(image: Caveman 92223 via flickr.com)

In a Guardian opinion piece published on Wednesday, John Elkington and Gary Kendall make the case for a massive transformation of our hydrocarbon-based economy by mid-century, in response to pressures of the geological, geopolitical, and climate change variety. They point to the fact that even Big Oil knows by this point that we are at the beginning of the end, that the Age of Oil is in irreversible decline. And while the “big six” oil companies seem to be doing well on the surface, they are going to have to drastically change their tune to adapt to a shifting market.

Elkington and Kendall focus on the three aforementioned main factors that are pushing the world away from a carbon economy: geology, geopolitics, and climate change. Geopolitically, there are tensions among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations cropping up in the fight for what’s left of the world’s oil. The pair cites Nigeria and China specially, who are at odds over China’s attempts to lock up oil supplies in African countries.

Geologically, Elkington and Kendall argue that the new market won’t support the lengths to which big oil will need to go in order to procure a continued supply of oil. While there is still oil left in the world, we are going to have to turn more and more to “difficult oil,” or oil trapped deeper in the earth or under the sea. In an effort to satisfy investors, oil companies will be forced to go after riskier, dirtier substitutes like the Canadian Tar Sands, gas-to-liquid options in Qatar, or coal-to-liquid options in China and elsewhere. These prospects will add increased amounts of carbon emissions to the air, which brings us to another source of pressure: the climate.

The pair rightly points out that to really, truly avoid catastrophic climate change impacts, we must take action and drastically decrease our carbon emissions by 2050. They posit that to realistically meet this requirement, we will need to transition to a zero-carbon energy system by mid-century. They imagine a world of energy efficient buildings and appliances, one where we aren’t allowed to burn fossil fuel with no plan to capture emissions. They even go so far as to say that by 2050, the actions of big oil to unearth carbon resources for market will be considered “strikingly primitive.”

Now, I would love to think that Elkington and Kendall are right, and that we’re all going to make this thing work and be carbon-free by 2050. And maybe I’m extremely pessimistic, but I just don’t see it happening. Given the enormous uphill battle it is to convince one country, let alone the whole world, to do what needs to be done…I just can’t imagine that 2050 will bring a resolution. As Elkington and Kendall point out themselves, this new vision of the future is pretty hard to swallow for Big Oil, who, let’s face it, have a lot of control. As Al Gore recently told Jon Stewart, there just isn’t enough monetary incentive for big oil to make the kind of changes needed for a zero-carbon economy, and governments move too slowly. I wish so much that I could agree with the very intelligent Elkington and Kendall, but I just can’t. I think we’re in for a bumpy ride.

Image courtesy Sean Scanlon at http://www.redinkphotography.com/galleries/california/