TomDispatch: Michael T. Klare: BP-Style Extreme Energy Nightmares to Come, Four Scenarios for the Next Energy Mega-Disaster

From TomDispatch this afternoon: In our extreme energy era, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico isn't a one-shot disaster but an arrow pointing to a nightmarish future -- Michael T. Klare, "BP-Style Extreme Energy Nightmares to Come, Four Scenarios for the Next Energy Mega-Disaster."

If you think the catastrophe in the Gulf is some kind of anomalous event (needing only better safety regulations), think again. "The only question is," writes energy expert and TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, "What will the next Deepwater Horizon disaster look like (other than another Deepwater Horizon disaster)?"

In his latest post, Klare offers four striking scenarios for future energy catastrophies in a world desperate for ever tougher-to-find, tougher-to-extract fossil fuels in ever more geologically, environmentally, and politically unsafe areas. A giant oil platform off Newfoundland is destroyed by an iceberg in a fierce north Atlantic winter storm in 2018. ("As a result, one of the world’s most prolific fishing grounds -- the Grand Banks off Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Cape Cod -- is thoroughly poisoned.") The U.S. finds itself in a literal quagmire oil war in Nigeria in 2013. A rare cyclone hits Brazil's "pre-salt" oil rigs, drilling for energy a mile and half under the water and from beneath two-and-a-half miles of shifting sand and salt, in 2020. ("In a matter of weeks, parts of Brazil’s coastal waters have become a 'dead ocean.'”) In 2022, China and Japan launch a resource war over disputed natural gas fields in the East China Sea amid environmental disaster.

None of these particular catastrophes is guaranteed to happen -- though all are based scrupulously on what's known today -- but what's guaranteed is an era of "extreme energy nightmares."

Another great post from Klare. This is must-read stuff.