Thanksgiving Day is a special day for those following the peak oil news. Geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, author of Hubbert's Peak, predicted that Thanksgiving Day 2005 would mark the peak in world oil production. When he made the prediction, in January the year before, his tongue was only slightly in his cheek. Deffeyes was not quite right, but he was close. Current data put the peak (so far, at least) 6 months earlier or 8 months later, depending on how you measure it.

So while Thanksgiving Day is not, in fact, the anniversary of peak oil, we can still give thanks in the way that Deffeyes encouraged us to do so that year: Thanks for the services of the first half of recoverable world oil. "Thanks for the services of the first half of recoverable world oil. Thanks for the automobile, the airplane, diesel trains and ships, two-lane blacktop, warm houses, plastics, [nylon and polyster,] and a huge range of petrochemicals. [The Thanksgiving dinner itself] was produced with fertilizers, tractor fuel, pesticides, and transportation provided by oil and natural gas." And 38 million of us in the US will use oil to travel 50 miles or more to eat that Thanksgiving dinner.

Of course, oil has been a mixed blessing. The age of oil has also brought the age of World Wars, poisonings from pollution on an unprecedented scale, destruction of cities for parking lots and ugly suburbs, and habitat destruction, climate change, and other pressures that threaten most species on the planet, including ours.

As we give thanks for the blessings of oil, let us us keep in mind the curses of oil, and let us ask for the wisdom to use the remaining half of the world's oil reserves more for useful, durable products than throw-away plastic cutlery, more for insulating homes and constructing wind turbines than for heating drafty homes and generating electricity, and more for medicines and food production than for guns and warplanes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Update 20071125: Modified the second paragraph to indicate where I was quoting Deffeyes. This post was adapted from a script I'd written to be read on my radio show. I didn't see the need to use quotation marks for something only I was going to see, especially when the text indicated that I was quoting Deffeyes. However, the written word has different conventions, and I regret the original omission.