As higher oil prices impact consumers, the media, bloggers, and at least one Congressman are beginning to give serious consideration to "Peak Oil," the controversial theory that predicts future world oil production will soon reach a peak and then rapidly decline. Though the actual peak year can only be known after it has passed, some predict the tipping point could come as early as this year. The worst case scenario would be the end of civilization. A more positive outcome, however, would be that a severe energy crunch would force us to find new ways of living that would radically transform how we think and are. A big open question is - do we have time to make the transition, or have we already squandered too much of our precious time and resources on oil wars?
I have done a fair amount of research on this fascinating topic during the past week, and will try to post more information in the coming days. In the meantime, here is a primer from an article in Rolling Stone.
The Long Emergency What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle? Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality." What you're about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.
The few Americans who are even aware that there is a gathering global-energy predicament usually misunderstand the core of the argument. That argument states that we don't have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems. We only have to slip over the all-time production peak and begin a slide down the arc of steady depletion.
We are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.
It will change everything about how we live.
This is going to be a permanent energy crisis, and these energy problems will synergize with the disruptions of climate change, epidemic disease and population overshoot to produce higher orders of trouble.
The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope -- that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on. If there is any positive side to stark changes coming our way, it may be in the benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately (and physically) with our neighbors, to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social enactments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom. Years from now, when we hear singing at all, we will hear ourselves, and we will sing with our whole hearts.
Technorati tag: Peak Oil
Posted by Diana at April 11, 2005 08:57 AM