I have a new article in Salon on perhaps the most misunderstood subject in energy — peak oil.

Here is the short version:

1. We are at or near the peak of cheap conventional oil production.
2. There is no realistic prospect that the conventional oil supply can keep up with current projected demand for much longer — if the industrialized countries don’t take strong action to sharply reduce consumption, and if China and India don’t take strong action to sharply reduce consumption growth.
3. Many people are expecting unconventional oil — such as the tar sands and liquid coal — to make up the supply shortage. That would be a climate catastrophe, and I (optimistically) believe humanity is wise enough not to let that happen. More supply is not the answer to either our oil or climate problem.
4. Nonetheless, contrary to popular belief, the peak oil problem will not “destroy suburbia” or the American way of life. Only unrestrained emissions of greenhouse gases can do that.
5. We have the two primary solutions to peak oil at hand: fuel efficiency and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles run on zero-carbon electricity. The only question is whether conservatives will let progressives accelerate those solutions into the marketplace before it is too late to prevent a devastating oil shock or, for that matter, devastating climate change.
   

That last sentence has been a major focus of this blog. I discuss it briefly in the article, but let me elaborate on it here. For more than two decades, conservatives have put up almost every conceivable roadblock to a sane energy policy. They have essentially said to peak oil — and catastrophic global warming, for that matter — “Bring it on!”

No one should be surprised we are now mired in a tar pit of growing dependence on oil imported from unstable or undemocratic regions, oil prices over $100 a barrel, a trade deficit in oil alone approaching $500 billion a year, and, of course, the very serious threat of catastrophic climate change from burning an ever-increasing amount of fossil fuels.

Many of us have predicted for a very long time that a quarter century of ignoring or underfunding the key solutions to our addiction to oil would have consequences. For instance, an April 1996 article I coauthored warned about what the Gingrich Congress was trying to do:

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Tonight Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is flying into Denver to scrounge up cash at a $25,000 apiece “roundtable” followed by a $1000-a-head ($2300 with a “Photo Opportunity”) fundraiser at the Denver Petroleum Club. McCain’s choice of venue is singularly appropriate, as his campaign is being funded and run by Big Oil lobbyists. As global warming, skyrocketing oil prices, and a failing economy create an interlinked energy crisis, McCain has repeatedly failed to put the people’s interests before those of the fossil-energy industry.

Since launching his campaign for president, Sen. McCain has talked tough about Big Oil but has been funded by their petro-dollars. In a 2007 Iowa speech, McCain described his “energy strategy” for America, with “straight talk” about “petro-dictators,” big oil subsidies, and energy lobbyists:

As President, I’ll propose a national energy strategy that will amount to a declaration of independence from the risk bred by our reliance on petro-dictators and our vulnerability to the troubled politics of the lands they rule. That strategy won’t be another grab bag of handouts to this or that industry and a full employment act for lobbyists. Yes, that means no ethanol subsidies. But it also means no rifle-shot tax breaks for big oil.

But is candidate McCain himself reliant on Big Oil? Since first running for the Senate in 1986, John McCain has received at least $549,712 from the oil and gas industry. More than half — $291,685 — has come in the last two years. Moreover, John McCain’s own campaign is a “full employment act for lobbyists” who rely on “petro-dictators.”

– McCain’s Senior Adviser Lobbies For Foreign Oil Interests. Charlie Black (lobbying firm: BKSH), McCain’s senior campaign adviser, is a registered lobbyist for two Russian oil companies — Yukos Oil and Occidental International Corporation — and his lobbying firm was hired in 2005 by the China National Off-Shore Oil Corporation. [Roll Call 7/18/05, Senate Lobbying Disclosure Records]

– McCain’s “Consigliere” a Top Lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. Former Texas representative Tom Loeffler (The Loeffler Group), a top Bush fundraiser now in charge of McCain’s fundraising efforts, received approximately $900,000 a year from the Saudis to lobby Congress and “arrange meetings between Saudi officials and such senior Bush administration officials as Karl Rove.” [DNC 4/23/07]

– McCain’s Campaign Liaison to Congress a Million-Dollar Big-Oil Lobbyist. John Green (Ogilvy Government Relations) — the “full-time liaison between McCain’s presidential campaign and Republicans in the House and the Senate” — has made over $7.6 million dollars since 1999 lobbying for petro-industry giants such as Amerada-Hess, Chevron Texaco, the American Petroleum Institute, Reliant Energy, PJM Interconnection and First Energy. [Politico 3/4/08, Senate Lobbying Disclosure Records]

– Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Everywhere in the McCain Campaign. Susan Nelson, McCain’s National Finance Chair worked at the Loeffler Group for Saudi Arabia. Frank Donatelli, McCain’s RNC liaison to the Republican Party, has lobbied for ExxonMobil, Dominion, and Eastman Chemical. Jerry Kilgore, co-chairman of McCain’s Virginia campaign, has lobbied for Shell Oil and coal company Alpha Natural Resources. [Washington Post 3/12/08, O'Dwyer's 8/9/06, Media Matters 2/26/08, Senate Lobbying Disclosure Records]

Although Candidate McCain may have made a “declaration of independence” on the campaign trail, Senator McCain’s own actions have kept “rifle-shot tax breaks for big oil” and “reliance on petro-dictators” as the law of the land.

