'Peak'-a-boo

An interview with a ghost from many Christmases past: The Right Honorable Edward Schreyer, newly-declared candidate for Parliament, who threatens to reveal the big secret

by Dan Crawford

During May this year, the 4th International Workshop on Oil and Gas Depletion Conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal. Former Canadian Governor General Edward Schreyer participated on a panel titled “The Depletion Protocol: Panel Discussion on Political Action.”

On December 15th, Schreyer announced his candidacy in Canada's 2006 federal election, an unprecedented move for a former Governor General. All media in Canada has focused solely on the controversial comments that Schreyer made nearly 20 years ago. The Republic is the only source to have interviewed Schreyer and uncover his true motivations for returning to politics. Schreyer revealed that if he is successful in his campaign, he intends to be the first politician to raise the issue of Peak Oil in Canada's Parliament.

Republic : What solutions or preparations are you advocating when it comes to Peak Oil?

Ed Schreyer: To begin the transition to renewables and subside or diminish the rate of depletion of oil and gas. That is the first step to begin the transition now because the lead-times involved are very considerable.

Republic : What message do you have for the youth of this country in dealing with their uncertain future?

Schreyer: To continue your insistence on better conservation and efficiency efforts and continue to improve those standards and those efforts; to watch the current generation of policy makers to see whether they are making real and genuine efforts towards conservation, efficiency and renewables, as opposed to doing lip service and press release service only.

Republic : Has anything come as a result of being involved with the 4th International Workshop on Oil and Gas Depletion in Lisbon?

Schreyer: I have had contact with Colin Campbell. In fact I've been to his home. I think these conferences are important but could become much more so if media attention were more genuinely involved. And by that I mean that it’s hard to know [about Peak Oil] without doing a systematic investigation of the matter. But it seems to me that the media has certainly not given particular attention to the oil and gas depletion issue and it’s impossible to know, or at least so far we have not been able to find out, if this is something that is a matter of deliberate policy or whether it’s something that is decided at the writer’s desk or whether its decided in the publishers’ and editors’ boardrooms.

But either way, no one would surely argue the point, the point being that, thus far, the media has given very disproportionately small attention to what I consider to be one of the most dramatic issues looming on the horizon.

The reason for this, I'm sorry I cannot explain to you, simply because I do not understand it myself. Why is it that the media is not giving more attention, not just during this election campaign, but in the past five years to Peak Oil and oil depletion and so on? I believe that there is a media strategy or at least a media pre-inclination to minimize the coverage, or conversely to play it off against the “there's lots of oil” lobby.

I don't know if you have noticed, but there is a peculiar sort of double campaign or self-canceling campaign going on here. The best example I can give you of that is Chevron Oil and also BP. Now BP, they have changed their name and logo by having a logo of the sun and the word “BP” is now spelled out as “beyond petroleum.” Now in the same vein, Chevron later, about four to five months later, began an advertising campaign, “Will You join us?”

When you read it at first it seems all very genuine and dramatic evidence or acceptance of the notion that the word “depletion” really does mean something to them, that they are finally acknowledging that. But in the case of both of them notwithstanding all this, they later go on in lengthier statements to imply that there is enough oil for the next 30 to 40 years.

You can hardly blame people who haven't had the chance or the time to do in depth research. You can hardly blame them for getting completely confused.

However if you look carefully at the Chevron statement and weigh it against the Peak Oil message, it isn't a complete contradiction. Because Peak Oil says that there will be, unquestionably, there will be oil around, but that the ability to produce it in a way that is commensurate with demand will slowly and steadily diminish and the consequence of the demand gap is that immediately the price goes haywire, that’s with Peak Oil, and Chevron says there’s enough for 30 years and well, yeah, but they don't make it clear that within those 30 years, there will be oil, but there will not be enough to meet demand necessarily and that's something they fudge.

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