h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sometimes a group of people will be gabbing about, and someone might come up with this as a conversation topic:

"What scares you?"

I used to not have an answer. Nothing, I figure, is really scary if you really think about it. I could say death scares me, but it doesn't really. Pain, perhaps, but that's because I dislike discomfort. Bugs and such don't really bother me, as long as I'm the one holding the bug spray.

But today I read something that really scared me. And I think I'm going to be scared for the rest of my days. I'm scared of the future.

The report I read was from
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It talked about how long our oil reserves will really last, and how long our society can really sustain itself.

The verdict? Our oil production will peak in about 5 years. After that it'll decline. Since the Muslim nations in the middle east somehow ended up with all the oil, about 2008 or so, they'll control a majority of the world's remaining oil reserves. Sooner or later, they're going to band together as Muslim nations and start squeezing the rest of the world dry. One US highly placed government official said that our dependence on foreign oil was a "threat to national security."

Think about it. Say some Islamic fundamentalists get into power and decide that the godless heathens in the West need to be taught a lesson. Allah decrees the start of a Jihad (holy war), or something to that effect. All they have to do is cut off our oil supply, and Western society is up the river. Sure, our combined militaries will march in to take over, but that means war. Specifically, WWIII. Maybe nuclear, biological, and/or chemical weapons will be involved.

And even if we win (at a cost of millions of lives, no doubt), then what happens? We've already reached our peak oil production. There's NO MORE OIL to be found. We've drilled everywhere in the world already. Blackouts will start. Gasoline rationing will return. The energy "crisis" in California is just the beginning. Imagine a world where plastic, automobiles, electricity, heating fuel, anything made from petroleum is severly rationed.

And the worst part? People don't want to know. Activists can protest till they're blue in the face, but people living the high life don't want to hear about how their free ride is about to end. In society, the bearer of bad news is never listened to.

I always assumed we'd have enough resources to last my lifetime before any big changes happened. But one model says that an industrial society like ours has a life span of about 100 years, and that clock started ticking in 1930. By 2030, we'll have burned our resources out and we'll return to pre-industrial conditions. Famine, pestilence, war, and death will take over to restore an equilibrium to our world.

It means by the time I become a productive member of society, there might not be our society left. There might be something very different, and that scares me.

Change is a constant in life; we adapt. Just imagine all the change a 90-year-old has seen, and how scary modern life would seem to that person had he or she pondered such things at 20. Not that I relish the thought of no cars...I adore driving too much. And life without electricity makes me quite grumpy. But I wouldn't lose sleep over it. We're too spoiled to just let our standard of living drop without a fight.