– McCain Voted Against Reducing Dependence on Foreign Oil. In 2005, McCain voted against legislation calling on the President to submit a plan to reduce foreign petroleum imports by 40 percent. [Senate Roll Call Vote #140, 6/16/05; DNC 6/22/07]

– Candidate McCain’s “Zero” For Energy Future, Billions For Big Oil. Since launching his campaign for president in 2007, Sen. McCain has skipped out on every key environmental vote the Senate has considered, earning him a zero on the League of Conservation Voters scorecard this session. In one such instance, his absence killed the rollback of billions of dollars in oil subsidies for renewable energy investment. [LCV 2008]

– McCain’s Absence Allows GOP to Filibuster Oil-For-Renewables. By a roll call vote of 59-40 on December 13, 2007, Senate Democrats failed to muster the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster threatened by Republicans of compromise energy legislation with an oil-for-renewable tax package. The tax package rolled back $12.7 billion in tax breaks on the oil and gas industry to invest in renewable energy tax credits. Sen. John McCain, on the campaign trail, was the one senator not voting. [CQ 12/12/07] [Vote #425 12/13/07]

Having failed to act to roll back subsidies for Big Oil as a senator, McCain now has unveiled a tax plan which would provide an even greater “grab bag of handouts” to industry. As Wendy Norris at Colorado Confidential asks, “[W]ould a McCain presidency simply reprise the oil-and-gas-friendly Bush Administration for another four years?”

If you’re interested in a Green Jobs 101 (from the media, anyway), a good place to start is Wednesday’s New York Times article, “Millions of Jobs of a Different Collar.” But it’s not a perfect start, because the article fails to demonstrate an understanding of the scale of this movement, and the author could have taken heed to one of his co-worker’s pieces on green education and job-training.

Here’s how the article describes green jobs (emphasis added):

Presidential candidates talk about the promise of “green collar” jobs — an economy with millions of workers installing solar panels, weatherizing homes, brewing biofuels, building hybrid cars and erecting giant wind turbines. Labor unions view these new jobs as replacements for positions lost to overseas manufacturing and outsourcing. Urban groups view training in green jobs as a route out of poverty. And environmentalists say they are crucial to combating climate change.

For those reasons, the issue of green jobs is something the Center for American Progress has given a lot of attention. This is the creation of a workforce to power a low-carbon economy.

However, in the same places the article shows skepticism of green jobs, the article reveals that it does not entirely understand or convey the concept of a green workforce for a green economy.

Two cases in point. The article writes, “Welders at a wind-turbine factory are viewed as having green jobs, but what about the factory’s accountant or its janitors?” And later it quotes Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute: “There will undoubtedly be a lot of jobs created in industries that are considered green or fashionable. Some will last a long time, and some will go like the dot-coms.”

What you have to understand about green jobs is that they’re part of something much, much larger, and that’s the transition to the low-carbon economy. Another person quoted in the piece is Lois Quam, who commented, “When I first started looking at this area, many people commented on how this will be as big as the Internet. But this is so much bigger than the Internet. The only comparable example we can find is the Industrial Revolution. It will affect every business and every industry.”

She has a much better grasp of the notion. The earlier two are so focused in details that they’re missing the larger picture. Mr. Ebell is right, dot-com jobs disappeared, but the Internet (the essence) revolutionized. The same is true here, some green jobs may fall as fads, but so many of our fundamentals about the economy will have to change that the argument holds its own. (The same applies to the relevance of the janitor at the turbine factory.)

A perfect example of how such a dramatic, yet subtle shift occurs also ran in today’s New York Times, “Majoring in Renewable Energy“:

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William Chandler, director of the Carnegie Energy and Climate Program, has borrowed my phrase for the title of his new study– “Breaking the Suicide Pact: U.S.-China Cooperation on Climate Change.” It begins:

Together, China and the United States produce 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Their actions to curb or expand energy consumption will determine whether efforts to stop global climate change succeed or fail. If these two nations act to curb emissions, the rest of the world can more easily coalesce on a global plan. If either fails to act, the mitigation strategies adopted by the rest of the world will fall far short of averting disaster for large parts of the earth.

These two nations are now joined in what energy analyst Joe Romm has aptly called “a mutual suicide pact.” American leaders point to emissions growth in China and demand that Chinese leaders take responsibility for climate change. Chinese leaders counter that American per capita greenhouse gas emissions are five times theirs and say, “You created this problem, you do something about it.”

Great factoid from the report:

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the United States has produced 1,150 billion tons of carbon from fossil fuels, compared to China’s 310 billion tons.

Key Recommendations for U.S.-China Cooperation:

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