Painting a Whole New Future--Without Oil?
"Life as we know it is about to...."
—Jess
Life as We Know It is About to Change 
Will I be able to continue my art career?
I got angry—really angry—when I learned that life as we know it is about to be turned upside down.
Questions zoomed through my mind:
- Where's the media attention to the fact that we're using up all of our oil?
- Why haven't I heard about it before?
- Is having my own family down the road going to be a only a dream because of the effects of not having enough oil?
- Could I still become the artist I've always dreamed of being?
Are my life plans going to be forever altered because of a problem I only first learned about during my freshman year in college?
CloseYou know how you hear stories about people's lives changing in the blink of an eye?
That's what happened to me when I learned that the world is on the verge of its peak oil production in my English class at the University of Southern Maine, Portland.
As an artist, the oil I think about most is made for painting. But the paper I was assigned was about the oil we use as a source of energy.
I hadn't really given a second thought to that type of oil. I didn't realize just how crucial it is to our survival and to the things we depend on every day.
There is a big threat that soon, we'll be using more than we can find.
This predicament is called global oil-production peak.
What is global oil-production peak?
The oil will run out some day, but there are conflicting views on when we'll reach peak oil.
When Will the World Reach Peak Oil Production? No one disputes that global oil production will peak. The debate is all about when.
In the 1950s, M. King Hubbert, a U.S. geologist, noticed that a graph of oil discoveries over time followed a bell-shaped curve. He created a similar curve for the rate of oil production, now known as the Hubbert Curve.
Hubbert predicted that oil production in the continental United States would peak between 1965 and 1970. And it did, in 1970.
Experts in the energy field have used variations on Hubbert's method to make various projections about when we'll reach the global oil peak:
- Within 20 years: Robert Hirsch and co-authors reported to the U.S. Government in Feb. 2005 that peaking will occur "within 20 years."
- In the next decade: Dr Shokri Ghanem of the National Oil Corporation (NOC) of Libya says it could take place sometime "within the next decade or so."
- In this decade: Kenneth S. Deffeyes, a geologist and professor emeritus at Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., says, "Sometime during this decade."
- In 2010: Colin J. Campbell, a geologist for Texaco, Amoco, and the country of Ecuador, says, "The decline will begin before 2010".
- Now: David Goodstein, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif., vice provost and professor of physics and applied physics, says, "Right about now."
No matter when it happens, it will happen. We can't be complacent.
CloseMore commonly called peak oil, global oil production peak refers to a time when oil production all over the world no longer will be able to meet our energy needs. Production will have reached its peak and begun to decline.
Oil Production Oil production means extracting and refining oil. In 2007, the world was producing and consuming about 84 million barrels a day.
According to The Oil Drum, world oil production peaked in July 2008 at 74.82 million barrels a day and by June 2009 had fallen to about 71 million barrels a day.
That means we're using it faster than we're producing it.
CloseWhen we say we'll have reached our peak, that doesn't mean we'll run out of oil, but run out of cheap oil. It's the halfway point of all oil reserves, when production becomes ever more likely to decline.
As oil companies look farther and deeper for oil, it will take more money and energy to extract and refine it. When it takes the energy of a barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil, then further extraction is senseless.
A barrel of oil: what for?
A Barrel of Oil 
Refining splits oil into different components for different uses. Nineteen gallons of each 42-gallon barrel become gasoline. The rest is used to make heating oil and other fuels, lubricants, waxes, asphalt, plastics, and fabrics.
In 2008, the United States, used about 19.5 million barrels of oil a day.
CloseWhat does peak oil mean to us?
Reaching oil production peak means we'll have to live with less oil—and it's something that's going to happen sooner than later.
What does this mean to you and me? It means big changes in the way we live our everyday lives.
How big a change?
What about alternative energy?
Alternative Energy? Using advanced technology or other sources of energy like nuclear, hydro, biofuel, biomass, geothermal, wind, or solar can't possibly fill the energy needs that oil fills today.
For example, hydropower furnishes about 5.5% of the energy currently consumed. Its potential may be as much as five times greater, but this can't fill the whole gap left by fossil fuels.
Things like coal, nuclear power, and tar sands are only short-term solutions.
Even driving a hydrogen-powered car isn't the answer—most are designed to run on hydrogen produced from natural gas!
Some researchers say that biomass fuels—like ethanol made from corn—require more fossil energy to make than they produce.
CloseHow will our lives change? I'm preparing for dramatically.
Dramatically Without the volume of oil we need, we'll have less available for:
- Heating our homes
- Gassing up our cars
- Eating food transported from around the world
- Using items that made from petroleum, like laundry detergent and water bottles
This will affect people who work in trucking, gas station, car manufacturing, tourism, as well as many other fields.
CloseScience Applications International Corporation, headquartered in McLean, Va., did a study on the global oil production peak and stated that the peak is going to be "an unprecedented risk management problem," and "extremely complex" to fix, "involving literally trillions of dollars" and "years of intense effort."
Once the peak occurs, transporting goods will become less common. Communities will have to rely on produce their own food.
Food Transport In the U.S., the average piece of food is transported almost 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate.
Seven-tenths of one calorie of fossil fuel is required to produce each calorie of food we eat. Then there's the added energy cost of packaging, delivery, refrigeration, and cooking.
CloseKeeping warm will rank high on one's list of priorities to survive, notes David Price, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., author of "Energy and Human Evolution."
Oil consumption even affects:
- Health care, because the money won't be there to fund research
- Education, because budgets are likely to be cut to compensate for energy costs
- Our water security because of the close link between water sources and energy security.
Healthcare Depends on Energy Hospitals and medical facilities are dependent on energy.
During an eight state electrical blackout in August 2003, hospitals struggled with back-up generators, losing donor organs, cancelling operations, and evacuating patients.
CloseIt's not going to be a matter of not being able to drive to the mall. It's going to be a matter of not being able to feed your children.
What's scary is the uncertainty of our plans for the effects of peak oil...
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