The End is(n't) Near

If you live on planet earth you should definitely take the time to watch the documentaries An Inconvenient Truth and The End of Suburbia. These may give you some good-to-know info.

The basic premise of my point today is that there are two very real – and very global – catastrophes that are looming. In fact, they are predicted to be so close they’ll happen in our lifetime, even in the lifetime of someone my parents’ age.

Catastrophe 1: global warming, polar ice caps, an uninhabitable planet, and so on (though the science has been questioned, it is a generally accepted truth now – heck, even Pat Robertson is on the global warming band wagon!).

Catastrophe 2: the unpublicized end of oil, the sustainer of life on earth. Yep, the well is going to run dry. And who saw that coming? I mean, it’s not like we take it out of the earth, wash our cars with it, and it seeps back into the earth’s belly – we burn the stuff, and it’s gone forever!

I was thinking as I was watching The End of Suburbia today that the two of these catastrophes may sort of end up cancelling each other out. As soon as oil production peaks (and I’m not sure if it’s happened already but it’s speculated to happen near 2010), the supply will slowly begin dwindling, and the price of the stuff – the sustainer of life – will skyrocket. And of course, as time continues, the supply of oil will become so scarce, it’ll be a substance for the rich of the rich (like Dick Cheney). It is predicted, in this film, that this will cause all of humanity to completely reform their way of life, especially out in the West. The American Dream will become a memory, that of endless consumption, proud pillaging, and the 3000-mile dinner plate. People will be forced to revert, as it were, to the old way of life: village style. So long commute (yes!), not to mention not-a-second-thought heating and air conditioning, hello home-grown food, and who knows, maybe even the family will make a reappearance! Remember the family?

It had to be foreseen that our way of life, with the extreme level of consumption and waste and earth-domination, could not be sustained. Resources that are not given the time to replenish, and fields that are pesticide-showered to death, and a completely foreign goods-manufacturing force (think goods movement… shipping). How could we be so proud?

But alas, I had to believe that Al Gore would be the hero! While he’s gallivanting the planet advocating less consumption and more sustainable innovation in the name of slowing down the inevitable meltdown, he’s completely neglected the fact that in my lifetime, using a car will be out of my price range. Having electricity extracted from my walls at the rate I do now won’t be possible; I will have to rely on everything my solar panel and windmill can provide. Soon, my commute won’t be possible on my wage. Soon I won’t be able to afford a shirt that was brought into being in Bangladesh. Soon I won’t be able to bring my Caesar Salad in from California. Soon, I won’t have a choice!

Then, THEN, our problem will be solved! The earth will take away our choice to live more or less sustainably. It will save itself (so to speak – I’m not on the floor to Gaia!). With no one driving cars, and a lot of hard-core industrial plants being shut down, and no one being able to afford anything that has anything to do with oil (which is almost everything), maybe the earth will calm down on this whole atmospheric build-up thing, and begin to heal itself before it's too late for us all.

Who knew there’d be an end to oil? But it makes so much sense. Maybe this means there’ll be an end to war as well! Haha, now I'm just getting excited! All major causes of the end of our existence could be nipped in the bud by the end of oil. It's that Texas Tea whose blackness has been a witch's brew for all these years.



I wonder if the scientific elite at thebulletin.org have pitted these catastrophes against each other. I think not, since the clock remains at 5 to midnight. Maybe I’m just blowing smoke with my little theory here. One can hope!