Suburban Chimp - Finance & Social Commentary

At the moment I am fairly partial to chocolate ginger nut biscuits. They have become somewhat of a Sunday treat. Trouble is, I stuff them down my throat in about ten minutes and then all the biscuits are gone and I’m sad. It’s a classic case of over consuming, and the problem with Sunday where I live is that all the shops shut early so once the biscuits have been eaten I’m left without. I guess it’s my own fault for being too greedy and I have nobody else to blame. When I was young my mum told me not to stuff my face, but did I listen? Heck no. Anyway, what am I banging on about then, where is this leading to? Oh yeah, what are we going to do when the oil runs out?

A term that is bandied about frequently is ‘peak oil’. What does this mean? Basically peak oil is the point when maximum petroleum production is reached. After this point the production rate starts to decline and the price starts to rise if demand is not met.

Now, all these rather optimistic people who say that climate change is a myth and isn’t going to happen could have a point, because as we as a global audience stick our heads in the sand and pretend it isn’t going to happen, we also seem to be doing exactly the same thing with regards to how much oil is left. Any then what? No oil means no cars because nobody seems to be making much effort to find a replacement fuel, and no cars means a massive reduction in CO2 so that’s global warming ‘fixed’.

Back to Peak Oil, some pessimistic people say that we have already reached peak oil production (which would be bad), and the most optimistic people say that that we ‘could’ have another 100 years until we hit this point. The general consensus is that we will reach this point at about 2020 – 2030, but we don’t really know for sure. So, I ask again, what are we going to do when all the oil runs out?

For humanity it’s crunch time, and it’s going to be this century that is going to make or break us as a species, because if we do not start taking some responsibility for the environment and the way we live our lives and if we don’t put monetary gain second to social responsibility then we’re pretty much doomed. The oil is pretty much gone, but nobody seems to mind.