Crude Awakenings on peak oil – Are we doomed?

“Oil is our God”

Just finished watching A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash.

Black blood. Excrement of the Devil. Blood of the Earth. Whatever you want to call it, oil – and its cheap abundant energy – is the root of our technological civilization. It is the life blood of today’s world.

However, thou giveth, thou taketh away.

Quite quickly peak oil could wipe out the civilization that cheap oil created, or at least that’s the message of Crude Awakening.

Once oil is gone, it will be immensely difficult to replace. And, even if it can be replaced, the replacement will almost certainly cost much more than oil, much more than .00 per gallon – MUCH more. Yet, today, there is no real world solution to cost-effectively replacing oil that has been proven technologically feasible.

Moreover, there is little hope of politicians – anywhere in the world – taking the lead on this issue according to experts in the film. Quite simply, the truth is too hard to swallow, but if peak oil is real and near, today’s economic crisis will be the last good times most of us ever see.

Ultimately, America needs less cars, much more public transportation, efficiency at all levels, and a huge gas tax to wake Americans up to the reality of the future. The days of cheap energy are over or soon to be over. The sooner that is accepted the better the chances of surviving this imminent catastrophe.

How bad could it get? Worse than you can imagine.

How about the end of the airline industry, for instance? I mean you’ll NEVER fly anywhere again. And that isn’t even the extreme end. Without oil’s cheap energy, the planet is incapable of supporting more than a couple billion people, at best, which means the majority of the people in the world would need to die.

No political issue today in America should be more important than ending foreign oil dependency, as a start. We cannot move fast enough towards efficiency and towards alternative energy.

Sure President Obama is taking more steps than George Bush, but they are baby steps, and without a few giant leaps, the game might already be over.