Our dangerous addiction to ugly oil
PLANET OIL BBC Two, 9pm OIL is ugly, or at least the squabbling over it during the referendum was. One side said oil was a problem; the other said it was a panacea. Its political consequences around the world are ugly too. And look at the way it scars the environment: the ugly infrastructure, the birds trying to lift wings weighed down with black gloop.
But this series has proved something rather surprising: oil can be beautiful as well. Standing by a massive cliff that looked like it was auditioning for Broadchurch, Professor Iain Stewart prizes out a piece of shale rock and subjects it to the heat of a blowtorch. It is accelerated geology, millennia reduced to a few seconds because mainstream television can’t wait around. It is mesmerising, a wonderful feat of natural engineering.
In tonight’s third and final episode of the series, Prof Stewart relates how oil from the North Sea (which in its early years rivalled the production levels of Saudi Arabia) along with other oil sources around the world led to a glut in the 1980s and 90s and economic boom times, which in turn fuelled increasing demand from across the globe. We thought it would keep going. We also thought we could build whole economies on it. And then the oil price dropped, and dropped, and dropped.
One of the points Professor Stewart makes in this episode is that there is still a lot of fossil fuel left in the ground (indeed, about 40 per cent of the reserves of oil in the North Sea are still uncollected) but how does that work next to the Western world’s commitment to reduce CO2 emissions? “As world leaders meet in Paris later this year, to try to yet again thrash out a global deal to cut emissions, the real question is can we afford to burn what’s left?” says Prof Stewart. “Can Planet Oil kick its addiction?”
How hard that will be was outlined in the first episode when Stewart got ready in the morning and pointed out how much of the paraphernalia of the home was oil-based: the plastic alarm clock that woke him up, the shower head, shower gel, bath mat, toothpaste, tooth brush, fridge, cereal carton, magazine, television, fuel, tyres, detergents, takeaway cup and so on. Kicking all of that will not be easy.