[Trusties] Fairness of the Oil Depletion Protocol

[Sean Seefried]

>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm not economist but I can't really see how a free market economy
>> will allow us to decline from the brink without strife.  This article
>> solidifies that view. That's why I'm quite interested in Richard
>> Heinberg's Oil Depletion Protocol. (http://
>> www.oildepletionprotocol.org/) The basic idea is that a single, or a
>> series of, international treaties are drawn up in which countries
>> agree that whatever proportion of the world's oil supply that they're
>> using now will be the proportion they use into the future.  An  
>> example
>> will help. Say the U.S. uses 20% of the world's oil at present. Then
>> they agree that even under declines in production they will still  
>> only
>> use 20% of the oil. So if the world produces 87 million barrels a day
>> then the U.S. gets 17.4 million. If that drops to 70 million the U.S.
>> gets 14 million.
>>
>> Now we can argue about with this is likely to happen, whether nations
>> will sign such a treaty. But we can't really argue about its  
>> fairness,
>> in principle.  First, the variability in the amount nations consume  
>> at
>> present is huge. Some nations consume only tiny percentages of the
>> total while others take huge chunks. This might already be considered
>> unfair but at least it wouldn't get any worse under the protocol.  To
>> not sign such a protocol would be, in effect, to say, "I deserve as
>> much as I can get my hands on, through whatever means."
>>
>> This becomes a little untenable. At least when oil production was
>> increasing a nation could say to another, "There's plenty out there,
>> just go out an produce/buy more".  But this won't be the case  
>> during a
>> decline.
>>
> You're right, we could argue about whether countries will sign up to a
> treaty that restricts the proportion of oil they have access to, and  
> I'm
> guessing that we would be on the same side of the argument. I don't  
> know
> how you could claim this to be "fair" however. It's well accepted that
> imbalance of resource use is grossly unfair, and many are now using
> climate change as a chance to rectify this. Contraction and  
> Convergence
> is one protocol, designed not only to deal with limiting GG emissions,
> but also to redistribute resources (fossil fuel use) from developed
> nations to developing nations, allowing these nations to increase  
> living
> standards in the face of a global reduction in fossil fuel use. Of
> course this would require international co-operation on an  
> unimaginable
> scale, but is certainly more fair that any system which allows
> over-consuming nations to keep over-consuming. Just because a system
> that is unfair is prevented from becoming more unfair, doesn't mean it
> becomes fair. Fair enough??

Love that last line :-)

I should make myself more clear.  Naturally, there are degrees of  
fairness. I was only trying to make the point that no one could call  
the Oil Depletion Protocol less fair than "grab what you can get". I  
can't think of any reasonable objections to its improved fairness  
(over the current status quo). It's probably the smallest step away  
from the status quo towards true fairness you could make. (This also  
makes it more likely that it could be implemented.)  It would be  
stretching credulity to suggest that as decline occurs that some  
nations should be allowed to increase the proportion of the world's  
oil that they are using!

I'm a big fan of the idea of contraction and convergence and I'd be  
really interested to hear any views you have about how this could  
realistically be made possible.

Cheers,

Sean
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