Suburban Chimp - Finance & Social Commentary

I have written a few flippant articles lately and have wondered about some of the content of them in great depth. The article which caused the most anxiety and perhaps the most thought was the one related to ‘Peak Oil’. I found a web-page which offered a gloomy if not horrific outlook for the future which culminated with a list of things you could do to ‘prepare’ for the worst. If we are truly going to run out of oil in the future then the prospect of this can barely be thought about as nobody seems to have prepared for the worst, and a world without any oil surely will be reverting us to (I quote from a more intelligence source) a post industrial stone age. When you think about the fact that there will be no oil, and that oil is pretty much the driving force in all that we do, we are faced with a few facts, generally which can be summed up as we’re pretty much screwed, we do not pass go, we do not collect £200 and have absolutely no future what-so-ever.
When you think about the drive towards nuclear power, GM crops, the illegal war in Iraq in terms of an oil crisis then things start to make a little more sense. Whatever I write here today will have little effect on any outcome that may happen. I cannot ‘fix’, ‘solve’ or do anything to resolve the terrifying events that are going to unfold within the next 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 years. Yeah, there is uncertainty when this is actually going to happen, we just don’t know. I have even started to wonder whether the sceptics who dismiss climate change may be correct and all the measures about sustainability, recycling, clean power, is just a masquerade, masking the true underlying cause as to why we need to ‘do’ something. When you realise that governments continuously cynically lie, cheat and play a game of smoke and mirrors then you can be sure when they say that they are making changes to benefit the ‘environment’ then there is either money or something more important at stake. Personally, no matter how cynical you are (like governments) or whether you believe in peak oil or not, or climate change or not something certainly seems to be amiss with society in general. Where are we going? What is this odd obsession with celebrities and consumerism we have all embraced all about?
I like to think of the worst-case scenario. Worst case is the fruititon of all the things scientist say might happen. We know that the oil is running out at some point. Nobody seems concerned. The mainstream press do not seem to care. Honestly just think of what is going to happen when the oil runs out. Just think. I know it is becoming increasingly difficult to ‘think’ and ‘create’ but just try to imagine, the more open individuals out there can do this easily, I am not going to spell it out to you if you don’t really get the idea of a world without oil, there are no alternatives to fall back on. Now consider that climate change is actually a real thing, and what the implications are for this, Melted ice caps, a rise in the sea levels, countries (say goodbye to the Dutch) submerged under water, wild weather, storms, hurricanes, and more. Consider the ‘conveyor belt’ in the ocean. That’s another article, the long and the short of that is if it is impacted by climate change (which it will be) the UK and the northern hemisphere will be plunged into tundra. Of course we also have perpetually increasing population mass to content with also, which in itself is a challenge most horrid. Combine these events and this century certainly has a few ‘issues’ it will have to deal with, and I for one do not believe we are capable of resolving them. I know I sound like a lunatic, but the evidence is out there if you just look for it.
Ian Dury is unfortunately dead, but before he died he used to sing that he had reasons to be cheerful. If he were alive today I believe that he would think the same thing, and I also have reasons to be cheerful even considering the facts above. I believe my generation, and the next couple of generations are in for a hard time. Human existence is in for a torrid ride and there are some big questions that are going to need to be answered and things are never going to be quite the same again. I can foresee tens of millions of people around the globe dying of starvation, I can see the complete degrade of first world society, where capital cities become no go zones, plunged into violent darkness due to the lack of electricity across the entire world, I can see I time when shops won’t be filled with MP3 players and digital photo-frames as there won’t even be any food to be bought, I can see the breakdown of sanitation services and running water, and I’m not talking about poor African countries, I am talking about the ‘developed world’, the UK and the US and the whole of Europe which will implode without the glorious black oil. Where will we be then? And I say we still have reasons to be cheerful, and I mean it, because the world is a resilient entity, eventually it can heal itself from ‘climate change’ and humanity is equally resilient, and 95% of the people may die out, but if there is one characteristic that humans have it is one of survival. I believe that humans may also learn from their mistakes and we will not adopt a money led society again, we will take on board the lessons of living an economical lifestyle, with ‘eco’ values of recycling, of not wasting things and never taking anything for granted. That may not be in my lifetime, or your lifetime, but it could be in your children’s lifetime so I will continue to spout nonsense on my little eco blog, giving advice on how best to live our lives, whilst offering up some outlandish doom mongering in the process. Maybe the oil will last another few hundred years, maybe climate change is a tale to scare children, maybe nothing will happen at all and I should have just bought a nice 4×4 and be done with it. Ah well, time will tell.