“We can wait until a crisis forces us to do something. Or we can commit to working together, and start by asking the tough questions: How do we meet the energy needs of the developing world and those of industrialized nations? What role will renewables and alternative energies play? What is the best way to protect our environment? How do we accelerate our conservation efforts?…”
I rubbed my eyes again. Most of this ad, part of a new campaign by an oil major, might easily have been taken more or less word for word from any of the pieces Michael Klare — author of the indispensable Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum — has been writing for Tomdispatch over these many months. When Klare writes such passages and they prove accurate somewhere down the line, they can perhaps be called “prescient.” When the Chevron ad people do the same, what you have is something like a confession reflecting a seismic shift in mainstream consciousness — and we have to take our seismic shifts where we find them. After all this time, it seems that “peak oil” may suddenly be on some part of Big Oil’s agenda, which tells you something about the cul-de-sac into which we’ve blithely managed to drive our SUVs.