Earth still has a crapload of oil, it’s just that we’ve been using up the most easily extractable sources. Extracting the rest will be harder and more expensive, but there is still a crapload…more than enough for several centuries. In the meantime, as prices rise, other alternatives become even more economically viable. Sometimes pretty quickly, as we’re seeing now with ethanol and so on.

I hope you’re not thinking of becoming a member of the drain-circlers club. These folks have been around since before my time, and it’s always something. Whatever issues we have with energy aren’t going to be solved by hand-wringing. The world will adjust its behavior to come in line with whatever the costs of energy are by becoming more efficient, more frugal, more ingenious, and by re-prioritizing. That’s what humans do, usually motivated primarily by self-interest.

Think about a world where we travel less, use more efficient electronics, collect more solar energy, make fuel from grass, import less crap from far away and create more stuff close to home, communicate with friends and family routinely electronically instead of doing so in person. That’s all been happening right in front of us already, or is going to start happening soon as energy costs continue to rise.

It doesn’t sound like the end of the world, does it?

A fair assessment. There’s just so much to learn…
I hope you’ll stop by The Oil Drum. http://theoildrum.com

Cheers,
PG