If we do not aggressively change direction by 2020, it will be too late and we will be taken, by default, down the fossil fuel path. Sure, we have lots and lots of fossil fuel, enough to cover our needs for the next 500 years. Or do we? We geologists know that the concept of peak oil and peak gas referred only to conventional fossil fuel with standard methods of extraction. Peak is now irrelevant in the face of huge reservoirs of the so-called “unconventionals”, i.e., tar sands, gas shales and heavy oils, with the concomitant new methods of extraction to recover them including dangerous solvent injection and hydrofracking. We cannot ignore the horrendous environmental and health costs of a fossil fuel-dominated future because these costs are real and someone has to pay them. These very dirty “unconventionals” will not peak until far into the future, well past the next major global demographic and environmental tipping points that will alter our future beyond recognition.
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