The age of oil is ending

For more than a century, it has been cheaper than coffee and as constant as ocean waves.

Getting it is simple. You select the grade, insert the nozzle, squeeze the handle and gasoline comes out. A hundred years and the pump has never let us down. Gasoline is always available. There seems no end to it.

Until now.


On top of the other problems plaguing the world such as global warming and the current financial meltdown, there’s a third pressing issue that threatens to bring the good life to an end. It’s the fact that the world is fast running out of oil.

Given that crude oil makes up 36.4 per cent of the world’s energy consumption, the seriousness of shortages cannot be underplayed. Our reliance on oil is almost total. It fuels 100 per cent of air and sea transport and most of our land transport. Without oil there is no petrochemical industry. Agriculture, manufacturing, building materials, the clothes we wear, the food we eat and the medicines we take depend on oil.

Montreal Gazette