Our Pompeii?

The morning of August 24, 79AD was undoubtedly not unlike many others in Pompeii, a town located near the Coast of Naples, in ancient Italy. It’s otherwise vibrant economy was finally starting to boom again after a major earthquake several years earlier. Bakers baked, blacksmiths forged, teachers taught and people otherwise went about their business, sure and confident of their place within the mighty Roman Empire. Surely, life was good.

However, the unthinkable happened, and peoples lives, where just moments earlier, all was well, were swept away by the destruction wrought by an erupting Mt. Vesuvius. Sadly, in the weeks and months prior to that historic volcanic eruption, the warning signs were there – tremors, minor quakes, and ominous plumes of smoke wafting from the caldera. Unfortunately, there were no geologists or volcanologists around back then to heed these signs and alert the people, and so the bakers still baked, the blacksmiths forged, the teachers taught and folks ignored the rumblings under the volcano, going about their busy lives as if tomorrow was a given.

It’s hard to imagine, really – a normal day one moment, and catastrophe the next. But…the signs were there, and the events of that day are now etched in history.

Fast-forward to the modern, high-tech world of today. We in the west enjoy an amazing standard of living that would have been nothing short of magic in the eyes of the early Romans. It’s amazing how we can feed and entertain ourselves, travel the globe, and manufacture the myriads of things for our consumer culture. The world is a manufacturing juggernaut, even in this depressed economy, and this is only possible because of the cheap, available energy available to do so. In fact, we’ve become extremely good at using fuels, mainly fossil fuel, to make our world go. Why wouldn’t we? Fossil fuels, namely oil, are still plentiful and relatively cheap, and deliver a powerful energy kick. We’ve used oil to industrialize agriculture, manufacture the specialty chemicals and plastics we all use on a daily basis, and make the transportation of people and things a perceived divine right . Surely, life is good.

However, like those Pompeian’s of so long ago, most people in today’s world are unaware of our own rumbling Vesuvius. But this time it’s not a volcano we need to worry about. The threat we need to wake up to and boldly tackle is less local, and more global, and it’s name is Peak Oil. This isn’t the name of a mountain in Saudi Arabia, rather it’s a term to describe the point in time where global oil production hits a maximum, and thereafter declines as the wells deplete and what oil is left is of poorer quality and harder to get. In a world so dangerously dependant on oil, this represents a greater threat to civilization than terrorism, H1N1, or this most recent global economic downturn. Most experts in the oil industry acknowledge peak oil production to occur some time in the next five to ten years. Every year past the peak would see oil prices skyrocket, permanently tanking the economy in the process.

You’d be right to step back at this moment and say all this sounded a little dramatic. And you’d be right – it does sound dramatic, but only because the problem itself is so. We depend on oil for just about everything and there is no substitute available or on the horizon to replace the expected shortfall between supply and demand, despite talk of a hydrogen economy or fleets of electric cars. Other sectors we take for granted would also be affected by soaring oil prices – food and home heating to name a few. Consider that for every calorie we get from our feed, eight calories of soon-to-be very expensive fossil fuel inputs were used to grow that food and get it to the store for you to purchase. Filling your grocery cart should not need a small loan.

While this sounds like a new problem, it really isn’t. In 1956, Shell geologist M. King Hubbert accurately predicted US oil production would peak in 1971. While many scoffed at him, he was right, and he went on to predict global oil production would peak around the year 2000. While certainly off, his prediction didn’t miss by much, as most petro geologists predict an oil Peak before 2020..

Credible, third party sources will verify that this threat is just around the corner and that inaction at government, business and personal levels would be disastrous. In 2005, senior energy advisor Robert L. Hirsch testified to Congress, “As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented.”

The L.B. Magoon report for the US Geological Survey notes, “In the last five years, we’ve consumed 27 billion barrels of oil a year, but the oil industry has only discovered three billion barrels a year. So, only one barrel was replaced for every nine barrels we used.”

James Schlesinger (R), Energy Secretary under President Jimmy Carter, also recently warned, "We are not good at recognizing distant threats even if their probability is 100%. Society ignoring [peak oil] is like the people of Pompeii ignoring the rumblings below Vesuvius."

The words of alarm from the experts in the field are our warning signs that awareness and action are urgently needed. While the residents of Pompeii had no warning, we certainly do, and the consequences of inaction are certainly ours to avoid. We are no more immune from disaster than those unfortunate Roman citizens two thousand years ago. It’s arrogant to think otherwise.

To learn more, please search for ‘peak oil’ online. You will be awarded with an impressive amount of information. Alternatively, you can email phcri08@gmail.com for more information. Let us together begin to prepare for one of the defining moments of this young century, and avoid our own Pompeii.