Collapse Assignment 2

Many blockbuster movies involve the crash of our culture or some form of the apocalypse- Day After Tomorrow, Apocalypse Now, I am Legend, etc. But as we watch these movies, comfortable in our air conditioned theatre eating our jumbo popcorn and coke, we rarely consider the actual possibility of our society collapsing. The collapse scientists are most afraid of is not one that involves aliens or explosions, rather a depletion of one of the most used fuels- Oil. The amount of oil that we use a year could reach the moon and back 250 times. In an average day, we use 84 million barrels of oil. And now scientists fear that our supply of oil will not be enough to keep our society running. This is called Peak Oil.
We will not simply run out of oil entirely, because oil runs on a bell curve. As it goes up the curve, there is plenty of oil and it is inexpensive, and as it goes down the curve it becomes scarce and expensive. The "peak" occurs once half of the amount of oil available has depleted.
In the 1950s, the United States was the largest oil exporter and largest producer of oil. During this time, as the country was reveling in its oil success, M. King Hubbard claimed that oil would peak at sometime in the early 1970s, and from then on would decrease. Many disagreed, assuming that the oil would continue to increase at it had been for the past few years. However, suddenly in 1972, the oil was no longer as available as it was the years prior. The country was beginning to experience the downside of the curve. Even a shortfall of production as small as 5% would result in the price of oil to practically quadruple. Hubbards theory was correct, and really not that surprising.
If oil were to peak, then in a certain amount of years in the future the availability of oil would be equal to the availability as it was that same amount of years in the past. However, as we continue to progress technologically, we find the usage of oil increasing. This shows why peak oil will become and increasingly fateful occurance as we move further and further into the future, as we rely more and more on it.
When considering the fall of certain societies, one must consider the collapse of Easter Island. Easter Islanders pushed their natural resources to the brink, leading to the complete deforestation of their island, therefore losing everything they required to survive. They never considered the long term affects it may have by cutting down all of their trees. We are proving to be more and more like the Easter Islanders as ignore the peak oil crises, and figure that the businessmen and scientists of our world will figure out a way to fix it, when in reality, it will just continue to get worse.
One must also consider the extensive warfare that goes along with oil. In 1963, world oil discovery peaked, and since then, we have been venturing to other countries in order to get the oil we want. As the peak oil crises continue to get worse, the more warfare will occur in order to obtain the oil we will so desperately need. We will completely deconstruct as a society.