The Twilight Zone (Peak Oil & 6 Reasons Why We Need to Act Now)

[chlamor]

The twilight zone

We've been warned about 'peak oil'- the day that heralds the end of cheap energy. It's the biggest threat to our lives and livelihoods, but no one is listening. Former industry insider Jeremy Leggett outlines the six reasons why we need to act now

25 April 2005

From time to time, the world is taken by surprise by a high-impact phenomenon that ought to have been foreseen. How, for example, did governments not manage to spot that CFCs would attack the ozone layer? What about global warming?

The answer is that some scientists do know these things are happening, but nobody listens. We have failed to learn the lessons made clear by such "oversight phenomena", and are currently facing the biggest short-term threat to our economic wellbeing that the modern world has ever seen, involving the commodity that society is most dependent on.

Almost nothing, however, is heard of the phenomenon of "peak oil". According to conventional wisdom, we have plenty of oil left. The current high oil prices will come to an end, whereafter we will be able to look forward to a return to cheap oil, and continuing supplies of it well into the century. Ergo, our oil-addicted economies can remain healthy and continue to grow. We have plenty of time to develop alternatives to oil. No need for concern, much less panic.

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=632811&host=3&dir=507

[mhr]

1. I Can Hear Rod Serling Now ....

Ladies and Gentleman, we open for your consideration, a species run wild and the consequences of overpopulation ...

[nightfire]

2. I can also hear P. T Barnum

It would be the height of stupidity to assume the oil flow goes on at the same (or higher) rate forever. So bring on alternative sources and conservation.

At the same time, it is just a bit suspicious that this theory gets popularized at the moment when an idiotic imperial war and an oligopolistic lock on oil supplies create a doubling in price in just two years. Tell the yokels - one born every minute - we reluctantly have to gouge them because oil all of a sudden got scarce.