The stark warning came from Michael Meacher MP, a former environment minister of Tony Blair (1997-2003), writing in the Financial Times on 3 September 2006.
Meacher says the world is currently consuming around 84 million barrels of oil per day. But rising consumption from fast-growing economies such as China will propel this figure to 121m barrels by 2025, according to the US Energy Information Administration. And the oil is simply "not there", he writes, or far too costly to extract.
However, the prevailing policy pursued by the US and other major consuming nations is to safeguard access to remaining reserves instead of putting in place ambitious policies to move away from oil.
This is because competition for oil is increasing, Meacher writes. "Over the past year, China, India, Russia and Iran have … begun creating a central Asian 'energy club'," and signed energy deals worth $500 billion between each other. The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, created in 2001, currently comprises six countries - China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
"The economic end-game is clearly to dilute US efforts to dominate the Caspian Sea's energy reserves," Meacher writes, arguing that this would eventually lead to increased military tensions. He cites Johan Abizai, the commander of the US Central Command, as saying that "American forces may need to stay in Iraq indefinitely because of the oil."
"This is a turning point in history. Never before has a resource as fundamental as oil faced rapid decline without a substitute in sight," Meacher writes. "The self-destructive strategy of cornering diminishing oil and gas supplies must urgently be switched to building a new world energy order based on a renewables and hydrogen economy, alongside energy conservation. If it is not, we risk a second Great Depression, rising military tensions and the prospect of big wars," he concludes.
