Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Men in White Coats Are Not Coming For Me After All

Today my biology professor lectured - with a straight face - about global warming and the nearness of depleted oil resources. In our lifetime, he said, oil would be so expensive it would be unthinkable to use it for something so inefficient as transportation. It was incredibly gratifying.

Did the mostly freshman students comprehend or believe? Doubtful, for the most part, I think. Regardless, it's refreshing to know that I'm not insane, after all, along with all the rest of the peak oil community. Now if only the rest of the world would listen to all these students graduating from universities...

I think I know how the Christians felt when the Roman emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan.

2 comments:

ha1ku said...

I am frightened of the day when most consumers cannot purchase gasoline for automobiles. There will a period of panic and uncertainty. And, worse, many consumer goods will go up in price because manufacturers need petroleum to produce and/or to transport these goods.

I am confident that as a society we will adapt, but the adjustment period has me worried.

Roz said...

I believe we will see a slow but inexorable climbing of gas prices...kind of like a few years ago, only maybe even slower. This is really what's going on already. Once the gas prices hit the level that upsets the equilibrium of affordability in personal and business ventures, all other goods and services will rise accordingly...quickly pricing out most people and destroying a lot of small businesses. That's when we may begin to see more social protests and civil unrest than we do now.

A quicker and therefore more violent loss of gas and oil would probably be the result of some emergent catastrophic event of some sort, natural or manmade. But this is just speculation! I think the panic will take a while to ignite. We (you and I) may not see the end of the adjustment period in our lifetimes...