peak oil – CleanSpeak

Conventional wisdom: real and manufactured

Even as winds of change sweep through the media landscape, it remains a truth that the first audience for any pitch is the reporter. Without a compelling pitch that resonates with the reporter, your story will not get written and therefore will not influence the end-reader audience.

It’s interesting, then, to see a campaign succeed with that initial target audience even as it butts up against a reality that could torpedo it.

This past Memorial Day Weekend, I happened upon an article in The Boston Globe (yes, I still have dead tree media delivered to my door, daily) assuring readers that the price of gasoline this summer would not be as expensive as last summer. Why the lower price? Well, according to article author Erin Ailworth, “The main reason is the boom in US production of crude oil, which accounts for about two-thirds of the price of gas. As a result of the controversial drilling process known as “fracking” that frees oil from shale formations, US crude is flooding global markets and holding down prices.”

That line has become conventional wisdom in the media, as well it should. As I’ve blogged in the past, vested fossil energy interests have expended a lot of effort to create it. A steady wave of research papers from institutes, investment houses, agencies and academics with ties to the energy industry have received breathless uptake in the media. Those who have taken critical views of those papers have been largely ignored. Not really a surprise because people prefer information that assures them the world they’ve known will continue on untroubled. The media, like corporations, is made up of people and the message they’ve been receiving on a regular basis from fossil-fueled sources is that all is well.

The problem with this manufactured conventional wisdom is reality. If you make it to the bottom of that Globe article you come across this paragraph:

In the meantime, gas prices remain historically high and may convince some people to stay close to home, said Mary Maguire, spokeswoman for AAA Southern New England. The auto association estimates that 34.8 million Americans will journey 50 miles or more from home during the holiday, a decline of about 1 percent from last year, when 35.1 million people traveled.

So, yeah, reality. Fracking for oil is expensive, both in terms of labor and materials. Those sustained high prices are tamping demand in the US, especially among those who remain among the ranks of the unemployed. Faced with a dearth of summer jobs and low wages, teens, too, appear to be less interested in dropping $60 or$100 in the tank every week to cruise around.

Meanwhile in what are still called “the emerging economies” of countries such as China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam, demand for refined petroleum products continues to climb. That rising demand will more than make up for declining demand here in the US. That trend will ensure both high gasoline prices and that fracking for oil remains a profitable endeavor. But, profitable or not, it’s unlikely to result in production rates that can replace that lost from depleting conventional wells and this trend will also help ensure prices for crude stay high enough to keep frackers in business.

And as the fracked oil flows, the conventional wisdom will as well, while people at the pump bump into the underlying reality of a world no longer awash in cheap fossil energy.

Export Land Model watch – news from the Citi

Once upon a time, the United States of America was the world’s largest oil exporter. We grew rich from the oil we sold and the oil we used powered new industries and ways of living that, in turn, amped up our use of oil until we had nothing to spare. Simultaneously, natural events ran their course and oil fields became less productive, causing domestic production to peak in the early 1970s.

That about sums up the Export Land Model, a conundrum I touched upon in a previous post. Now, it seems to be playing out, with its own localized twists in the home of the current number one oil exporter, Saudi Arabia.

Earlier this month, a report by analysts at Citigroup echoed that assessment, saying that the world’s biggest oil exporter may become “an importer” by 2030 due to rising domestic use – which the Citgroup analysis estimated was growing by about eight percent per year.

Even more recently, a Reuters story notes that Saudi Arabia burned record monthly volumes of oil in June and July. The story notes that the reason for the increase is a need to produce more electricity for air conditioning. Unlike the United States and most other Western countries, Saudi Arabia uses oil to produce a large percentage of its electricity. Switching to solar would seem to be a no-brainer – they have a surplus of sun and the rise in oil prices is keeping the cash pipeline flowing. The trick is in the transition.

This Wall Street Journal article has some good numbers and perspective on the challenges the Saudis (and other OPEC countries) face in trying to transition up to a third of their electricity generation to alternatives by 2032.

Meanwhile, a story from this week quotes the Saudis as saying that they will be turning increasingly to natural gas for electricity generation to reduce their dependence on oil.

Ditching one fossil fuel for another to generate electricity? That sounds really familiar – where have I heard that idea before?

Why they were wrong

Back in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, environmentalists warned of coming disaster. The air would soon become unbreathable, clean water would be as rare as unicorn dander. Didn’t happen. That these dire warnings failed to accurately predict our present-day circumstances is often cited as evidence that any similar such claims – about, say, climate change or peak oil – should be taken with more than a pinch of salt, if not outright ignored as the usual ravings of hyperventilating Cassandras.

So why were those earlier prognosticators of doom wrong? Because they were right. Environmental degradation was a growing problem. Rivers actually were catching fire in these United States. Air quality in major metropolitan areas truly was bordering on the Dickensian. Acid really was falling from the skies as rain and a hole was opening in the ozone layer. By raising the issues with urgency, passion and creativity, environmentalists of the day were able to engage the larger public in these problems and build support for solutions: the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, for instance.

That public engagement and support for solutions helped ensure passage of legislation at the state and federal level that would guarantee those dire warnings of environmental Armageddon would not come true.

So, here we are again. Credible science and analysis points to real and pressing problems with the climate and energy supply. Dire warnings are being penned by those doing and as well as those interested in the science. Will their dystopian futures also fail to materialize? That, unfortunately, is an open question.

