Tag Archive for "fuel"

With the recent admissions by the oil industries that oil supplies did in fact peak around 2002 and the gloomy outlook of increasing fuel prices as supplies decline how many people are wondering quite what we have done and how many are just madly fiddling away while Rome (ie the fuel) is burning? As was predicted by an astute man in the seventies, our nonchalant consumption of fossil fuels placed on a 10,000 year graph will look rather like a slim penis in the middle of the vast timeframe to either side. Is it nature’s way of telling us we’ve been a load of dickheads?

Okay, so there are other power sources and some 80% of the cars on show at the Birmingham Car Show this year were electric but so far nobody has any clue how we could fuel an airplane other than with fossil fuels. That means the same is even more true for a space rocket. It may be millions of years in the future but when our sun goes nova we have to leave this planet or mankind becomes one big fry-up. If by that time there is still no other way to fuel a rocket ship what will those last humans think of us as they watch the sun explode? There are plenty of poor excuses of course … you’re thinking about them right now … but isn’t it incredible that it took us until the fossil fuel supply peaked to even begin to take the problem seriously and recognise the danger of having based our lives on a non-replaceable fuel supply. To say that the last 50 odd years of the so-called developed nations has been governed by short-sighted selfishness is putting in mildly and even now people are saying, “They’ll come up with something” or “xxxx fuel is the answer” when what they really mean is, “I don’t really care because I’ll be dead by the time it gets really tough.” That is assuming we have any idea how much or how little time we have until it gets tough … and when the tough gets going there’ll be nowhere to go.

You might want to take a look at Greenpeace here

If you don’t know about the peaking of oil supplies then take a look at this.

There is also Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers here.

Or an in-depth review of George Monbiot’s book Heat here.

None of it is easy reading but it’s better than being an ostrich.