Iceland Volcano’s Eruption Sends Quick Wake-up Call on “Peak Oil”
What does an erupting volcano in Iceland have to do with our future oil supply running out?
A lot, if you consider only the effect the recent grounding of planes all over the world has had on food supply. When oil runs out, as it will, food delivery will be drastically curtailed, and the disruption caused by the April 15 eruption of the Iceland volcano demonstrates just what this might mean. Airline won’t be back to normal until volcanic activity subsides, and in the meantime vegetables grown in Kenya are rotting; undelivered roses are being ground up for compost. Kenyan flower growers are losing $2 million a day. Food producers have in Southern Spain have also been effected, as well as the electronics and pharmaceutical industries, who rely on overnight delivery for many of their products.
Warnings of the Approach of Peak Oil and Its Effect on World Food Supply
There’s been a lot of stale argument recently about oil – is it running out? Are we approaching/at/passed Peak Oil (the point when global oil production goes into irrevocable decline)? Business, unsurprisingly, isn’t waiting for the answer; it’s working out what will happen next.
Take the recent report from Deutsche Bank, entitled ‘The Peak Oil Market: Price Dynamics at the End of the Oil Age’. This describes a world where the effect of failing global reserves is compounded by incoherent politics. If the US Government was honest about the cost of oil, for example, it would slap another 50c on a gallon of gasoline to pay the cost of the war in Iraq. Ludicrously, as global oil supplies dwindle, the increasingly precious part that remains is concentrated in the hands of those who give it away to their citizens for almost nothing – Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq.
Governments should be planning how best to manage the limited supply of oil sensibly, for the long-term, the bankers write:
‘We believe, based on the history of the past decades, years, and months, that they will do the exact opposite.’
Has a “Convergance of Catastrophes” Already Begun?
James Howard Kunstler examines the critical importance of oil in our global economy and then anticipates the cascade of catastrophic consequences when – not if – supply fails to meet demand. After a century of profligate use of this energy-dense resource, he contends that we are within a decade of experiencing an oil shortage: for transportation, industry, heating, plastics, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals and all the countless products essential to our modern lives. In other words, our energy-devouring civilization has been accelerating entropy.
Relevant today, James Howard Kuntsler’s 2006 Public Testimony at the Vancouver Planning Commission
The Kuntsler session was an eye opener for many at the time and is
still worth watching just to get a feel of what impacts are now
affecting all we take for granted in our current lifestyle and
economic predicament. We cannot continue in our current mode of
linear planning.
Peak Oil: A Dark Look Into Our Future
Blind Spot is a documentary that illustrates the current energy crisis that our way of life is facing. Whatever the measures of greed, wishful thinking, neglect or ignorance, we have put ourselves at a crossroad which offers two paths, both with dire consequences. If we continue to burn fossil fuels we will choke the life out of the planet and if we don’t our way of life will collapse.
Change Has Come
“Peak oil is history. And that means economic growth is history, too.” By Guy McPherson Professor of Natural Resources and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Arizona Home Page: Nature Bats Last Change has arrived. After all the hate-filled, mudslinging nastiness, after soaring rhetoric and hollow promises, after lies, rumor, and innuendo, after poor predictions [...]
A Genuine Progress Index
A Genuine Progress Index (GPI) would allow us to measure social and environmental factors of well-being with the same authority and enthusiasm with which we measure GDP. It would show whether social and environmental factors are improving or deteriorating and would create the awareness needed to stimulate serious actions toward solving the problems. Please help [...]
