Thirty Reasons Why Organizations Must Get Off Petroleum Now

Don’t get me wrong — I am very concerned about global warming and climate change. In the long run, that’s one of the most serious challenges that humans face as a species. But in the short run, the world is no longer able to produce petroleum in sufficient volume to satisfy its demand. Soon it will not be able to produce petroleum in sufficient volume to satisfy its needs.

Reflecting this, a majority of the world’s major oil producing countries now see that their production is in decline. These post-peak producers include the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Venezuela, Mexico, Nigeria, Canada and the United States. Likewise, the world’s discovery of new fields peaked in 1965, and it generally lags production by about 40 years. That means that total world production will decline sometime soon, if it has not already.



What’s more, the price of crude oil has risen 95% over the last year, and this reveals that worldwide supply can no longer keep up with worldwide demand. Peak oil and its impacts will seriously affect us much sooner than climate change will, although the sooner we stop burning fossil fuels, the soon we take care of both of these very serious problems.

Although global warming gets a lot of press these days, the major media are strangely silent about peak oil. In a culture that makes it a habit to be short-term in its focus, it is astounding that more Americans are not seriously concerned about peak oil. In this brief piece, I list 30 reasons why we all must immediately start to transition away from petroleum. Although a great deal of transition-related work remains to be done, we now have eleven commercially available alternative fuels that can stand-in for petroleum. Although it looks as though all-electric cars are going to be the long-term winner, depending on the circumstances, a wide variety of other alternatives may be appropriate, at least as transition fuels. The other options include ethanol, butanol, di-methyl ether, bio-diesel, straight vegetable oil, bio-methane, natural gas, propane, hydrogen and synthetic liquid fuel.

Don’t take my word for any of this. Look it up on the web or ask the retired expert geologists who used to work for the oil companies, such as Dr. Colin J. Campbell. Read some books such as Richard Heinberg’s The Party’s Over, or Dale Allen Pfeiffer’s The End Of The Oil Age. When you really see the big picture, you will no doubt agree with me that a reorientation away from petroleum, towards renewables, is absolutely required, and it is required now.

Renewable Energy World