Will the coming oil crisis be the end of suburbia?

Three years ago, when I started to teach Introduction to Sociology for Lamar Community College, my brother sent me the DVD, “The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream,” concerning the “coming oil crisis.”

I showed it to my class to help the students better understand “social change” and what would happen to society during such a crisis. They hadn’t even heard that we were going to face such a crisis. It’s no surprise, most Americans hadn’t heard of it either; that was three years ago.
Today, the mainstream media are beginning to wake up to what geologists and environmentalist have been warning us for years.

We have reached “Peak Oil.” The demand for oil has outreached the supply and there are no new cheap alternatives. We have many years of oil left; this just means that it’s going to get a lot more expensive because of demand. We think $3 a gallon is bad now; it could possibly go up to $10 a gallon in a few years, even more.

This will be a world crises and not just an American one. Countries like Brazil, which is self-sufficient in energy, will weather this crisis much better than most. Even poorer counties of the Third World, who use less oil, will be able to adapt to living simpler.

Every semester I’ve shown “End of Suburbia” to my classes to mixed reviews to the message. I’ve warned them that it will be too expensive for most Americans to own big trucks or SUVs, especially at the current way they are made to consume gas.

This means our lives are going to change dramatically. Predicting social change can be difficult, especially for long-term future. The worst-case scenario is the total decline in our economy with a depression, social disorder and wars between states and communities for the remaining sources, much like the CBS TV action series “Jericho” in which residents of a small Kansas town are cut off from the rest of the world after major terrorist attacks.

The best-case scenario is that we have minor inconveniences and we find ways to use energy more efficiently and wisely.

Pueblo Chieftain