Will the future look like the Jetsons or Ingalls?

“My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a plane. His son will ride a camel.” That’s an old – well, actually current – Saudi saying related by Rochester resident Norm Erickson during a talk in Spring Valley recently.

Erickson, a retired IBM engineer, uses various calculations and models to predict that we are on the downward side of the peak oil boom. If he’s right, Saudi Arabians will go back to riding camels and our society may look more like the Amish community than the jet-setting, cosmopolitan culture that seems to be a given as we look ahead.


“Our future is not going to be a bigger and better replication of our past,” Erickson explains.

His talk is convincing as he bases his research on facts and figures from many sources, including mainstream government reports. His conclusion is that our oil reserves are nearly depleted or are at least on the downward curve of production. For the last quarter century, we have used more oil each year than we have found. New finds will likely be hard-to-extract sources that will be costly to produce.

Spring Grove Herald