How expensive does oil have to get before your habits change?

Perhaps we think supplies still come from the North Sea? Perhaps we think they always will? And why wouldn’t we? No elected political leader has had the considerable guts needed to tell us that a shortfall between demand and supply of 10 to 15 per cent is enough to shatter an oil-dependent economy and transform the way we live.

The only obvious indication of trouble has been the rising oil price. And yet, the public evidently thinks politicians can cap it. Today, business leaders are calling on the Chancellor to scrap intended rises in fuel duty. With prices rising from $68 to $90 a barrel, they argue, the government’s share in tax and VAT has already soared.
In 1996, oil cost $10 a barrel. It costs $100 this year. And according to ex-OPEC analysts featured in A Crude Awakening the price of $200 may be just two years away.

It’s almost impossible to imagine how a world without copious, cheap oil supplies will operate. Ironically, the archaeologists excavating Scotland’s past along the M74 route can help. They’ve found an old pharmacy, a dentist’s surgery, and the site of Caledonian Pottery – innovative in the 1880s for using gas kilns instead of solid fuel. Past worlds abandoned as times changed.

Hugh McBrien, consultant for West of Scotland Archaeology Service, says: “We showed some kids a teapot they couldn’t tell us what it was. This generation can’t recognise teapots because they’ve never seen their parents use one.”

That’s how quickly societies change. The essential becomes forgotten. The habit
becomes the exception. So we’d better start documenting ouroil junkie days now. The
days we thought driving daily between cities was normal. The days we drove to malls for everything and jetted off to warm, exotic destinations without bringing back presents – because they were already available and cheaper here.

Scotsman