conserve resources and reduce pollution, and which enable individuals, local communities, and developing countries to become more self-reliant, are crucial.

Nick Milton, formerly a Greenpeace campaigner, explains, “The skills of the oil industry could easily be converted to exploiting the UK’s rich potential for renewable energy, and create a net gain in jobs into the bargain.” A recent report produced for Greenpeace showed that the Northeast of England, with its long history of heavy manufacturing and offshore work, provides an ideal site to develop a successful offshore wind industry. Milton continues, “Over 30,000 new jobs could be created if the UK government committed to an initial, readily achievable target of just 10 percent of our electricity from offshore wind in the next ten years. Denmark is already investing over U.S.$1 billion in offshore wind as part of a strategy to boost its wind-driven electricity generation, from today’s eight per cent, to as much as 50 per cent by 2030.”

American journalist Ross Gelbspan reports that a renewable energy study in the United States shows that “for every million dollars spent on oil and gas exploration, only 1.5 jobs are created. But for every million spent on making solar water heaters, 14 jobs are created. For manufacturing solar electricity panels, 17 jobs. For electricity from biomass and waste, 23 jobs. Renewable energy is a win-win resource: good for the environment and good for employment.” Renewable campaigners say that this is the kind of business enterprise, rather than the oil industry “dinosaur,” that we should be selling to the next generation of schoolchildren.

Last, and most definitely not least, there is the question of greenhouse gas emissions. Using figures from the 2,500-scientist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it can be shown that we can afford to burn no more than one quarter of existing fossil fuel reserves without causing significant ecological damage, including major food production losses in vulnerable parts of the world. And as emissions continue to rise, there is an increasing incidence of extreme climate-related events, such as severe droughts and devastating wind storms, like the cyclone which swept through Orissa, India towards the end of 1999, with the loss of up to 10,000 lives.

Sadly, the Climate Talks in Bonn last November were not infused with any commensurate sense of urgency. American big business is still attempting to buy its way out of making real cuts at home, in a country where 4 percent of the world’s population are responsible for around 25 percent of emissions. The news media carry reports of the possible climatic impacts—more flooding, more frequent and severe storms, even the possible shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean “conveyor belt,” plunging western Europe into a new ice age. We hear considerably less about the corporations determined to prevent a shift from a fossil fuel economy to one based on renewable energy.

Instead of unfounded fears of oil industry job losses, the question we should be asking is, “how will the oil industry compensate those hundreds of millions of people whose lives and livelihoods are at risk from fossil fuel-generated climate change?”                   Z

David Cromwell is a physical oceanographer and writer. His first book, Private Planet, is due to be published by Jon Carpenter later this year.