The IEA puts a date on peak oil production

FATIH BIROL, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA), believes that if no big new discoveries are made, "the output of conventional oil will peak in 2020 if oil demand grows on a business-as-usual basis." Coming from the band of geologists and former oil-industry hands who believe that the world is facing an imminent shortage of oil, this would be unremarkable. But coming from the IEA, the source of closely watched annual predictions about world energy markets, it is a new and striking claim.

I don't know what's most striking: the claim the Economist refers to, the fact that it's actually mentioned by the article, or the fact that it's mentioned with so little prominence.

In other words, this is like the articles about asset bubbles 4 years ago: there's enough publicly available information out there that there is little doubt about the underlying reality, the newspapers will be able to claim that they did cover the topic appropriately, and the topic can safely continue to be ignored by politicians, pundits and deciders. The topic is dismissed and neutralised and no policy conclusions need to be reached - and in particular no change to the system - and to the profits made by the incumbents and insiders need to be made.

Funnily enough:

The IEA reckons that co-ordinated action to restrict the increase in global temperatures to 2ºC will restrict global demand for oil to 89m b/d in 2030, compared with 105m b/d if no action is taken. That, Mr Birol says, "could push back the peak of production, as it would take longer to produce the lower-cost oil that remains to be developed." Action on climate change may yet save the world from an early supply crunch.

If any action or event is going to save the world from catastrophe, it's much more likely that fossil fuel scarcity will reduce carbon emissions, by reducing economic "growth" as we know it (and, possibly, but we can't put our hopes on this, because there simply won't be enough carbon around to burn). The good news is that the solutions to both problems (climate change and resource scarcity) are pretty much the same: energy efficiency, renewables, a re-definition of what economic propserity is. The bad news is that there's still a large consensus amongst serious people to do as little as possible to actually implement these.