I’m no longer religious (I'm agnostic ) , but I was raised as a Catholic and I can’t help but look at the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and smile at the irony of it when looked at through my Peak Oil glasses. The biblical passage states:
Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
In the Peak Oil context the tree of knowledge is the exploitation of fossil fuels. For many years we’ve exploited other natural resources such as trees, but only fossil fuels allowed society to grow in the leaps and bounds that it has. Many moons ago I used to be of the opinion that mankind would never have been able to achieve any of the things that have been achieved without the benefit of fossil fuels. And, my reasoning went, in order for us to “evolveâ€




