Fossil fuels

FARMINGTON — The high price of fuel following back-to-back natural disasters in the oil-rich Gulf Coast this summer was but a small taste of what life will be like when fossil fuel production in the world is depleted in the next 30 years.

Opinions on the effect of reaching “peak oil” range from faith that the market economy will find a solution to the doomsday scenarios of a global economy unable to meet its energy demands.
“In 5,000 years of recorded history, the world is approaching 7 billion people. We are 100 years into the age of oil and in another 100 years, we will be through the age of oil,” said author and scientist John G. Howe, author of “The End of Fossil Energy and the Last Chance for Sustainability.”

“We used it up and this 100-year party is over,” he told about 200 people at the University of Maine at Farmington this week during a talk on the post-petroleum age. He was an invited guest of geology professor Tom Eastler, who was espousing a similar mantra at UMF 30 years ago.

Morning Sentinel (Maine)