Climate: Even oilmen believe our planet is burning up
EconomicDemocracy Coop
executive of one of the biggest oil companies in the world: a man who
made his company billions of dollars..Over the tinkle of teacups, he
is predicting the end of civilisation...
"..Once I had decided to write a drama about climate change I spoke to
everybody who was prepared to
talk. Surprisingly, this turned out not just to be the usual
environmental suspects such as Greenpeace, Friends Of The Earth or
WWF, but people in the oil industry. And these weren't disaffected
whistle-blowers, but some senior figures who were prepared to step out
of the shadows and tell me just how scared they were..."
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Even oilmen believe our planet is burning up, says Full Monty writer
behind terrifying TV drama
By Simon Beaufoy
Last updated at 10:12 PM on 19th July 2008
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I am sitting in the office of a man who was, until recently, chief
executive of one of the biggest oil companies in the world: a man who
made his company billions of dollars. I listen, make the odd nervous
note and reflect that it's been a long road since I wrote one of
Britain's best-loved films, The Full Monty.
As a scriptwriter, I have met lots of powerful people, but my reaction
is always the same. When I went to the Oscars, I sat next to a
pleasant, elegant woman and chatted happily to her until somebody
pointed out it was Claudia Schiffer. After that, I could not utter
word.
But today it isn't because I am star-struck that I am terrified; it is
because the oil man is telling me the opposite of everything he should
say. Over the tinkle of teacups, he is predicting the end of
civilisation.
My friends give me uncomfortable looks about my new film, Burn Up,
because I have a Cassandra-like reputation for writing fiction about
things that later become fact.
Many years ago, I made a film called The Darkest Light about a and-
mouth disease outbreak. Two years later, it happened for real.
I wrote the script for another film called Yasmin that suggested
disaffected British Muslim youths could turn to terrorism. A year
later came the London suicide bombings.
I'm not boasting: I just listen to experts who prove frighteningly
accurate.
Burn Up - starring Rupert Penry-Jones, who played Adam Carter in the
hit BBC series Spooks - is about the moment runaway climate change
collides with an unprecedented oil crisis.
So given my track record, my friends are keen to know what happens at
the end.
Once I had decided to write a drama about climate change I spoke to
everybody who was prepared to talk.
Surprisingly, this turned out not just to be the usual environmental
suspects such as Greenpeace, Friends Of The Earth or WWF, but people
in the oil industry.
And these weren't disaffected whistle-blowers, but some senior figures
who were prepared to step out of the shadows and tell me just how
scared they were.
The oil man predicting an apocalypse was one of them. I had gone to
his office expecting him to tell me global warming was at best an
uncertain science based on dodgy data, at worst a Left-wing conspiracy
designed to tax us all to death.
Oil companies pumped out the oil that was producing the carbon
dioxide, so why would he tell me any different?
Sure enough, that's how the interview started. The world was 'going
through a 40-year transition period from a carbon economy to a
hydrogen economy' where oil would smoothly be replaced by other
sources of renewable energy.
He talked on convincingly. The tea-lady brought round the trolley. I
felt reassurance waft over me: the environmental scaremongers were
wrong.
Then I looked up. A '40-year transition period'? I cleared my throat,
and nervously suggested that Sir John Houghton, the scientist who led
the first Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change, had told me we
had at best ten years to stop the increase in global temperatures,
otherwise we were in danger of runaway climate change. Ten years tops.
Not 40.
The CEO stopped in his tracks. 'Oh, you've talked to him, have you?'
His tone changed.
He sat down heavily and said: 'Well, I know John and he's right, and
if you want to know what I really think, I think we're fiddling while
Rome burns.' He was the first of many to come to the confessional.
People who for the sake of their careers shouldn't even have returned
my phone calls were opening their hearts to me. Why such dangerous
honesty towards a writer?
I found the answer at a conference of the Tipping Point organisation
which puts artists and scientists together to learn about climate
change.
We met at Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre, in which were placed signs
reading 'politics', 'business', 'the media' and 'science'. We were
asked to stand under the sign we thought offered the most hope of
progress on the issue.
