Life after the oil crash
The grab-your-gun-and-head-for-the-hills scenario goes something like this: In the next year or so, world oil production will peak and then promptly plummet, forced down by sinking reserves. While supply crashes, demand will grow. Virtually overnight, fuel will become so dear that farm tractors will go idle, people will go hungry and homes will go cold. Financial markets will collapse and social chaos will follow.
Are you ready?
The doomsday image may sound like the half-baked plot of a Schwarzenegger flick, but thousands of North Americans are taking it seriously enough to stock up on non-perishable food, recycle their own manure, build home gardens, bone up on canning techniques, even undergo “socially responsible vasectomies” to limit their energy reliance.
With the price of a barrel of oil spiking upwards of $100, the more alarmist of peak-oil buffs are buzzing that the world’s oil-dependent economy could tank in the very near future.
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One of the most popular sites, LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net, casts the looming crisis in dreary terms. “Dear Reader,” it reads. “Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky proclamation of a doomsday cult, apocalypse bible prophecy sect, or conspiracy theory society. Rather, it is the scientific conclusion of the best paid, most widely respected geologists, physicists, bankers and investors in the world. These are rational, professional, conservative individuals who are absolutely terrified by a phenomenon known as global ‘Peak Oil.’”Some environmentalists bristle at such grim proclamations. “It’s simply fear-mongering,” says Guy Dauncey, author of Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change. “When you mention collapse and heading for the hills, that saps the creativity we need to get out of this problem.”
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