A rambling look at how Peak Oil is going to save our species, and other interesting points.

As we draw into the year two-thousand and nine, the troublesome nagging that I have felt for most of my life has finally manifested itself into a tangible thing. Looking around me, I see all the evidence pointing to the collapse of the current global order, and absolutely no concrete evidence to the contrary.

There are, of course, a multitude of well crafted arguments that we can keep living the way we are indefinitely without consequence, but in reality there is no way to continue to support the system we have built around us. It is a system that depends, by its very nature, on the continued exploitation of natural resources at a rate that must be larger by a significant margin than the rate of exploitation of the previous year, in order to support the rate of exploitation for the following year. This has lead to exponential rates of pollution and destruction around the globe, the price for which we are now beginning to pay.

To look around at our society and break it down to its basest components, there is no reason why anyone (except those at the top) would want to keep this system going. For the past 60 years, we’ve watched the basest freedoms that we fought for centuries to gain be stripped away with nary a whisper in protest. As a result, there is little difference in freedom between the average Canadian/American/British/etc citizen and the average peasant in Burma or China.

We are fed food that is almost entirely bereft of nutritional content. We are swayed into happy apathy by being bombarded by useless and mind-numbing entertainment in a vast variety of forms. Our children are sent to schools where they are taught to fit into the system, never question authority, and where being average is rewarded higher than being excellent.

Alexander Fraser Tytler, in 1800 AD identified that a democratic system could only exist at most for two hundred years before collapsing under the weight of corruption and dictatorial rule. In examining the supposedly democratic countries around the world today, this rule has never had a more perfect example to support it. The worlds oldest bastions of democracy are even now crumbling under the weight of corruption, one only has to look to Britain or the USA, both democratic for almost 250 years, to see the evidence of this.

What can we do, you ask? A good question, and a hard one to answer. In the past century, we have witnessed a gulf between government and the people imposed by technology that effectively removes the ability of the common man to revolt against any repression. It is no longer sword against sword, rifle against rifle. Now it is rifle against machine gun and napalm.

Sadly, this situation leads to the inevitable problem of terrorism: The only way to remove the oppressors from power is to revolt, but overt revolution of the masses is made impossible against such incredible weaponry in the hands of the powers that be. So, the solution is to go underground, to start the revolution by way of sneak attacks and silent shots in the night. By doing this, however, the revolutionaries are then caught in a catch-22: They are working to free the people, but the government will turn the people against them by using the media to brand them as terrorists against the “common good”.

“Well then, there is nothing we can do!” would be the simplest response to these points. If you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t, isn’t the best idea to simply make the best of a bad situation and try to live your life happily? I suppose this ideology might have worked for past generations, but unfortunately that attitude is no longer possible to adopt. Should our generation take that stance, decide to settle for second best and let the rapists keep on raping unstopped, We will face the ultimate destruction of the planet, and the very SURVIVAL of our SPECIES AS A WHOLE will be put into serious question.

This is not the middle ages. This is not the Industrial Revolution. Where previous generations had the option of “bending over and taking it”, we don’t. We live on a planet that has seen a solid two hundred years of constant pollution on a global scale. In the past 60 years alone, we have caused more irreversible pollution and damage to the planet than was caused by the sum history of the Human Race. Note that I do not say mere pollution, to state that would be a silly fallacy. I state Irreversible pollution, Eg: Genetic modification to plants, radioactive waste, mass clearcutting and the acidification and garbage filling of the oceans, loss of species diversity among fauna, etc. Pollution that will take centuries or millennia to recover, Presuming a lack of further desolation by Humanity.

Ponder that for a moment.

Should we decide to make the best of a bad situation this is going to continue, all for the sake of a cheap dollar for those at the top of the system, until it all comes crashing down within a century and we witness war, carnage, and global environmental catastrophe the likes of which have only been fantasized about.

Everything, in the end, comes down to Oil. Oil is the problem, the solution, and the unknown factor all at once. Without oil, our civilization collapses over night. Cargo ships cannot sail, shipping trucks cannot move, and all alternative sources of energy cannot be manufactured without it. When the oil dries up, our civilization burns like Rome, and only those who prepared instead of watching Oprah will survive.

As a solution, oil solves the catch-22 of terrorism. Without oil, the militaries of the world come to a standstill. Sure, they can still walk from place to place, but their heavy armaments will be frozen forever. Gone are the deadliest threats to the revolutionary, all that is left is the foot soldier, who’s advanced armaments will soon run out of ammunition. Without oil the vast, corrupt, and previously untouchable governments crumble away into nothing, leaving the people who thought ahead to pick up the pieces.

(continued below)

[edit on 14-12-2008 by D.E.M.]

As a problem, we can merely re-state what was outlined above: Without oil, the cogs of society creak to a halt and freeze for eternity. Go down to your local port and watch a shipping freighter come into port. Think of how many tons of dead weight is being pushed by those engines. Electric can never deliver the raw power needed to drive that ship around the world to deliver its goods, only oil. Not even steam, in its greatest moments, could approach the raw power of the modern internal combustion engine. Go down to your local supermarket, and take stock of how much of the produce there is produced locally, or shipped from across your state or even country. In BC, Canada, almost none of it will have been produced within 50km. In most places, none of it will.

So we can summarize that “Peak Oil” is the bane and the solution to our current situation. Without Oil, we will see the fall of our entire civilization. With it, we will continue the plunge into dictatorship until the vision of Orwell’s 1984 is reached in totality. Without Oil, the playing field is leveled and humanity can re-direct itself onto a course towards social and environmental sustainability using modern technology.

Given the current drilling depth and extraction costs, we have 20 years to get ready.

No opinions on the theory from the audience? Did hope the essay would garner at least a few people weighing their own feelings in, thus helping me to gain a better grasp of the wider mindset regarding such things