The Peak Oil Crisis: Pondering the Near Future

We are faced with three serious problems that are going to bring about radical changes in our lifestyles. In order of urgency, the problems are the great economic recession/financial crisis, the peaking of world oil and other fossil fuel production, and global warming. The opening effects of these problems are already upon us, but it will be months, years, and in the case of global warming, decades before their full impact is felt.

Our three problems are interrelated as changes in the status of one will lead to changes in the others. The global recession has already cut oil consumption, lowered gasoline prices, and put off the day when oil shortages develop. Someday soon faltering oil production will lead to much higher prices and thereby choke off an economic rebound. In the long run the depletion of fossil fuels should help the global warming situation if, as seems likely, we go over the infamous “tipping point” and the Antarctic ice cap melts. In this case, the world’s oceans are scheduled to rise by 25 feet or so, inundating important parts of the world’s land mass. It is likely to take centuries or perhaps millennia before all that water gets back into an iceberg on the Antarctic land mass where it belongs.

In thinking about the years ahead, is there anything, other than speculation, that can be said about what human life will be like in the rest of this century?

A few points seem obvious.

Falls Church News-Press