Peak Oil and a Changing Climate
January 5, 2011
The scientific community has long agreed that our dependence on fossil fuels inflicts massive damage on the environment and our health, while warming the globe in the process. But beyond the damage these fuels cause to us now, what will happen when the world's supply of oil runs out?
The scientific community has long agreed that our dependence on fossil fuels inflicts massive damage on the environment and our health, while warming the globe in the process. But beyond the damage these fuels cause to us now, what will happen when the world's supply of oil runs out?
Peak Oil is the point at which petroleum production reaches its greatest rate just before going into perpetual decline. In “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate,” a new video series from The Nation and On The Earth productions, radio host Thom Hartmann explains that the world will reach peak oil within the next year if it hasn’t already. As a nation, the United States reached peak oil in 1974, after which it became a net oil importer.
Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and the other scientists, researchers and writers interviewed throughout “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” describe the diminishing returns our world can expect as it deals with the consequences of peak oil even as it continues to pretend it doesn’t exist. These experts predict substantially increased transportation costs, decreased industrial production, unemployment, hunger and social chaos as the supplies of the fuels on which we rely dwindle and eventually disappear.
Chomsky urges us to anticipate the official response to peak oil based on how corporations, news organizations and other institutions have responded to global warming: obfuscation, spin and denial. James Howard Kunstler says that we cannot survive peak oil unless we “come up with a consensus about reality that is consistent with the way things really are.” This documentary series hopes to help build that consensus. Click here to watch the introductory video, and check back here for new videos each Wednesday.
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3 comments:
I have heard this topic a lot lately. It is quite alarming but common sense dictates this day would come. I foresee a return to smaller community based farming and industries. Which to my mind, isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm beginning to see a need to become more friendly, interdependent, and accountable in our local communities.
Dee, thanks so much for posting this. What an incredibly thoughtful, and sobering presentation, by a number of thoroughly convincing and competent speakers. I have no illusions, and can only nod my head in sad agreement.
The United States public has had a giant set of blinders attached to its collective head, blocking peripheral vision, allowing the eyes to only look straight ahead at some gleaming Shangri La in the desert (Las Vegas ?) where all are rich and living in glamor and glitz with limousines and prostitutes taking care of their every need.
For quite a long time I've been referring to it as the House of Cards In the Desert phenomenon. We've built a vast house of cards on an irrigated patch of desert (Phoenix ?), but one of these days a swirling dust devil on a giant scale is going to blow our house of cards to smithereens.
The three terms that worry me most in your text here are "hunger, unemployment, and social chaos". That's the part that is really going to hurt. After the companies go bankrupt and fail, after the supermarkets are empty, after the farms have been plundered by migrating hordes in rags... then what ?
National Geographic's cover story which just came out is about the world population reaching 7 billion this year. Imagine 7 billion people, or more, when push comes to shove, ready to turn into cannibals when other sources of food have vanished...
No wonder there are survivalist groups arming themselves in the mountains of Idaho and holing up deep in the hills.
It seems obvious that there is a huge amount of spin and propaganda circulating supporting the business as usual, maintain the status quo approach. It is very positive, no matter how frightening, to see some extremely intelligent, well educated humans, speaking plainly and clearly here about a reality for which they can have no possible motives of self interest or personal profit to promote.
The question is : Where do we take it from here, knowing what we currently know ?
All I can see is :
We need to stop population growth now, immediately, allowing natural attrition to act... Religious leaders who continue to urge reckless procreation without limits should be sanctioned heavily, they are totally irresponsible in today's world.
We need to stop oil consumption, or drastically reduce it, and switch back to sail driven ships, and horse drawn transport, or solar electric cars, etc ...
We need to halt production of arms and weapons of all kinds, disarm the armed thugs at large, and stop romanticizing our worldwide culture of violence...
We need to stop emptying the oceans of fish and whales, and start producing food naturally, without the current huge reliance on chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Bhopal was just a wakeup call...
We need to take a hard look at what we can learn from so-called aboriginal peoples about how to live in harmony with the earth, if there is still time to do so...
Etc. ad nauseum...
Sorry for ranting in your space here, but I do feel strongly about these issues...
....the sky too, is folding in on you, and it's all over now, baby blue."
Well, it's quite simple for a little while, what to do when the oil is all gone. Most important: Learn to start a fire with pieces of your IKEA furnishings. After that, we can only resort to eating our hearts out.
Youtube: How to start a fire with IKEA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzXOVbYUamc&feature=related
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