THE PERFECT STORM

Given the potential enormity of the consequences of climate change, it is perhaps not too surprising that some people stick their fingers in their ears and go "La, la, la - I can't hear you!"

That's not the same thing as trying to pretend that science has failed to prove that global warming is happening, or that there is no correlation between mankind's activities and climate chaos. After all, the Met Office has decades of detailed statistics at its disposal. The climate change sceptics don't. So, who are you going to trust? Those agencies which have been monitoring the situation for many years and have observed an increase in global temperatures, or the right-wingers who want you to believe that there has been no such increase?

More pressing, in many ways, is a problem that we hear less of. It's called peak oil.

Now, peak oil has a specific meaning. Basically, it's what happens when half of the available oil supplies in any particular region have been extracted. When oil is first struck, it spurts out of the ground under tremendous pressure. But from day one, that pressure begins to fall. Steadily, it gets harder and more expensive to extract that oil, until eventually it makes no real economic sense to do so.

The United States reached peak oil in 1970 (this was accurately predicted fourteen years earlier). Almost immediately, the world suffered the first of its major oil crises. Another happened in 1979, causing mayhem to the global economy.

Most authorities now accept that the world has reached peak oil - or is about to, at any rate. Oil prices continue to head northwards. There's even a pretty sound argument that the recent global economic crash was precipitated, not so much by subprime mortgages and banks behaving like reckless youths, but by the ever-spiralling cost of oil.

The global economy has been built on oil for about as long as anybody can remember. And as oil continues to get more expensive and more dangerous to extract, the price of oil will continue to rocket. This will have severe knock-on effects on just about everything.

Together with climate change and a mushrooming global population, peak oil represents a looming crisis of almost Biblical proportions. And, unlike the great global warming crisis, it's difficult to deny. In short, we're in trouble. Big trouble.

In 1977, President Carter warned us all about this. He was ignored, and Big Oil took over the White House. The opportunity to take sensible steps to avert catastrophe was delayed.

Meanwhile, the renewables industry was born. The US made its first experiments with wind energy as a result of the oil crises of the 70s. Fiercely opposed by right-wing interests, renewables have slowly and steadily grown. Various bodies, including the World Wildlife Fund, are now beginning to look forward to a time when at least 95% of Europe's energy, and potentially 100% of global energy, is produced by renewables (circa 2050, if we all get our acts together). The question is - will peak oil, climate change and too many human beings on the planet wreak phenomenal havoc before then?

It is monstrous that anti-windfarm campaigners claim to be defending "our way of life" when the threats to everybody's way of life do not come from wind turbines, but from the consequences of not taking the appropriate steps in good time. VVASP recently emailed their supporters to warn about the "harm" to people's lives from the Lenchwick Windfarm if a planning appeal goes ahead and is successful. Not only was that statement fatuous, misleading and utterly self-serving ... it couldn't have been more misguided. While the world waits for the perfect storm to strike - peak oil and massive hikes in oil prices, extreme weather events, mass shifting of populations, wars over precious resources, etc. etc., to pretend that people's lives will be harmed by a windfarm is fanatically irresponsible and grossly, sickeningly stupid.

Be in no doubt: peak oil is a massive problem, and it's a lot closer than we think. Opposing urgently-needed renewable developments on the protecting-our-way-of-life grounds is insane. It's missing the point by a million miles. It's making sure that everybody - and particular the generations to come - suffers as a result of our present-day selfishness, short-sightedness, criminal negligence and inability to tell the truth. It is madness of the worst kind.

Anyone wishing to know more about peak oil can email Wind of Change and we'll send out a report authored by Hans Zandvliet and released only last month. Read that report, and then decide how long we can continue to bury our heads in the sand and shout loud lies about harmless windfarms in order to "defend" our way of life.