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What Happens When The Oil Runs Out?

19th January, 2010 - Posted by health news - No Comments

Have you ever stopped to think about what it would be like to lose all of the perks of modern civilization? It’s only through relatively recent technological achievements that we’re now able to have medical procedures from anything to fungus toenail laser treatment to ingrown toenail removal. The idea of going back to live closer to Mother Earth in a place like Long Island sounds nice, but what if you needed Long Island fungus toenail treatment and lacked the resources to have it done? Chances are, it wouldn’t be pretty!

Yet this may be our future reality. While few think many of the conspiracy theories currently going around about 2012 and the end of the world global warming being a real danger are becoming less and less. Even if you deny that this climate change is happening, you still have to consider things like peak oil, and the unsustainable nature of the way we currently exist.

“Unsustainable” means that our current way of life cannot go on eternally. This is obviously true, as our civilization is run on what are mostly non-renewable minerals such as coal and oil. It’s been guessed that planet Earth may now be fifty percent through all available oil stocks, while the level of customer demand for oil continues to skyrocket. This is due to the economic improvement of densely populated areas such as China and India.

So what happens when all the oil runs out? The hope is that scientists will by that time have figured out such a way that we can run wholly on solar and wind as fuels, since they’re one hundred percent renewable. But how much time do we have left?

Some, such as the author of “Endgame” Derrick Jensen, have posited the theory that reverting to a Stone Age way of life may actually be what’s best for humanity. It sounds ridiculous at first, but what Jensen is promoting is a lifestyle that is far closer to nature, and pays respects to what it takes from the natural world. It’s been said by American Indians that if one takes a fish from the ocean to eat, that person now has a responsibility to that community of fish, to make sure that it survives. Such a notion seems pretty strange to modern people, yet this way of living is far more environmentally friendly, and ultimately safer, than the way we are currently behaving.

Demand for non-renewable minerals will continue to increase as the resources themselves are more and more depleted. What will it look like when we realize we’re out of oil? Not many people want to be around to find out the answer. One of the reasons many American politicians, even liberals, are so set on maintaining a stability in the Middle East is that these countries hold large amounts of oil that may be required to keep society from falling apart.

Whatever the result of our current lifestyle will be, there’s a large chance that it will be event that the youth of today will witness within their lifetimes. We’ll just have to wait and hope for the best.