Climate change & peak oil – they’re Yin & Yang

We have barely scratched the surface of the psychology of climate change, but before we go too far can I make a plea for it to be studied in tandem with peak oil, which the UK Energy Research Centre recently concluded would be with us before 2020, and which the UK government has not yet woken up to.

Climate change without peak oil is like Punch without Judy, gin without tonic, Rodgers without Hammerstein. Cheap fossil fuels created manmade climate change. Expensive fossil fuels, or learning to live with life after cheap oil , will be a key part of the solution.

Those of us who have been using the language of the apocalypse to explain why action is urgent now find ourselves changing our tune. Sometimes that’s because of the Transition Towns movement and its emphasis on looking forward positively to an age when we have dealt with climate change and learnt to live without cheap oil. Sometimes it’s because we’ve read the market research which says that Britain understands that there’s a problem, but isn’t being motivated to take action because the threat is perceived to be too far off and because of muddled messaging from the government and the media.

A vision of a positive future, where the dragon has been slain and the princess has been won, will work for some. For others the message will need to be about cutting carbon pollution, ending energy waste, saving money and taking control of our lives from energy companies who have us over an oil barrel. And another group will take action if it seems fun and fashionably.

But then there’s the rebound effect. There’s a growing body of research which suggests that when energy efficiency measures are installed the energy bill savings are taken in terms of higher thermostat temperatures or, worse, cheap flights. The Camden Eco House, a refurbished Victorian property, was meant to reduce emissions by 80% but it didn’t because the new occupants, a large family from Camden’s long housing waiting list, pushed the thermostat up to 25°C!

Undoubtedly we can all be clearer about explaining climate change and peak oil, in ways that make people psychologically more likely to take action. But I suspect that for most people behavioural change is likely to come with price rises. Either we wait for peak oil to push the cost of energy up as it inevitably will, or we bring in carbon taxes and hope for the best, or we institute a system of carbon rationing or tradable energy quotas which to my mind is the fairest solution and the only one that will get us where we need to go.

Either way, climate change and peak oil – they’re Yin and Yang!