Cheap Oil Is History: Tough Times Ahead

But you don’t have to buy into the Rapture Index (now at a whopping 152 at www.raptureready.com) to imagine a just and loving God saying, “Whoa! My creations have gotten way off base. Let’s just end this insanity and begin again.” After all, there are 13 wars currently taking place and genocide is occurring in at least one nation as you read this. More than 25,000 people around the world die of starvation each day (one child every five seconds) while an epidemic of obesity is occurring in the U.S. We’re raping Mother Earth with little regard for our children’s future, fouling our water, air and food in the process. Yeah, I could see the Holy Avenger being really pissed. Of course, if you’re anticipating the Apocalypse, you needn’t be alarmed, but there is a more corporeal, less ethereal end approaching -- the end of cheap oil. And while it doesn’t have its own TV show yet, it’s showing up in the news in a big way. Gasoline in the U.S. averages $2.28 per gallon nationally at this writing, up from slightly over $1.40 per gallon in October 2002. To fill our ‘97 Acura now costs about 30 bucks. I suspect lots of SUV owners are looking longingly at the hybrid autos right now. But we haven’t seen anything yet. In 1956, geophysicist M. King Hubbert, predicted oil production in the United States would peak in the early 1970s and it did so in 1970. The result? OPEC seized control of oil prices, and the turbulent decade of the ‘70s was an enormous wakeup call for this nation -- oil embargoes, high interest rates, stagflation, high unemployment and a lousy stock market. We bought more time in the 1980s and 1990s with new oil from the North Sea and Alaska, but this was a short-term solution as these oil fields are rapidly being depleted. Now a number of experts subscribe to geologist Colin Campbell’s prediction that worldwide oil production will peak in 2008 and then decline, though some claim that the peak arrived this year. There are even murmurings of depletion in Saudi Arabia’s vast oil fields (twenty-five percent of the world’s known reserves). A story now circulating there goes like this: “My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet airplane. His son will ride a camel.” On top of the peak predicted by some, demand for oil keeps increasing -- here in the U.S. (where five percent of the world’s population consumes 25 percent of the world's fossil-fuel-based energy) and in rapidly developing nations such as China and India. Something’s got to give, and the volatility of oil prices and the rising cost of gasoline in the U.S. are merely harbingers of things to come. You don’t need a Bible or other holy text to foretell that what’s likely to end is America’s gluttonous way of life. When gasoline prices double, triple or quadruple or when there’s none available at any price, the conservation measures being advocated today could seem to have been quaint attempts to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, especially if no effective technology or alternative fuel are ready to take the place of oil in our petroleum-addicted society. Driving a car could become a luxury reserved for the wealthy. Transporting food from thousands of miles away could become outrageously expensive. The Wal-Marts and other big box stores could collapse under the cost of shipping their wares from China and other nations across the seas. Of course, this might not be all bad. In fact, didn’t Jesus have something to say about the virtues of a simple life? Perhaps we’ll walk and bike more. Communities may coalesce again. Maybe we’ll eat more food from local farmers or even grow our own. Mom and pop shops could experience a revival. But it might be a hard landing for some. For instance, how would New York City grow enough food for the millions who live there? How would commuters get to work? Where would the power come from to run all of those air conditioners in the Southwest? And on the political front, would we be willing to contest China for the remaining oil reserves of the Middle East that lie much closer to them than to us? The other day I saw another one of those bumper stickers that read “WARNING: In the event of Rapture, this car will be unmanned.” Maybe an alternative message is in order: “In the event of oil peak, this car’s gas tank will be empty, and I’ll be home tending my garden.”