This article was first published in Ecologist on 8 December 2009. Criticizing the Canadian tar sands used to be so simple. Environmentalists condemned them as a ‘climate crime’, while peak oilers argued they could never fill the gap left by conventional depletion. It turns out neither critique captures the full magnitude of the problem. In the light of the latest science, exploiting the tar sands threatens to damage not only the climate but also the long term fuel supply. (more…)...

First published at The Ecologist, 8 October 2009. There is a “significant risk” that conventional oil production will peak before 2020, and forecasts that delay the event beyond 2030 are based on assumptions that are “at best optimistic and at worst implausible”. (more…)...

By David Strahan. First published in the Ecologist, April 2007. What is it about climate change campaigners and peak oil – the two words you almost never hear them utter? The idea that global oil production will soon go into terminal decline ought to be a godsend; it makes the kinds of things they have been lobbying for all the more urgent and compelling. Yet most of the big NGOs continue studiously to ignore the idea. (more…)...