Module B1 Study Book - the Graduate School of the Environment

een 4 billion years... At three minutes before midnight [on the last day] …
man appeared. At one-fourth of a second before midnight, Christ arrived.
At one-fortieth of a second before midnight, the Industrial Revolution
began. We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been
doing for that one-fortieth of a second can go on indefinitely. They are
considered normal, but they are stark raving mad.1
Introduction: Revising our Worldview in an Era of Declining
Affordable Oil
This paper explores some ethical dimensions of an unprecedented challenge
confronting our richly diverse and interconnected global culture: the end of
affordable oil. It is a challenge that will link together science and religion,
technology and human values, public policy and personal practice in unusual
ways. In 1956 M. King Hubbert forecast ― correctly, as it turned out ― that
U.S. oil production would peak around 1970; he also predicted that world oil
production would peak some time between 2000 and 2020.3 (The top of the
curve of oil production as a function of time is known as “Hubbert’s Peak.”)
Appearing to confirm this latter forecast, Kuwait announced in November
2005 that its al Burgan oil field, supposedly the second largest petroleum
producer in the world, has reached peak production, and in Twilight in the
Desert Matthew Simmons reported that the large Saudi oil fields are nearing
the end of their useful lives.4 The oil fields of the North Sea and the North
Shore of Alaska are similarly in irreversible decline. By mid 2005, it became
clear that the end of the age of oil is near.
The peak and subsequent decline of oil production are not arcane theoretical
issues of petroleum geology or industrial economics. Rather, the end of
affordable oil will be an event in history as unique as the event that led to the
extinction of the dinosaurs. But this time, the target will be human beings,
and more particularly, our technological civilizations. The end of oil is a social
issue of the highest order of magnitude, carrying implications of tremendous
change in areas ranging from what we eat, to the way manage our daily
lives, to our intercultural relationships, to the values we cherish most. It
will challenge some core tenets of our religious ethics with unprecedented
urgency.
It is morally obligatory for intellectual leaders across all professions ― religion,
government, academe, science, business, economics ― to begin to reflect in
their thinking the precautionary principle articulated by Carolyn Raffensperger
with regard to genetically modified organisms.5 Raffensperger argues that
the principle involves taking precautionary action against a potential threat
even before we have established cause and effect with scientific certainty,
shifting the burden of proof to those who put others at risk, and developing
more democratic and thorough decision making criteria and methods.
Applied to peak oil, we may say the following: because the consequences
of the loss of abundant cheap energy ― on the interpersonal, international,
and intercultural levels ― will be catastrophic for humankind, we are morally
142 Paper: Ethics in uncertainty