Forum Post: Peak Oil: The Real Problem?

Just watched this: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-end-of-suburbia/

Saw a brief doc that mentioned this (than tried to connect it to 9/11 conspiracies) but that made me think.

Did we hit peak oil in 2008? Is that what caused the economy bubble to burst, and the car industry to die? When the gas price went up about a year ago (from a high of just under $1 CAD to $1.20 average per/L), did that cause such a strain on the economy recently that this event alone is responsible for the current "recovery" that feels like recession?

Many people have been predicting a slow decline in our economy for awhile now. I feel like this is it; peak oil. We hit peak oil, and the western governments made a mad dash to gain control of any weak foreign supply they could.

Even for the global warming skeptics; knowing we hit peak oil is an excellent reason to tax people who burn fossil fuels. Convincing people to use less oil, knowing that the carbon output is going to decrease anyway, is a very good strategy to pay off old debts. Like they say in the video, it's not that we have run out of oil. We may have oil for thousands of years, but we have run out of cheap, inexpensive oil. This impacts the cost of food and transportation.

Without oil, working becomes more difficult. Transportation too and from work becomes more difficult. Daily living expenses become more expensive. Even maintaining a "Big Government", that requires electricity and transportation becomes more difficult to maintain. The Government will not be able to pay off debts if the nations infrastructure cannot be maintained.

I am very convinced that peak oil is the problem we are facing, and the cause of a lot of the political tension and strife in the world. I have not seen the gas price move downwards more than 10 cents since it hit $1.20. Today, it was up slightly more.

I think this chart shows my reference to the 2008 recession. The Gas spiked hard in 2008. If you look at the history adjusted, it looks like the 2008 price matches the early prices from the 1979 crisis.

According to Bloomberg, the recession actually caused a decline in oil usage (which may have been the whole point), because of reduced demand: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-05-09/saudi-arabian-algerian-oil-ministers-see-consumption-increasing-this-year.html