HomeNews/Essays Petrocollapse: your basic wake-up call plus caveat
Petrocollapse: your basic wake-up call plus caveat
by Jan Lundberg
14 March 2006
Dear Culture Change readers,
This essay may be familiar thinking, but it is intended to serve as an introduction for "the mainstream." Please consider passing this along to websites and other publications. Thank you, - JL
Culture Change Letter #125 - March 14, 2006
The public has been plainly informed, perhaps better than ever: a permanent energy crisis looms. The Earth has given up almost all the easily available oil, placing us in the position of suddenly lacking the materials to continue unsustainable growth. The implications are too enormous for the corporate media or our "leaders" to disclose, so, for short-term considerations, happy-talk and other distractions serve to forestall preparation and mitigation for our imminent, historic transition.
Peak oil extraction is estimated to be upon us, with natural gas soon to follow, indicating a free fall to an uncertain minimum-energy universal lifestyle. Anyone who really believes that some alternative form of energy will ride in like a knight in shining armor to save us is sadly misinformed. The only deviation from our free-fall fate might be that we get sidetracked by some related crisis even more lethal involving climate or nuclear war.
But we can say we are facing petrocollapse, and it has been ratified by the mainstream media (e.g., New York Times; see Culture Change Letter #124)) and even the President. When we realize global oil discoveries peaked over 40 years ago, and we use more than four barrels of oil for every one discovered, we can see the writing on the wall. And how can we expect to maintain or expand upon 84 million barrels a day of oil use, when the vaunted tar sands of Alberta may only provide an eventual maximum of five million barrels a day? This would be at huge investment cost over several years, with devastating effects on the environment and public health that have already begun.
George W. Bush has told us what's happening, between the lines. All one must do to see the whole reality is to critically consider his non-solution to oil addiction – biofuels – and we are left with nothing but fast-disappearing oil. Peak oil is another name for petrocollapse, if we acknowledge the Hirsch Report for the U.S. Dept. of Energy 13 months ago: we blew the two-decade minimum lead time to change the infrastructure away from petroleum. The government knows that peak oil has "sneaked up" on us, and that the nationwide Katrina will have to hit relatively soon.
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