With some giggling and shoving, 200 people crowded underneath the
various signs. When this musical chairs for adults finally stopped,
there were just two people under the 'science' sign. Only one of them
was a scientist.
We were aghast. The room was full of eminent scientists from across
the world, yet none of them had the confidence to stand under their
own sign.
Why? ' Because nobody is listening, ' they answered. 'For 15 years
we've been warning about rising sea levels, melting icecaps, changes
in sea currents, weakening monsoons, the acidification of the ocean.
Yet nobody is listening to us.'
It is extraordinary. There are thousands of scientific studies by
climatologists, oceanologists, biologists - every ologist imaginable -
charting the current and future effects of climate change. Yet half
the population of this country still doesn't believe it.
Today, there's a lot of talk about renewable energy and the G8's
latest pledge of cutting carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2050. But
we've got ten years to turn this around, not 40.
Sir James Lovelock, author of the Gaia theory on the ecological
balance of the planet, told me it was like the days of appeasement
before the Second World War when Hitler was rearming, polishing the
boots of his stormtroopers and annexing countries while much of the
British Establishment chose to look the other way.
I was so frightened by what I heard that I put solar panels and a wind
generator on my roof, changed to a green electricity tariff, cycled
everywhere.
Did it make one jot of difference? No. But if I couldn't change my
behaviour knowing what I now knew, how could I expect a government to
change?
As I dug around the oil industry, I came across another extraordinary
elephant in the room that nobody dared mention, but which will become
crucial in the fight to prevent irreversible warming: Peak Oil.
This is what they call the moment when we start running out of the
stuff.
When I started on this journey, three years ago, oil was 50 dollars a
barrel and the Peak Oil theorists were dismissed as alarmist fringe
elements. We were apparently at least 50 years away from Peak Oil.
Anyone who dared to say different was simply laughed at.
But then I met a man employed by the oil industry to collate data on
oil reserves, and he told me that already we are not producing enough
oil to meet demand, and even if output were increased, it would be
used up by growing demand from China and India.
So, I asked, what did this mean?
'A global crash,' he said, 'at a guess somewhere between 2008 and
2010.'
I left his office on a beautiful, globally-warmed day with house
prices soaring and the financial markets blossoming. Clearly, the man
was nuts.
But who is nuts, now? Oil has hit 147 dollars a barrel, house prices
are plummeting and the stock markets are going through the floor. And
yet, still, is anyone listening?
Somehow, I had to turn a mass of complex science and politics into
something people would want to watch, but how could I dramatise carbon
dioxide, an enemy you can't see, smell or touch?
It would be like Spooks without the terrorists, The Wire without the
drug dealers.
I found the answer in men like John Ashton, Tony Blair's 'climate
tsar'. A former diplomat, he now shuttles between China and Europe,
patiently negotiating, encouraging, persuading the Chinese, soon to
become the world's biggest emitters of CO2, to sign up to emission
reduction targets.
You are unlikely to see his name anywhere, for that is certainly not
his style, but if we ever get ourselves out of this mess, it is people
such as John [and thousands of citizen-activists who push for change,
even more so -ED] who will have saved us.
And that's what gave me the key to Burn Up: the lies and duplicity of
the denial industry pitched against people desperate to prevent
runaway climate change.
I concealed a mass of factual science and politics inside the Trojan
Horse of a racy thriller.
And where does this leave me? What does Cassandra have to say about
the chances of humanity solving this most dangerous of puzzles?
You might be surprised to know that I believe there is still hope.
As Rupert Penry-Jones's character says in the film: 'Oil. Oil is
everything.' Its all-consuming use has caused the problem and now its
scarcity might just save us.
A spiralling price that triggers a global power-down could buy us the
time to stop the warming. In fact, it's happening right now.
Will it work? We're about to find out.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1036513/Even-oilmen-beli...
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Overview and local actions you can take: http://www.PostCarbon.org
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STILL FEELING LIKE THE MAINSTREAM U.S. CORPORATE MEDIA
IS GIVING A FULL HONEST PICTURE OF WHAT'S GOING ON?
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