A Crude Awakening

Just recently I watched the movie-documentary ‘A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash’. Before I watched it I thought it was yet another disaster movie (which have been common lately), with the usual formula of lessons learned and ultimate triumph though new technology. But it wasn’t that type of thing at all, no it was a documentary and far scarier!

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0776794/

The Plot summary from IMDB :-

“Supported by a powerful mix of archival footage, NASA shots of burning oil fields, and, often unintentionally hilarious, historical film excerpts, OilCrash guides us on an exotic, visual journey from Houston to Caracas, the Lake of Maracaibo, the Orinoco delta, Central Asia's secretive republic of Azerbaijan with its ancient capital Baku and the Caspian Sea, via London & Zürich. OilCrash visits cities around the world to learn of our future from such leading authorities as oil investment banker Matthew Simmons, former OPEC chairman Fadhil Chalabhi, Caltech's head of physics, Professor David Goodstein, Stanford University political scientist, Terry Lynn Karl, peak oil expert, Matthew Savinar and many more.”

The main themes of the movie are the costs of being dependent on oil and I don’t just mean for transportation and power. I knew oil was used in many by-products but I really didn’t appreciate the true picture. The rapid decline of easily obtainable oil and the future we face with increasingly less oil, for a world requiring more and more oil from less and less places. Increasingly dealing with the future oil sources being what are effectively war zones.

The film also highlights the real lack of commitment of resource and money to finding long-term alternatives to oil. The most memorable part of the film for me was the statement alone the lines that to avoid the worst impacts of the changeover of our economy from oil to an alternative, we would need to begin the process 20 years before the global peak supply of oil is reached, the peak potentially happened 10 years ago or so.

The film revolves around the arrival and passing of the global state of ‘Peak Oil’ which is nicely explained in Wikipedia as:

“Peak oil is the point or timeframe at which the maximum global petroleum production rate is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, the availability of conventional oil will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

I first heard the term Peak Oil several years ago via the BNP website, yes that’s right the BNP website. They maintain a section on their site which is a good introduction to Peak Oil and worth checking out.

http://www.bnp.org.uk/peakoil/index.htm

While the movie is quite depressing, due to the nature of the subject, there is some optimism in the ability of the human race to adapt, with which I would agree, and add that we would stand a better chance if we elected convictions politicians with vision. Quality leadership is sadly lacking from the usual offering of the Lab-Lib-Con establishment with their big business links.

So if you get the chance see this film you should, and afterwards think whether we have a government which is able to take the UK through the transition from oil to an alternative without disaster, I think not.