David Fleming (writer) - Views and Ideas

Views and Ideas

His influential April 1999 article for Prospect magazine, The next oil shock?, interpreted the International Energy Agency’s 1998 report as predicting an impending global oil crisis. He later revealed that Fatih Birol – the future Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency – agreed to meet with him after reading the article, and confessed that “you are right… there are maybe six people in the world who understand this”. Fleming had a long history with peak oil, having been part of the team who wrote the Ecology Party pamphlet The Reckoning in 1977, which discussed the peak oil problem and our need to rethink our use of energy.

He developed the idea of TEQs - the most widely studied model for the implementation of a carbon rationing scheme - and founded The Lean Economy Connection to work on the application of Lean Thinking to economic theory and society in general. Until his death he remained a strong advocate for TEQs, and an ardent critic of nuclear power.

In his 2007 book The Lean Guide to Nuclear Energy: A Life-Cycle in Trouble, Fleming argues

• Every stage in the nuclear process, except fission, produces carbon dioxide. As the richest ores are used up, emissions will rise.
• Shortages of uranium - and the lack of realistic alternatives - leading to interruptions in supply, can be expected to start in the middle years of the decade 2010-2019, and to deepen thereafter.
• It is essential that radioactive waste should be made safe and placed in permanent storage. High-level wastes, in their temporary storage facilities, have to be managed and kept cool to prevent fire and leaks which would otherwise contaminate large areas.
• The world's endowment of uranium ore is now so depleted that the nuclear industry will never, from its own resources, be able to generate the energy it needs to clear up its own backlog of waste.