About 7 months ago, in the process of filling up our Netflix queue, my wife picked a movie called "Collapse". I think it's fair to say she has regrets about that decision now.
If you haven't seen the movie:
1) I recommend it.
2) It's about peak oil.
At this point I'll assume the majority of people still reading have never heard of peak oil, and that the majority of those people will soon find themselves using terms like "doomer" or maybe "whacked-out-nut-job" to describe me and/or this website to their friends. That's ok. The posts that will appear on this site are almost guaranteed to either baffle, offend or bore you to tears if you're part of that majority. If nothing else, reading this website occasionally and laughing at it could help you verify that you're still in the "normal" bucket.
This site is for the two minorities I implied above: First are those who have heard theories about peak oil, financial collapse, climate change or the precarious state of our society in general and either agree with those ideas or at the very least control the urge to roll their eyes and sigh audibly whenever they encounter them. Secondly, those who are still blissfully ignorant of the world's growing problems, but will eventually land somewhere between simply being open-minded to the possibilities and a die-hard believer. To anyone in those two groups, "Welcome". I hope you find something in these pages that is helpful.
Now as far as the line goes (that's the "Dividing Line"...you know, the title of the blog?), the image I used at the top captures it almost too perfectly. I can hear the woman saying to herself, "Wait a minute, this wasn't here yesterday..." I can feel her surprise and confusion. The day is coming (and for some is already here) when you will see or hear something that makes you think, "This isn't what the world looked like when I went to bed last night." The change you see that day might be a consequence of one of the topics I mentioned earlier, or it might be something else - something totally unexpected. That event will be the first dividing line in your life after which you will never see our world the same way. For me the dividing line was watching this movie in November 2010.
Hopefully it won't ruin the film for anyone who's interested, but I need to give away a few of the key plot points. The film is an interview with Michael Ruppert, an investigative journalist, former LA police detective, and "whacked-out-nut-job". He talks for a few minutes about investigations he conducted into the CIA's involvement in drug smuggling, then abruptly switches gears to focus on the main theme - the impending collapse of modern civilization following peak oil.
For complete beginners, peak oil refers to the theory that individual oil fields, countries and the entire planet all trace out an oil production curve over their lifetimes known as Hubbert's Curve. On the left side of the curve, oil production expands steadily at first and then goes parabolic until it reaches the peak. At this point, approximately half the oil in the field, country or planet (depending on what the curve is measuring) has been used and half is still in the ground. The right side of the curve has a sharp drop-off after the peak which turns into a slow decline approaching zero. Right now the world as a whole appears to be at or just past peak. We won't know where the peak is for sure until it's in the rear-view mirror, but the theory has proven reliable in terms of single fields and countries many times.
Michael Ruppert makes the case that the global down-slope of Hubbert's Curve will be a time of extraordinary suffering and hardship for mankind since nearly everything (and everyone) we see around us is directly or indirectly a product of cheap, easily accessible fossil fuels. Oil is obviously used to power nearly all the world's vehicles, but don't forget about the coal we use to generate the bulk of our electricity, and natural gas which is the basis for modern chemical fertilizers. The list goes on. Future shortages of these resources won't just mean making fewer trips in your gas-guzzler to Wal-Mart...it means that if and when you get there, you might find nothing on the shelves to buy and no money in your pockets to buy what you need anyway. It means the world will change in a big way.
I'll stop there and save the rest of the terrifying implications for a later post, but I want to mention the second part of the movie's message. In the second half of the interview, Ruppert is asked what we can do to prevent all this from happening. Should we all drive less? Switch to solar or wind power for electricity? What about organic farming? His answer, and one that I've come to accept as the truth, is that we can't prevent it. So if you're already a bit nervous thinking about how running out of fossil fuels has the potential to devastate human society, you might want to take some deep breaths or go get a glass of water before you attempt to digest that it's more than just a possible outcome. Again I'm going to save the specifics for another post (or more likely series of posts) because it's not a short topic to discuss. Suffice it to say "we", as a global civilization, are likely to arrive both a day late and several bucks short.
So finally, the interviewer comes to the only question left to ask, "What can we do?" Prepare. The only way will be to learn to live without things that won't be available anymore. Believe it or not, this is actually the bright spot in "Collapse". Really. Yes, we've fooled ourselves into thinking that life on Earth will always be the way it is today and no, it turns out our planet doesn't care if we really really need those resources to survive. When fossil fuels run out, they're gone - at least until somebody puts some fossils in the ground and lets them cook for a few million years. Pleasant thoughts, huh? Oh and don't forget that peak oil is just one scenario on the horizon ready to wipe that grin off our faces. There's also financial collapse (hopefully at least some readers will accept this one as plausible after 2008), environmental catastrophes due to climate change and a handful of other slightly less-likely candidates.
The (relatively) good news is, we don't have to curl up and die just yet! Humans were around for a long time before fossil fuels were discovered and before exotic financial derivatives were created. We've survived to see the rise and fall of many civilizations over the ages, and we even made it through the ice age...well some of us did. Care to guess which two groups of people have had the privilege of passing on their genes following each and every previous collapse? Most of them realized that something bad was about to happen, they accepted that fact AND they did something about it. The second, smaller group of people just got lucky. Odds are better if you at least try to make it into that first group.
That's the second dividing line, the line that will one day exist between those who have something approaching a comfortable, happy life and those who suffer. This blog is all about giving you the information you need to see the problems we face, come to terms with them AND do something to help yourself make it through. We've got a lot of ground to cover.
No comments:
Post a Comment