David Strahan | Articles – The treacherous traverse of Hubbert’s Peak

The treacherous traverse of Hubbert’s Peak
Posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007

By David Strahan. Published as ‘Climate Criminals’ in Summit, Spring 2007.

Mountaineers are a special class of climate criminal. We clearly have a particular moral duty to protect the icy landscapes we enjoy, and most of us like to think of ourselves as environmentally responsible. But the reality is rather different. When it comes to flying, just like the hordes heading off to the beaches of Magalouf, we remain in stubborn denial about the damage our emissions cause, and carry on regardless. In a three page article for the Independent entitled ‘The Melting Mountains’, Joe Simpson bemoaned the destruction of classic routes in the Alps from melting ice and massive rockfalls, without a single mention of his own airmiles, still less the helicopter fuel used to haul him off the Dru. At a meeting of the Alpine Club last summer, one speaker regaled us with stories from a lifetime of expeditions and slides showing evidence of glacial retreat, without once making the connection. Ed Douglas reports being canvassed about a plan to climb the Seven Summits by a couple of teenagers who apparently had yet to develop a sense of irony. Their campaign – involving at least seven round trip long haul flights – was intended to raise money for an environmental group called Leave No Trace.

There is of course scant chance that climbers will forego their flights voluntarily, but it is now becoming increasingly clear that soon this will cease to be a matter of choice. The fleeting age of the jet-setting bag rat is about to come to an end, not primarily because of climate change, but because of its stealthy companion oil depletion. Topping out on far-flung hills courtesy of BA or Easyjet will soon be consigned to history because of one apparently insurmountable problem: the peak of global oil production, known in the industry as peak oil or Hubbert’s Peak. These terms are not immediately self-explanatory, but should perhaps be more suggestive to climbers than anyone else. As every ascentionist knows, when you reach the top, there’s only one way to go.

M. King Hubbert was an irascible but brilliant Shell geologist who in 1956 stunned the oil industry by predicting that US oil production would ‘peak’ and go into terminal decline – in either 1965 or 1970, depending on which of two industry estimates of ultimate US oil reserves he employed (figure 1). At the time he made the forecast US production was still rising strongly, and the idea that it might soon start to fall was considered outlandish, so the perennially optimistic oil industry laughed Hubbert to scorn. But he was right: US oil production peaked in 1970, right on schedule, even though half the oil that would ever be produced there was still underground.

I just read (4/1/07) your BBC viewpoint article on peak oil, climate change, and economy, and came to your site to learn more. Thanks for your investigations, for letting us know this important information, and for outlining helpful responses.
D. Narveson – Iowa/ USA

I have just read your quite excellent article in the current issue of Prospect Magazine. I have been a “peak oiler” since working offshore Saudi Arabia in 1964 and have more or less built my career on “trying to do something about it”.

That has been difficult. A renewable energy company I formed in the 1970s went bankrupt, mostly due to my managerial incompetence but also because it was quite impossible for the primitive renewable technologies we were trying to market to compete with fossil fuels.

I still totally agree with you that no renewable energy source can begin to fill the gap left behind by depleting conventional oil and gas. A point well understood these days by my friends at OPEC and certainly by President Putin.

Thus, I fear, there really will be resource wars restrained paradoxically but hopefully by the lack of fuel with which to wage them!

We probably only disagree on the imminence of man-caused global warming. In my view, the galloping economic catastrophe that will be caused by peak oil will be so great as to cause the breakdown of normal society and its ability to invest.

Because (I feel) I have little new to learn about peak oil, I am normally resistive to purchasing and reading new books on the subject. I will make an exception in the case of your book because you make your point so exceptionally fluently.

I’m a climber of many years, and am somewhat ashamed of all the miles I’ve driven in an SUV to crags around the Western US. I still love climbing, but since becoming (painfully) peak oil aware a year ago, I now mostly get my fix biking to the local rock gym.

I now tend to look at all the outdoor sports as a rather silly, selfish endeavour. (The magazines with their endless ads for more consumption of gear, autos and travel make me ill to look at now). True, there is a heroic and spiritual personal side to climbing. But that’s only if you ignore the damage we have been doing, loving the mountains to death.

To me, a much greater challenge than climbing mountains is to try to find a way of living in harmony with nature. Instead of just visiting wild places during our brief vacations from our industrial jobs that contribute to the environmental (and social) destruction we see accelerating all around us.

To that end, I salute people such as David Holmgren, co-founder of the Permaculture concept. Or the Amish people in America. My ideal of true adventure is now something like creating an eco-farm, taking care of a piece of land, restoring the natural life that once lived there, and finding a “yield” (fruits, veggies, etc) that we can ourselves live from.

Sort of a “biosphere without the sphere”. Now, there’s a challenge far greater than climbing Everest or the latest 5.15 sport route.