Does modernity disappear along with the oil? It's a question worth asking, when six of the tweve largest companies in the world are fossil-fuel providers, four make cars and trucks, and one, General Electric, is, as its name implies, heavily involved in the energy industry. Just buying fossil fuels requires almost a tenth of global GDP, and almost all the other 90 percent depends on burning the stuff.It appears there will come a time when all the cholesterol we've been consuming will give us a heart attack. Then, our lives will be walking on a treadmill and downing Lipitor with a half-useless heart. It'll still be life, but not the life we know and much harder.
And yes, that's a metaphor.
The hope is that modernity ADVANCES with the end of oil! Think of everything we could do with dependency on free, renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. We could be there if we just put our minds to it....
ReplyDeleteSara,
ReplyDeleteI understand that that's the hope. But is it reality? Even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, the atmosphere would be 650 ppm carbon dioxide, meaning we'd live in a world with an atmosphere double the limit over what's sustainable.
But we both know that's not going to happen. And, during the time we transition to renewable energy--a transition that will take a very long time--we're likely to run out of oil, etc. especially as other countries rise (see China).
In 2008 alone, 40 million people joined the cadres of the hungry because of the drought. That brought us to 1 in every 7 people on the planet that are hungry. Maybe we have modernity here, but it's dying in most other places. This is why I'm worried (and rambling without much coherence).