New oil price records set again today, as gas prices in the LA also see record highs. The long term will show that these events are not part of some brief blip, a temporary spike in prices. Many people think this problem is a result of Big Oil manipulating the markets. Though this is certainly one part of the problem, the big picture reality is, world wide expanding consumption, is now hitting the wall of peaking world wide hydrocarbon production. You hear some people say there's plenty of oil, like these high energy prices are just a part of some marketing game, like the government can just tell the Oil Companies to " straighten up " and the problem will just go away. The fact is, worldwide, there has been a decrease for some decades in finding new fields, especially the big, highly important so called " Elephant Fields ". So why to this point have we seen increasing worldwide production. Thus far, technological advances have allow oil companies to increase thier extraction rates of, mostly existing fields, which has actually increased the speed at which oil depletion will be arriving. Easy to obtain oil is disappearing fast. Whats left will be increasingly lower in quality, harder to find, more expensive to process. World economies that have grown fat on continuous growth and expansion, will find increasingly leaner times, as the energy supplies dwindle. Resource depletion will also be showing its ugly head regarding other important resources, like natural gas, copper, uranium, water etc, etc. China and India, containing almost half the world's population, are trying to duplicate the affluent type societies that the developed world as achieved. The world's depleting resources won't allow for this. You can bet thier will be increasing tensions between the strong countries over what resources are left, it is inevitable. Some scientist suggest that earths biosphere should reasonably only be expected to sustain, on a long term basis, around 2 billion people. Not a rosy outloook for the 7 billion by 2012, and climbing numbers that are predicted, that will be jocking for ever more limited resources.......... I saw advertised today that CNN will run thier show, " We were warned " this weekend on Saturday, and Sunday, back to back each day with a global warming show also. Times were shown as 7PM and 8PM for the two shows. It is good to see the cable news finally starting to get the word out in some form, regarding oil depletion and climate change. The worldwide affluent societies need to come to grips with the reality of these building crisis situations, and can ill afford to operate in thier previous manner, highly preoccupied, complacent, ill informed, all too willing to live the good life, at the expense of the poorer people of the world, and at the expense of the integrity of the world's precious resources, and environment. The clock is ticking, a storm is coming, and it remains to be seen if humanity will be able to instigate anything close to a realitively smooth transition to a sustainable way of interacting with our life support system, Mother Natures womb that sustains us, the biosphere.
