The Ultimate Race

WHICH WILL END THE WORLD FIRST: GLOBAL WARMING OR PEAK OIL?

There are two schools of thought on how civilization will destroy itself. Al Gore’s polar bears have gotten most of the pub, but coming up fast is Peak Oil, which says petroleum production is only going downhill with disastrous repercussions. We thought it might be fun to run the two doomsday scenarios head to head, based on a mostly random reading of current events. What can we say? We like competition.


THE STARTING LINE: FEBRUARY, 2008

Last year at this time, Global Warming looked unbeatable, like the Patriots in October. An Inconvenient Truth was weeks away from an Oscar, the early ski season had been wiped out by 60-degree temps and a golf-course-killing drought was asserting itself in the South.

By the end of 2007, though, Peak Oil was on a roll like, you guessed it, the Giants. Thanks to a cold(ish) December and issues involving the crude supply chain that we don’t really understand, not only did oil prices touch $100 a barrel (up from $25 in 2003!), Bode Miller had great conditions to dominate the World Cup! Topping it off, American oil despot Jerry Jones got the Cowboys back atop the NFC East while Russian oil despot Vladimir Putin won an Olympic Games for the Bears and was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

That said, you can