15 Big Ideas from 2005

When gas hit $1.20 in August, SUV owners finally felt the pain. By October, car dealers across North America were admitting the obvious. The bottom had fallen out of the market for America’s most notoriously overweight gas guzzlers. Instead, consumers were snapping up the lightest, most fuel-efficient vehicles they could find.

Experts say that this sudden reversal of fortune is a potent prelude to the transformative power of peak oil – the moment when world oil prices reach a threshold that the market simply can’t bear.
But peak oil isn’t just expensive. It’s almost certainly revolutionary. And it’s also at our doorstep. Forget about the production capacity knocked out by Hurricane Katrina. The real story is China, as one-seventh of the world’s population begins a wild, carbon-fueled ride towards western prosperity.

Initially destructive, economists predict peak oil will ultimately be the necessity that is the mother of new invention, as major western economies retool to refuel and get serious about energy alternatives. In the process, everything from the way we design our cities to how we grow our food to the global status we enjoy goes up for grabs.

The Tyee