Running out of Oil
I just saw the movie Oil Crash at ASPO Switzerland, which I would highly recommend.
The movie contains interviews with some leading oil and energy experts and what they say is pretty clear: We are about to reach to Peak Oil, where we will never be able to produce more oil than right now.
The implications of decreasing oil production will obviously be huge. The demand is rising even more with people in China and India starting to drive more and more cars and their economies growing rapidly.
They talk about Air Travel being available only for a Super Elite. Driving is going to become very expensive, and most of the world’s companies are either directly or indirectly dependent on inexpensive oil.
Why is oil so important? As the movie suggests, it costs only a handful of dollars to get a barrel of oil out of the ground.
But the barrel of oil contains the same amount of energy as do 25′000 (!) hours of human manual labor. Oil is a very, very cheap source of energy and was highly responsible for the world’s creation of wealth during the last one and a half centuries.
Many very intelligent and driving people are looking for ways to encounter this potential energy crisis. I find Jeremy Rifkin’s approach very interesting, suggesting a peer to peer sharing of energy with hydrogen.
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:00
Interesting…