The Root of All Our Woes

According to the best estimates of a number of respected international geologists, including the French Petroleum Institute, Colorado School of Mines, Uppsala University and Petroconsultants in Geneva, the world will likely feel the impact of the peaking of most of the present large oil fields and the dramatic fall in supply by the end of this decade, 2010, or possibly even several years sooner. At that point, the world economy will face shocks which will make the oil price rises of the 1970's pale by contrast. In other words, we face a major global energy shortage for the prime fuel of our entire economy within about seven years. Could it be that the oil reserves in the middle east and in the US are running low? Experts believe there is no relief to what is happening in the economies of the world. As the oil reserves now experience its production to peak, barrels of oil will become more difficult to exploit, and more costly, as internal well pressures decline or other problems make recovery more expensive for each barrel. The oil is there but not at all easy to extract. The cost of each barrel past peak is increasingly higher as artificial means are employed to extract it. After a certain point it becomes uneconomical to continue to try to extract this peak oil. The world now has a false sense of energy supply security and the truth is anything but secure. The thing that built nations to prosper will in the future cause its downfall, unless we take action now. Can we slowly separate ourselves from oil? Can we reduce our dependency from it? This of course entails a lot of research and is certainly a possibility. I think that the answer to this problem is renewable energy. If we exploit and produce enough renewable energy then we can curb our dependency from oil and eventually address the root of all our woes.