Dirty Greek - Boom, Bust, and Echo: The end of the oil age

Then let me hear no more of our kind's natural necessity to form hierarchical groups. An observer viewing human life shortly after cultural takeoff would easily have concluded that our species was destined to be irredeemably egalitarian except for distinctions of sex and age.

- Marvin Harris

:: Blog :: Photos :: Europe :: Books :: Articles :: Links :: Friends :: Combo Feed :: Mobile ::

george-at-dirtygreek.org

follow dirtygreek at http://twitter.com

My Photos

My Flickr Photos

Dirty Greek - Boom, Bust, and Echo: The end of the oil age

Culture Critique : Boom, Bust, and Echo: The end of the oil age

You are NOT on the DirtyGreek.Org homepage. Please CLICK HERE to go there.

And as quickly as it begins, it begins to end... Industrial society as we know it will begin to change drastically sometime between 2006 and 2015, according to this article. This is the time when global oil production is predicted to peak, meaning that we will no longer find more oil and production will decrease from that point on. According to that prediction, oil industry is a dying breed.

That being said, the article goes on to explain that we are not likely to see a society with such energy production capabilities again for a long time, if ever. Even a full hydrogen-based energy economy could not allow for the freedom of travel and energy that we have today, which means that this affluent society is all but over.

This isn't necessarily a doom-and-gloom prediction. In fact, the article mentions that as our own global economy begins to waver, the necessary action will be for economies to become smaller and more localized. This sounds great to me, being a supporter of neotribalism and localization as opposed to globalization.

In any case, and whatever happens, one thing is for certain. Oil production will soon peak and slowly decline, soon making petroleum economically unfeasible. What happens after that can only be guessed.