Problem #7: Peak Oil
Note: this is, by necessity, closely related to the one for Day 8, discussing climate change.
First things first: oil, coal, and natural gas are all fossil fuels. This means two things: they exist because of processes that occurred long ago, and there isn’t any more being made. To be accurate, more oil, coal, and natural gas could be made, but I rather doubt anyone wants to wait the hundreds of millions of years that would be required for that to occur. This means that there’s a limited amount of all of them, and once that’s met, there’s no more. This makes fossil fuels the very definition of a non-renewable resource.
Peak oil is a fairly simple concept on its face: it’s a hypothetical date after which world crude oil production peaks and begins to inevitably drop since, as a non-renewable resource, it’s impossible to create more of it1. Now, the date of peak oil is impossible to determine exactly, as greater exploration and extraction techniques- such as the highly controversial one called hydrofracking- have increased the amount of oil that is available. However, peak easy oil- that is, the kind which can be extracted by drilling a hole on land- may be reached already. The decline in availability of easy oil, naturally, leads to increased pressure to extract difficult oil- such as via deep sea drilling, hydrofracking, and tar sands.
Peak oil is not some left-wing political plot; it is reality, and facts, as has been observed, are very stubborn things. Given this, a rational approach to peak oil should be a gradual transition away from fossil fuels to renewable sources. While renewable sources are ramped up in availability, difficult oil- and gas via hydrofracking- can provide a helpful bridge energy source. But, like it or not, oil isn’t going to be around forever, and continuing to drill for it in more and more dangerous locations won’t- and can’t- change this fact.
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