Price sores

When oil production starts to fall, the economic impacts could well be devastating.

When prices rise, will the political will to fight climate change wilt?Soaring crude prices could tip the world into a depression deeper than that of the 1930s, and collapsing stock markets cripple our ability to finance the expensive clean energy infrastructure we need.
As the unemployment lines grow, the political will to tackle climate change may be sapped by the need to keep the lights burning as cheaply as possible.
Many environmentalists seem to dismiss or ignore peak oil because they simply cannot see it as significant when compared to climate change.
But this is to miss the point.
Oil depletion is deadly serious in its own right, but it also has the capacity both to worsen emissions and destroy the wealth needed to fight global warming.
For this reason - among others - it too has the power to destroy our civilisation.