Unlike the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, today’s Internet-driven communications environment makes confusion and apathy as easy to create as clarity and action. What will finally ensure that today’s doomsayers are as inaccurate as yesterday’s? Compelling stories.

Those seeking to compel the actions that will ultimately prove their prophecy wrong must recognize that, for humans, story trumps data. For scientists and engineers, good data tells a compelling story. But for most people, a metaphor works better.

With the science established and consequences beginning to play out, bridging that communication gap may well be the first and most important problem those seeking change will need to solve.

Good (and bad) to the last drop

Wildfires and heat waves have me thinking about peak oil, climate change and the efforts to convince folks that oil supply is not an issue. Here’s why. Across the Pond at the Guardian, George Monbiot, a British writer well known for his environmental activism, has recently declared Peak Oil a dead letter, lamenting that there is still enough in the ground to fry the climate. True, but also wrong.

Beyond the basic flaw of interpreting “Peak Oil” as shorthand for “imminently running out of,”others have done a detailed job rebutting not only Monbiot’s misunderstandings, but also the study that was his inspiration. My interest, however, is on the “boom” in oil production he mentions and this lament toward the bottom of the piece: “Twenty years of efforts to prevent climate breakdown through moral persuasion have failed…”

And I suspect that failure will continue. While some people are moved to change by the havoc wrought on the environment in pursuit of unconventional sources of fossil fuel, the vast majority aren’t – or are willing to look the other way.

The destruction Canada is doing to pristine wilderness in Alberta isn’t a secret, but it’s only increasing. That Macondo well blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico a couple years back is still showing up in the coastal environment, but that hasn’t prevented large oil companies with spotty safety records from receiving permission to drill in even more hostile and environmentally sensitive places, like the Arctic.

But, humans are risk and change averse. We will stay with what we know, even if it’s got problems, rather than risk a radical change. Oil has proven it has the power – quite literally – to transform life from a nasty, brutish and short struggle for survival into a comfortable, convenient and extended tussle for entertainment. Moral persuasion is unlikely to make headway against that perception. People like comfort and convenience, not to mention entertainment.

The vast majority of “consumers” are not interested in going back to a mythically bucolic future. Even “country folk” like their gas-guzzling pick-up trucks, bass boats, chain saws and ATVs. They make life easier and more fun.

The challenge for those who care about our environment, and the affect fossil fuel use is having on it, is to care about our current lifestyle; what it offers and what it doesn’t.

Green and sustainable are, at base, moral persuasion arguments and they’re not working. Can your alternative, sustainable, greener offering make daily life more comfortable, convenient, secure or safe? Can it help a business be demonstrably more profitable, or insulate it from uncertainty in a key area?

If so, then that’s your lead message because for most consumers the only alternative they’re eager to embrace, especially in times of uncertainty, is one that improves their life.

I know it when I see it

Unlike advertising, well-executed PR doesn’t hit you over the head. Rather, it becomes an organic part of the public conversation, shaping and directing it, often by defining key terms and setting acceptable boundaries of thought and belief. So, as a professional in the field, it is with no small amount of interest that I have watched a recent rash of stories popping up in some fairly weighty mainstream outlets – Bloomberg BusinessWeek, for example and Forbes.com – declaring that new developments in unconventional oil sources, primarily shale, have finally – or, perhaps, once again – disproved the Peak Oil “theory” that purportedly states we’re running out of oil.

This rash of Peak Oil denial articles has the earmarks of a classic PR push. How so? Well, sifting through the stories, I see a characteristic attempt to shape the conversation by redefining key terms and setting boundaries of discussion. A couple examples:

Peak Oil = running out: This shows up in a number of the articles and, for those who follow the issue, it’s an obvious misstatement. Peak Oil is primarily about rates of production, secondarily about the cost of those production rates and then about the net energy yield from that production. But that’s complicated. More casual readers won’t stay with a complicated discussion. An effective PR approach is to simplify the complication in a way that bolsters your position. In this case, inaccurately portraying Peak Oil as a claim that the world is “running out” of oil makes it credible to point to expensive, low flow rate sources like tar sands and shale oil as proof that we’re not.

It’s a Theory: A favorite from the playbook, you may recognize it from efforts to discredit the teaching of evolution. The American public, generally speaking, has a poor understanding of how science defines and uses terms. What most people call a theory, science might call a hypothesis – more akin to speculation or, at best, an educated guess. In the natural sciences, the term “theory” is applied to concepts whose explanatory powers comport accurately and consistently with empirical observations. But, again, that’s complicated. Going with the common misconception and consistently associating Peak Oil with the term theory subtly, but powerfully, discredits it in the mind of the casual reader.

So, why the rash of articles now? From a PR standpoint, it may have had something to do with a recent article in the prestigious journal, Nature, in which two respected scientists declared that Peak Oil was not only real, but already here. In PR we call this an appeal to authority. Casual readers likely don’t have access to Nature’s pay wall to read the article or follow the work of either scientist who authored the piece. But, the casual reader will place more credibility in the Peak Oil “theory” if it’s reported that an august publication has published an article by two respected scientists in support of it. If you’re in the fossil fuel extraction business, that’s a five-alarm PR emergency.