The Petroleum Party is Over, But Don’t Turn Out the Lights Yet

Kunstler begins by announcing that the great petroleum party is over. The depletion of oil and natural gas resources on this continent has been well documented by many geologists and social critics, including Kenneth Deffeyes, Julian Darley, Walter Youngquist and Alfred Bartlett. But Kunstler adds some twists of his own. He notes that cheap oil largely built the U.S. empire and accounts for its bloodied police mission to Iraq. Affordable fossil fuels, in turn, invited China to export all those plastic gadgets that appear on Wal-Mart shelves, and it permitted Canada to give up its trains as well as any sense of urban discipline.

But depleted oil fields in Saudi Arabia and the North Sea are sending prices up. The fact that a quarter of the world’s drilling rigs are now punching holes under lakes, subdivisions and parks in Western Canada signals that our favourite fuel is no longer a cheap date. “Let us recognize that we are moving into a new phase of history,” Kunstler argues. “Let’s be brave and wise about it, and prepare to move on.”
The Globe and Mail