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Our civilization runs on oil.
it's the cheapest most energy dense and portable fuel we've ever found.
Nature took tens of millions of years to make petroleum
and we've used up the best of it
in less than two hundred.
A little over a decade ago, eminent
petroleum geologists
calculated that global oil production would soon hit a peak
and begin to decline,
no longer meeting ever rising demand.
But oil industry spokesmen countered with the message
"Don't worry there's plenty of oil" and assured us that everything would be just fine
So, what actually happened?
World crude oil production flat lined in 2005.
Oil prices went crazy.
Wars erupted in the oil-rich parts of the world and the global economy went
into a tailspin.
The term Peak Oil entered the lexicon.
The oil industry is now staging another PR counter-offensive.
They're telling us that applying new technologies like hydrofracking to low
porosity rocks
makes lots of lower quality unconventional oil available.
They argue we just need to drill more to produce more.
Problem solved!
But wait. What's actually new here?
Most of this technology has been around since the 1980s.
The unconventional resources have been known to geologists for decades.
What's new is high oil prices.
It's high oil prices that make unconventional oil worth producing in the
first place.
it takes lots of oil, money and energy, not to mention water, to frack low-porosity rocks.
And the environmental risks are staggering.
How does the economy handle high oil prices? Well, it turns out the economy hates high oil prices
and responds by going into recession.
Which makes energy prices volatile, rendering the industry subject to booms
and busts.
So, what's the bottom line here?
Yes, there's still oil in the ground.
We just can't afford it.
In broad terms, the peak oil analysts were right.
But the fossil fuel industry is winning the PR battle.
What really matters, though, is not who wins the debate, but
how we prepare for the inevitable.
We've got to wean ourselves off our high
energy lifestyle.
We'd be foolish to wait for events to settle the debate once and for all.
Let's say goodbye to oil.
It's saying goodbye to us.