I admit it. I was one of those people who flippantly dismissed the ‘Peak Oil’ crowd, those dogged army of researchers and activists who have been crying out for years that we have crossed the threshold of remaining oil reserves. I stupidly thought of them as alarmists. After seeing Michael Ruppert and Chris Smith’s riveting, eye-opening documentary ‘Collapse’, however, I’m changing my tune.
Some people might say that we couldn’t possibly be on the brink of societal collapse, that it couldn’t possibly be as bad as the peak oil crowd says it is–despite news reports like this and this, quoting an International Energy Agency whistle-blower who says “…the agency is responding to U.S. pressure to downplay how fast existing oilfields are being depleted while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.”
Couple the above news clipping with the reality that Saudi Arabia is now turning their oil extraction strategy to off-shore drilling, which is notoriously more expensive than land based drilling and inevitably requires more resources than what is ultimately yielded–not to mention conservatives here at home beating the drums for offshore drilling and the pillaging of A.N.W.R.–and it’s no longer a leap to assume that we ARE running out of oil.
Yet, maybe those nay-sayers are right. Maybe we do have more years than the worst-case scenario says we do. It still doesn’t negate the fact that we need to change our paradigm or way of thinking–even IF the industrialized world isn’t in dire straits yet, with a finite resource like oil, it’s only a matter of time.
Think about how dependent we are on oil for everything from food production to automobiles (and not just for vehicle propulsion–even those electric cars need oil to be built and shipped) and everything in between. For all the miracles that industrialized civilization has performed, our Achilles heel is oil. And there can be no question that it will be our downfall. To paraphrase a scene from the film: Will you be the person on the Titanic who wants to build a lifeboat? Or will you continue to deny that your ship is sinking?
Watch Collapse and then make up your mind.
